u/gogo__yubari

I posted some questions in r/horrorlit and a wonderful commenter pointed me in the direction of this subreddit!

First of all, I find it difficult to be genuinely scared
by books or to find books in the genre that truly stand out from the rest. Don’t get me wrong, I adore horror novels, but imagine my surprise going into WUtLH expecting a standard horror that was very enjoyable but nothing new to write home about. Turns out it was one of my absolute favourite reads of 2026 and already one of my favourite horror novels ever

I finished it last night and haven’t stopped thinking about it since. I am going to do some digging through this sub when I finish work to try and find answers for the questions I posted over in horrorlit, but in the meantime I’m hoping to get some clarity on the book title please! Again, this was my first read so there may be something glaringly obvious I’ve overlooked, and I have searched this sub for the answer but couldn’t find anything (may have just used the wrong search terms so please do tell me if so!)

Why is the title WE Used to Live Here? Who is “We”? Thomas and Eve? Thomas and Paige et al? Is this question opening a can of worms that would take more than one read and a Reddit post to answer?

Finished it last night and loved it. Absolutely loved it. At no point did I have any idea what was going on or where it was going. I kept thinking I’d figured it out (ohhh it’s a classic haunted house, never mind it’s a Parasite situation, no wait Eve actually is Alison and this is all a delusion) and was wrong every time

I literally can’t stop thinking about it and I have questions. There’s 3 realities I think I can sort everything into:

Reality 1 (start of the book, Eve’s real reality):
- Charlie has a tattoo
- Alison exists and stabbed Thomas in childhood after he infiltrated her family
- The motel sign reads KETTL_ _REEK MOTE_
- Heather remembers Thomas and Alison
- The study has a stained glass window

Reality 2 (after Eve wakes up after hitting her head, they flee the house and go to the motel):
- Charlie doesn’t have a tattoo
- The study doesn’t have a stained glass window
- The motel sign reads KETTL_ CREEK MOTE_

Reality 3 (end of book):
- Charlie is Charlotte and Eve’s ex girlfriend
- Alison never existed
- Eve is Emma
- Heather knows Thomas and Emma

Now I don’t think the book is compartmentalised into each individual reality and they instead bleed into each other with Thomas being the overarching constant (e.g. when Eve goes back to the house after the motel and finds the basement room that didn’t exist before but Alison is also there, AMIF existing and then vanishing, the photo of Eve that Thomas gives to her in the psychiatric hospital), and we’re not meant to properly understand who is real and who is where they should be but there are some things I’m still confused about:

- The doppelgänger situation. Are there actually doppelgängers, or are these just people simply existing in their own realities who are just as confused as the rest of us? If that’s the case, are Eve and Alison actually doppelgängers?

- Who called Eve at the motel? Was it really her Charlie or was she being lured back to the house?

- I’m guessing the old man in the cabin is Thomas from reality 3 (the scar) and if so what’s his deal? Why did he seem so apologetic and try to warn Eve, cryptic as it was? Is he the REAL Thomas and was cosmically identity thefted by the other Thomas?

- What was with Paige’s lasered tattoo? Was it just a sign of her turn towards religion or was it significant to the story and I totally missed it?

- The morse code states the old man goes by many different names. Are there other iterations of Thomas mentioned that I missed?

And not really relevant to the WUtLH story, but how does The Caretaker compare in terms of creepiness/confusion? I adored WUtLH and I’m trying to find my next read!

I’m SO furious with myself for only recently getting into Shirley Jackson’s work! We Have Always Lived In The Castle is my absolute favourite but Hill House is a very close second. I love her so much, currently reading Hangsaman!

I wanted to share my favourite quotes bc some of these hit so hard, some of them are SO funny, some of them have sat heavy in my brain ever since

What are everyone else’s favourite quotes?

- "Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone” (iconic, obviously)

- “When she stood still in the middle of the room the pressing silence of Hill House came back all around her. I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside”

- “Theodora came through the bathroom door into Eleanor’s room; she is lovely, Eleanor thought, turning to look; I wish I were lovely”

- “I really think the poor girl was hated to death; she hanged herself, by the way”

- “You are a very silly baby, Eleanor, she told herself, as she did every morning”

- “‘Stuff yourself very full of kippers,’ Luke said. ‘Then it will be impossible to feel anything at all.’”

- “Eleanor thought, It is my second morning in Hill House, and I am unbelievably happy”

- “Theodora was making very little of a fuss, actually. One of these times, she thought, one of us is going to put her head back and really howl, and I hope it won’t be me, because I’m trying to guard against it”

- “I was supposed to be much more frightened than this, I think, and I’m not because it’s simply too horrible to be real”

- “Nothing of the least importance has ever belonged to me; can you help?”

- “Grant that Luke take me at my worth, she thought, or at least let me not see the difference. Let him be wise, or let me be blind; don’t let me, she hoped concretely, don’t let me know too surely what he thinks of me” (carve this one onto my headstone tbh it is so beautiful 💔)

- “All I want is to be cherished, she thought, and here I am talking gibberish with a selfish man”

- “The last page is the very nicest, I think. This, ladies, is Hugh Crain’s blood. Nell, do you want to see Hugh Crain’s blood?”

- “After a minute Theodora said, ‘I think I am going to be simply crazy about Mrs Montague’”

- “‘I dare say she was walled up alive,’ Mrs Montague said. ‘The nun, I mean. They always did that, you know. You’ve no idea the messages I’ve had from nuns walled up alive’”

- “No; it is over for me. It is too much, she thought, I will relinquish my possession of this self of mine, abdicate, give over willingly what I never wanted at all; whatever it wants of me it can have”

- “She laughed, hearing her own words, so inadequate and so unutterably sad”

- “I am really doing it, she thought, turning the wheel to send the car directly at the great tree at the curve of the driveway, I am really doing it, I am doing this all by myself, now, at last; this is me, I am really really really doing it by myself. In the unending, crashing second before the car hurled into the tree she thought clearly, Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don’t they stop me?”