ALC Review: We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough
- Story Eater
- 22 hours ago
- 3 min read
Release date: 20 May 2025
Rating: 4/5
Narrators: Helen Baxendale, Jamie Glover, Sarah Pinborough
Synopsis: 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. Her post-sepsis condition can cause hallucinatory side effects, which means she cannot fully trust her senses. 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.
Review
Color me surprised, but I may have found a paranormal book with about as perfect an ending as I can think of. Random stuff wasn’t interjected, it wasn’t a Scooby-Doo reveal, and it wasn’t absolutely predictable and/or stupid. Sure, there were still some things I didn’t like about the book, but I thought the author really stuck the landing at that end, and for me, that’s a pretty big deal.
Don’t get me wrong, not everything about We Live Here Now fits right in with all of my bookish preferences. To start, it was pretty slow for the first 35-40% of the book. I had to start another book and come back to it. For a book so short (about 304 pages), I expect a faster pace with no slumps. I’m not averse to saying I wasn’t feeling it at the time, maybe I wasn’t in the right mood, or some other such bookish nuances; but I think it was slow.
Second, the lore behind the book is thin. A short little blip brings up some supposed stuff about the house could be haunted because it’s this or that (no spoilers), and that’s all. I’d have appreciated a bit more development to add to the atmosphere and give a little bit of complexity to the story. This also adds to one of my other reservations: the narrative technique. The haunted house vibe in stories usually comes with an unreliable narrator aspect to give it its creepy vibe and some tension, but I didn’t feel that was done very well here because it was combined with myriad other things to create suspense, which just made it feel cluttered to me.
Even though there are a ton of things I could gripe about, I’ll avoid going down a list of “I don’t likes” and just cap it at two and move on to the finale. Haunted house stories always suck me in; I don’t like horror or supernatural in general, but I do love haunted house stories (for the most part). Unfortunately, I have yet to read one that is overall excellent. I always find things that detract from that ultimate perfection in a story I long for. Mostly, it’s the ending that stinks. For example, The Death of Jane Lawrence sported some stellar creepy vibes and an excellent unreliable narrator, but the ending was noxious. Terrible. Hated it. The ending of We Live Here Now did not stink. It was brilliant. I’d say it was worth the trudge through almost 100 pages of slog in the beginning.
For the audiobook narration, I’ll admit I thought I’d never heard of either Helen Baxendale or Jamie Glover (I had to look them both up on IMDb) before listening. I have seen Anonymous and Emma and am familiar with much of the British cinema and television they’ve been in, but I could not remember either of them. They made for great storytelling here—both felt like the perfect embodiment of the characters. The author also provides narration, which I liked as well, particularly in that it was more than reading the acknowledgements and/or intro.
Overall, I’ll give it about 3.5 stars for the story and 4.5 for the narration. If not for the stellar ending, I’d have felt I wasted my time a bit, but the narrators did so well and kept me going until the good bits hit and then it was a jaw dropper.
My thanks to Macmillan Audio for the ALC, for which I willingly give my win, honest opinion.
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