We Used To Live Here by Marcus Kleiwer

 We Used to Live Here 

By Marcus Kleiwer 

Published Year: 2024

Page Count: 270 pages 

Medium Used; Kindle Scribe 

Genre: Dark, Lesbians, Horror, Alternate Realities, Ghosts, Murder, Suspense. Thriller, 2026-read. 

Rating: 4.5/5 😀😀😀😀🤞

Eve and Charlie are a couple who purchase, renovate and sell houses for profit. They have bought a mansion 3709, situated on a 5 acre plot, surrounded by mountains, forests and ponds, on Heritage Lane. It is a secluded spot, located far from nearby establishments. For example, It would take over 2 hours to get help in case of medical emergencies or police assistance. But still, they love the house and buy it. The interior is cluttered with relics, old furniture covered in dust and they project an year for clearing it up. They plan on demolishing the house and building new from scratch. 

One day, a family of five arrive on their footstep with a strange request. Charlie is out of the house and Eve receives them. The Faust family, comprising of Thomas and his wife, Paige and their three kids - Jenny, Newton and Kai request a home tour because it was Thomas's childhood home. He promises to wrap up the tour in 15 minutes. They are on a cross country trip and this is their stop in between. After their time is up and they are thanking Eve for fulfilling their request, they notice that Jenny is missing. She must have gone and hid in the basement. It takes a while for her to rejoin them. They rethink of leaving but there comes a notification that the nearby bridge is closed due to bad weather. The family stays the night. Eve wants them gone as soon as possible. But they seem to stick like glue. In the morning, she finds her phone missing. She walks to her neighbor, Heather's house and learns some grim truths about the Faust family. Thomas, as a child, was viciously attacked by his sister Alison, who was an adopted child and committed to psychiatric ward due to this incident. Enroute her home, Eve meets an old man who warns her that the family members don't look the way they really are. It is very cryptic right? And it would send chills down the spine of anyone in Eve's place! Would be mentally harrowing to think she is surrounded by people who mean her "harm" although it is not certain what that harm might entail. 

She notices some strange silhouettes in the basement and attic which might have been her imagination or reality warping around her. She notices things changing and it feels like she is losing grip over reality. After an accident with her dog and Kai, the family drives away. So does Eve and Charlie. They rent a room in the nearest motel and we see Eve getting mired deeper into her delusions. I wondered if this is perhaps the house is exerting control over her from afar. She is convinced that Charlie and dog Shylo with her at the motel are doppelgangers of the "real" ones. She runs away from them at night and goes back to the house. She gets telepathic mental images projected from Alison's ghost(?) and it is the opposite of what we were lead to believe by Heather and Thomas. Who's version is the truth and whom to trust? I guess it is easy for us and her to believe in the victim but who is the real victim? Through a series of unhinged events, Eve ends up in an altered reality where I felt it would have been better if she was truly mad.  Her condition plummets into insanity, in a jarring version of reality, that she cannot reconcile with! 

The word I would describe for this story is "mind bending " and "haunting ". It is a shocking story. It had me question my sanity. Throughout the story, I was quizzing myself over whose version to believe and whose to brush aside as fabrication. To imagine and successfully write this complex story is in itself a major feat. I would have liked for the author to have dwelled a bit more on the history of Thomas and his family. What made them the way they were or simply, tell us upfront, what the hell they are. How it is that Thomas is singularly aware of the true identity of Eve when everyone else bought into the altered reality version of events. Was Paige really dead or is she going to make a surprise resurrected entry later on? See -- me here, totally lost my marbles it looks like. I am asking these questions assuming this story to be some kind of a biography while it is nothing more than compelling and consuming work of fiction. True admiration for the author! Definitely check this out.

 It scared the beezus out of me couple of times. While there was no life threat for Eve, there has always been a definite hint of some heinous plot underneath; to somehow frame her as a mentally unstable person. But why? What would Thomas or his family gain from subjecting her to this torment? I would have like more details from the author .. unless there is a sequel planned, I would say he left a few untied ends here. 

The prose is good. The world is ominous - wind gusting, lights flickering and scraping sounds make the house look like an organism rather than an inanimate thing made up of brick and tiles. With the contending voices in Eve's mind : one warning of danger and other brushing it away : make her situation all the more chilly and precarious.  Which one does she heed to, at the time of need? I liked how research notes, news articles and other trivia are peppered through out the book - they drift together as pieces of a puzzle and add up to understanding the whole story!