Get Out meets Parasite in this eerily haunting debut and Reddit hit—soon to be a Netflix original movie starring Blake Lively—about two homeowners whose lives are turned upside down when the house’s previous residents unexpectedly visit.

As a young, queer couple who flip houses, Charlie and Eve can’t believe the killer deal they’ve just gotten on an old house in a picturesque neighborhood. As they’re working in the house one day, there’s a knock on the door. A man stands there with his family, claiming to have lived there years before and asking if it would be alright if he showed his kids around. People pleaser to a fault, Eve lets them in.

As soon as the strangers enter their home, uncanny and inexplicable things start happening, including the family’s youngest child going missing and a ghostly presence materializing in the basement. Even more weird, the family can’t seem to take the hint that their visit should be over. And when Charlie suddenly vanishes, Eve slowly loses her grip on reality. Something is terribly wrong with the house and with the visiting family—or is Eve just imagining things?

This was another book I had preordered and held onto specifically to read during my month of Halloween fun. As soon as all the reviews started pouring in, I was afraid of being let down, but I wasn’t. This one is creepy and totally messed with my mind!

The book focuses on Eve and Charlie, a young, queer couple who find themselves in a nightmare situation after purchasing an old house in an isolated location in the Pacific Northwest. The couple have been flipping houses for a while, but as of late, they haven’t been turning much of a profit, and they need this house to bring in some cash.

One evening, while Eve is home alone, a knock comes at the door. She finds a man, his wife, and their three kids standing on the front porch. The man tells Eve that they are moving cross country, and before they leave, he wants to show his family the house he grew up in. Eve is home alone, waiting for Charlie to return, and since she is a notorious people pleaser, she has difficulty turning them away. Finally, she agrees to give them 15 minutes in the house, but when the youngest child decides to play a game of hide and seek, the stay is extended, and this is when the events snowball, leaving Charlie and Eve stuck in a house with a strange family they can’t seem to get rid of. Surprisingly, the family and their antics aren’t the weirdest things to happen but rather a catalyst to a string of events that will leave Eve (and the reader) wondering what is and isn’t real. Once Charlie goes missing, the tension ramps up, and we – along with Eve – spiral into something mind-bending and terrifying.

From the moment the mysterious man and his family enter the house, the unease creeps off the page and steadily builds until the finale. As Eve grapples with Charlie’s disappearance and the visiting family’s unsettling presence, readers are taken on a heart-pounding ride through a world where reality and imagination blur. The further I read, the more twisted my mind became, but not in an annoying way. This is a book that had me wondering WTF was going on the entire time I read it, and typically, I would get frustrated and give up. That wasn’t the case here. The unexplained events are what make the book, and we’re supposed to be confused because Eve is confused. It’s very effective.

The plot is super intricate and carefully constructed. Every scene has a purpose, as do the transcripts and articles that show up between chapters. They don’t always make sense, but things begin to fall into place as the book progresses. Even the morse code that ends each transcript section has a message for the reader. Kudos to the author for pulling this off.

The characters are all amazing. I felt for Eve, and by the time I got to the end of the book, I felt almost as if I was Eve. Every member of the strange family is also intriguing and serves a distinct purpose. Not one word or character was wasted in this book, and I loved it.

Would I recommend this book? Absolutely, but be prepared to have your brain tied in knots by the time you reach the end. The plot is intricate, the characters are all top-notch, and there are plenty of twists. An atmosphere of dread builds as the book progresses, and this left me questioning what was real and what was merely a figment of the imagination. Now that I have finished the book and have had some time to process it, I want to go back and reread it so that I can piece together all of the intricate clues (including the Morse code messages strategically placed at the end of some chapters).