The horror! The horror! The horror!
We Used to Live Here
by Marcus Kliewer
New York: Atria/Emily Bestler Books, 2024
$34.99 / 9781982198787
Reviewed by Zoe McKenna
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There are those out there, like me, who grew up spending countless unsupervised hours in Reddit’s r/nosleep forum. Chances are, those same people passed through adolescence sending shivers down their spines with horror books under the bed covers. For those people, Marcus Kliewer’s We Used to Live Here cannot be missed.
Kliewer is a writer and stop-motion animator who resides in Vancouver. We Used to Live Here is his debut novel, though the story is already well-loved. In its first iteration, We Used to Live Here was published as a story in four parts on r/nosleep, a Reddit subforum dedicated to scary stories, with roughly 18 million members. There, We Used to Live Here won the Scariest Story of 2021 award; the film rights have since been acquired by Netflix.
We Used to Live Here opens with Eve, alone in her new fixer-upper home, waiting for her partner, Charlie, to return from work. Instead, a stranger arrives, accompanied by his wife and three children. The man, Thomas, explains to Eve that he lived in the house growing up, and wants to show his family around for nostalgia’s sake while they’re passing through town. Eve, ever the people-pleaser, lets the strangers inside.
It doesn’t take long for Eve to realize her mistake. Things inside the house are no longer what they seem, and when the youngest child disappears in the basement—which requires that the family stay overnight— the situation quickly dissolves into madness. Eve wakes to find Charlie missing, and soon it seems all remnants of the life they shared are disappearing with her.
While the characters fall a bit flat, so too do they fall into the footsteps of a long legacy of one-note horror leads. Fans of the genre know this story well. The foolish protagonist makes mistake after mistake, as the audience cries out in agitation. The dubious partner is humbled as strange events can no longer be dismissed with logic and reason. Monsters in the attic and phantoms in the basement! Useless light switches and unreliable flashlights! The beats are well-worn and well-loved, and in its essence, that’s what the horror genre is all about—familiar stories that make readers second-guess the bumps in the night from their own basement.
Despite his close adherence to horror tropes and structure, Kliewer also offers readers extra tidbits to keep readers enthralled. Kliewer intersperses the chapters with newspaper articles, police interviews, website content, and similar sources. This dossier of research has two effects. The first is to give readers a break from the lightning-fast pace of the narrative—an opportunity for the unease to settle in. The second is to add authenticity to Eve’s unreliable narration.
Reddit’s r/nosleep forum began as a space for people to share supposedly true stories—personal anecdotes of their encounters with the supernatural or otherwise scary. By including the letters, articles, and other excerpts, Kliewer introduces a small, niggling voice that has readers questioning whether parts of the story could be real.
Elevating the novel further, nestled into the last page of each research-focused divergence from the storyline, is a single word written in Morse code. While easy to miss, for those paying attention, it’s a spine-tingling easter egg to unravel while reading along.
The mind-bending trajectory of this story makes for a thrilling experience for readers.
Yet, perhaps more interestingly, We Used to Live Here is a fascinating case study for writers. The original serialized story is still available on Reddit for those interested in seeing where this novel began. In some ways, the access feels like a peek behind the curtain of the writing process, so often hidden away from the public eye. By reading the Reddit posts, readers can trace the threads of the original stories and explore how they have evolved in the full-length novel. Whether you prefer to race through a short story for an expedited thrill or sit with the novel and watch as the plot lines expand and contract around shared protagonists, Kliewer has offers the best of both worlds.
We Used to Live Here isn’t a novel for the faint of heart. It’s also not for those who like neat endings. It’s is not a story that strives to resolve every mystery or provide clear explanations. With every passing word, the story becomes madder, and with each chapter, the narrator becomes more unstable and more unreliable.
That said, if you’re looking for a novel that twists and turns so quickly, and devolves so deftly, that you’re left with more questions than you began with—buckle in for the ride.
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Zoe McKenna holds a MA from the UVic and a BA from VIU. Her thesis, as well as a great deal of her other reading and writing, focuses on horror writing in Canada, especially that by BIPOC authors. Her previous work has appeared in VIU’s Portal Magazine and Quill & Quire. When not reading, writing, or reviewing, Zoe can be found hiking a local mountain or in front of a movie with her two cats, Florence and Delilah. She is always covered in cat hair and wears almost exclusively dark clothing to prove it. Find her on Twitter. [Editor’s note: Zoe McKenna has reviewed books by Ivana Filipovich, Giselle Vriesen, Scott Alexander Howard, S.W. Mayse, Linda Cheng, Paul Cresey, Michelle Min Sterling, Eve Lazarus, David Wallace, David Ly & Daniel Zomparelli, Sophie Sullivan, kc dyer, Robyn Harding, and Lindsay Cameron for BCR.]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-25: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, Maria Tippett, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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