We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough

 

Emily and Freddie have relocated from London to a remote country house. As soon as they move in Emily begins to get a strange feeling and is convinced the house is haunted.

We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough has just the right level of creepiness to keep you turning the pages, desperate to know what is going on, but all too prepared to slam the book closed if things get too much. A little bit like watching a scary film from behind a cushion.

Emily is rebuilding her life after an accident in which she almost lost her life. Months in a coma have left her weak and jobless. During the time she was in a coma her husband, Freddie, sold their London apartment and bought a remote house, convinced this was what Emily wanted. Freddie's employer has arranged for his job to be relocated but in the meantime he has a few weeks left to work in the London office. As a result of this Emily is frequently alone in the house during the week.

Strange things begin to happen around Emily, all the classic signs of a haunting; strange smells, noises, objects moving. While Emily is convinced there is a supernatural element at play, no one else has witnessed anything and her husband tries to convince her that it is more likely to be a post-sepsis hallucination. My first thought was that Emily had brought something back with her after being technically dead for a few minutes but I did also consider that this could be a case of gas-lighting.

There is far more to the story than the sinister goings-on within the house. Past residents deny ever witnessing anything and both Emily and Freddie are hiding secrets. You begin to wonder how far they are willing to go to prevent their secret from being uncovered. All of the different threads made for a pacey story.

I felt empathy for both main characters as they tried desperately to deal with the situation they were in. The harder they tried to keep their secret hidden, the worse the situation became and the more drastic the solution seemed. When the secret of the house is finally revealed I loved how it was used by various characters and led to a wonderfully apt conclusion. 

We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough will be published on 5th June 2025 in hardback, ebook and audio format. My thanks to NetGalley and Orion for a review copy.

Author Details

Sarah Pinborough is a New York Times bestselling and Sunday Times Number one and Internationally bestselling author who is published in over 25 territories worldwide. Having published more than 25 novels across various genres.

Sarah was the 2009 winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Story and also the 2010 and 2014 winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Novella, and she has four times been short-listed for Best Novel. She is also a screenwriter who has written for the BBC and is currently working on three TV projects and the film adaptation of her novel The Death House.