Review: We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough

We Live Here Now

by Sarah Pinborough

Release Date: May 20, 2025

2025 Flatiron Books: Pine & Cedar

Ebook & Audiobook ARC; 291 Pages

ISBN: 978-1250394057

ASIN: B0DHV5DGJT

Audiobook: B0DN25LRDS

Genre: Fiction / Horror

Source: Review copy from publisher

 

2 / 5 Stars

 

Summary

After an accident that nearly kills her, Emily and her husband, Freddie, move from London to a beautiful Dartmoor country house called Larkin Lodge. The house is gorgeous, striking—and to Emily, something about it feels deeply wrong. Old boards creak at night; fires extinguish; and books fall from the shelves—all of it stemming from the terrible presence she feels in the third-floor room.

But these things happen only when Emily is alone, so are they happening at all? She is still medically fragile. Freddie does not notice anything odd and is happy with their chance at a fresh start. She, however, starts to believe the house is haunted by someone who had been murdered in it even though she can find no evidence of a wrongful death. As bizarre events pile up and her marriage starts to crumble, Emily becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about Larkin Lodge. But just as the house has secrets so do Emily and her husband.

 

My Thoughts

We Live Here Now had all the elements that would make a good story as there was a house in the woods that had a history of strange things happening within it, neighbours who made odd comments about the house, things that went bump in the night, hallucinations, secrets, and a marriage on the rocks. But when you have main characters that are just unlikeable and you can't relate to them, and a writing style that is simply way too repetitive, this destroys any tension or suspense in the book and just makes you roll your eyes.

 

First of all, I don't need to like the characters in order to enjoy a book, but I do need to understand their motives and understand why they act the way they do. These two main characters, Freddie and Emily are just not likeable as they are spiteful, narcissistic, and mean, and boy, do they hold grudges.  It just makes it so hard to care what happens to them and honestly, I was hoping one of the ravens (even they were awful) would pick them off and we would just be done with the story.  I couldn't even distinguish between the secondary characters at the moment, and I just finished this a month ago.  Unfortunately, they were just as one-dimensional as the main characters. Again, the characters don't have to be likeable, but they do need to have some depth, some personality to them, and these just...didn't.

 

The story itself was intriguing, but unfortunately it was quite repetitive and nothing really happened until the last ten percent of the book.  There were very few haunting elements, but more discussions about Emily's illness and whether she was seeing hallucinations. You can imagine where the story went from there when you have two people who live together, but don't necessarily like each other and are scheming against each other.  It really is a shame though, as the actual story was quite interesting and I would have loved to have the author really develop the concept and make it a lot more creepy and eerie than it was. It could have been so much more, if you can forgive the pun, ...haunting. 

 

Verdict

We Live Here Now just missed the mark and spent too much time focusing on things that really destroyed the tension and suspense of the story. Instead of focusing on the actual mystery, the author chose to focus on two main characters and their relationship issues which really destroyed the overall effect for me simply because the story became too repetitive and the characters were just not developed. By the time we got to something interesting, I was just trying to get this book over with and simply lost interest.