Crystal Quast's Blog - Posts Tagged "pyschological-thriller"
Haunted by houses and a premise with some cracks
How do you pick which book to read next?
For me, it could be a recommendation, a snippet read elsewhere, new information about the author, or of course, a cover that pulls me in.
I moved a lot as a kid; nearly twenty times before I hit the same age. My family wasn’t in the military and my dad didn’t work for one of the big banks—other reasons I knew kids moved a lot.
I never knew why we packed up and had to move into a new home so frequently, sometimes more than once in a single year. Junior high was spent pinballing between two towns and schools, and in the span of three years, I racked up five different living addresses.
For that reason, there are reams of houses that I used to live in. Houses whose details I still remember in intricate detail: the number of steps to the second floor, the furniture placement, the colors.
I drove by a few in real life, too, and once the current occupants of what I thought of as my favorite house were standing on the front lawn. My sister’s car, already crawling, came to a stop. I rolled down the window and explained.
This couple had lived there since the day we left over 30 years ago and were now just the third family to occupy the home.
Like most things when you're young, the house seemed much smaller than I remembered it. I could still see my mom standing in the kitchen, washing dishes while looking into the yard. The yellow gingham wallpaper was long gone.
The house, built in 1976 by an architect as a wedding present to a daughter for a marriage that never materialized, still had the same layout.
Then, two years ago, a woman showed up on my own doorstep—the original owner of the home I’ve lived in for nearly a decade. This set of owners looked around all three floors.
We had knocked down walls and changed things up. The woman commented on how open it was; no room for privacy, but she guessed maybe that’s how people liked it now.
Her son talked about the fun times he had at the bar in the basement; there was no bar when we moved here. By then, it had been converted to unloved student housing.
Their visit wrapped up, and as I ushered them out the door, I apologized for the state of my home; it was messier than I would have liked it to be. The woman smiled and noted how it must be hard to keep it tidy with two young boys.
While she meant to be kind, her comment tweaked a nearly constant critical refrain of my adulthood. I smiled and closed the door, but felt sad that the woman seemed less than pleased with the fate of “her” house.
When I later mentioned it to a wise friend, she countered with: “Fuck ’em! They had no right to come to your house and expect it to be the same! Or clean! You don’t have to keep your house clean for anybody except yourself and how you want it.”
So when I saw the cover and the title of my latest read, We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer, I was hooked and left the bookstore with a different title than I planned.
I loved the idea of reading about a family once removed from a home, returning in horror-story fashion.
The first part of the novel was gripping. A strange family walks out of the woods to appear at the home of Eve and her wife, Charlie.
Overall, I enjoyed it, but I like to really understand plot mechanics. A haunting premise with sharp opening chapters, but too many plot holes for me to feel fully at home in the story—so I gave it 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.
Read the full review here: http://bit.ly/4630koT
For me, it could be a recommendation, a snippet read elsewhere, new information about the author, or of course, a cover that pulls me in.
I moved a lot as a kid; nearly twenty times before I hit the same age. My family wasn’t in the military and my dad didn’t work for one of the big banks—other reasons I knew kids moved a lot.
I never knew why we packed up and had to move into a new home so frequently, sometimes more than once in a single year. Junior high was spent pinballing between two towns and schools, and in the span of three years, I racked up five different living addresses.
For that reason, there are reams of houses that I used to live in. Houses whose details I still remember in intricate detail: the number of steps to the second floor, the furniture placement, the colors.
I drove by a few in real life, too, and once the current occupants of what I thought of as my favorite house were standing on the front lawn. My sister’s car, already crawling, came to a stop. I rolled down the window and explained.
This couple had lived there since the day we left over 30 years ago and were now just the third family to occupy the home.
Like most things when you're young, the house seemed much smaller than I remembered it. I could still see my mom standing in the kitchen, washing dishes while looking into the yard. The yellow gingham wallpaper was long gone.
The house, built in 1976 by an architect as a wedding present to a daughter for a marriage that never materialized, still had the same layout.
Then, two years ago, a woman showed up on my own doorstep—the original owner of the home I’ve lived in for nearly a decade. This set of owners looked around all three floors.
We had knocked down walls and changed things up. The woman commented on how open it was; no room for privacy, but she guessed maybe that’s how people liked it now.
Her son talked about the fun times he had at the bar in the basement; there was no bar when we moved here. By then, it had been converted to unloved student housing.
Their visit wrapped up, and as I ushered them out the door, I apologized for the state of my home; it was messier than I would have liked it to be. The woman smiled and noted how it must be hard to keep it tidy with two young boys.
While she meant to be kind, her comment tweaked a nearly constant critical refrain of my adulthood. I smiled and closed the door, but felt sad that the woman seemed less than pleased with the fate of “her” house.
When I later mentioned it to a wise friend, she countered with: “Fuck ’em! They had no right to come to your house and expect it to be the same! Or clean! You don’t have to keep your house clean for anybody except yourself and how you want it.”
So when I saw the cover and the title of my latest read, We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer, I was hooked and left the bookstore with a different title than I planned.
I loved the idea of reading about a family once removed from a home, returning in horror-story fashion.
The first part of the novel was gripping. A strange family walks out of the woods to appear at the home of Eve and her wife, Charlie.
Overall, I enjoyed it, but I like to really understand plot mechanics. A haunting premise with sharp opening chapters, but too many plot holes for me to feel fully at home in the story—so I gave it 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.
Read the full review here: http://bit.ly/4630koT
