Fi comes home one day to find a moving truck in front of her house, unloading the belongings of strangers. Only Fi didn’t sell her house…

“Something horrific is taking place, she thinks. Knows. Knows in her bones.”

This is not the type of book I’d usually read but the blurb sucked me in. I wanted to know Fi and Bram’s backstory, to figure out how and why this had happened.

Beginning with Fi’s discovery that her house is no longer her house, this story then takes you back to the beginning of where it all went wrong. Fi’s story is told via a podcast that she and her friends all used to listen to before her life became an episode. Bram wrote his own version of events.

I don’t usually finish books when I don’t like any of the main characters. I’m all for loving characters or loving to hate them, but don’t tend to want to get to know fictional characters I wouldn’t want to sit down and have a conversation with. I made an exception for Fi and Bram, neither of whom I’d meet for coffee.

After hooking me in the beginning, the story dragged in the middle. I decided to stick with it and am glad I did because it picked up towards the end. I saw some of the twists coming. The ones I didn’t see coming didn’t surprise me when they arrived; my response was more that how the plot was unfolding made sense rather than there being any jaw dropping.

I can see why people enjoy books like this one. There’s dysfunctional family dynamics, betrayal and people pushed beyond their limits. I still don’t think it’s really my type of book (if the characters had made the decisions I probably would have, there wouldn’t have been a book in the first place), but I like wandering outside of my reading comfort zone every so often to see what I’m missing. I probably need to do it more often.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to read this book. I’m rounding up from 3.5 stars.

Book blurb...
On a bright morning in the London suburbs, a family moves into the house they’ve just bought on Trinity Avenue. Nothing strange about that. Except it's your house. And you didn’t sell it.
FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE.
When Fi Lawson arrives home to find strangers moving into her house, she is plunged into terror and confusion. She and her husband Bram have owned their home on Trinity Avenue for years and have no intention of selling. How can this other family possibly think the house is theirs? And why has Bram disappeared when she needs him most?
FOR RICHER, FOR POORER.
Bram has made a catastrophic mistake and now he is paying. Unable to see his wife, his children or his home, he has nothing left but to settle scores. As the nightmare takes grip, both Bram and Fi try to make sense of the events that led to a devastating crime. What has he hidden from her – and what has she hidden from him? And will either survive the chilling truth – that there are far worse things you can lose than your house?
TILL DEATH US DO PART.

My thoughts…
This plot is fascinating and well told, holding my interest until the last page.
That said, I'm not sure the ending was as satisfying as it could have been. It was one of those stories that leaves the reader wondering and, personally, I would have preferred the author tie up the final lose end. (But that’s just me.)
I felt for both Fi and Bram, although they both needed a kick in the backside as far as their relationship style goes.
The plot is one that highlights how doing one morally questionable thing leads, firstly to lies, and then to life spiralling out of control.
While well written, the conflict in the plot could have been resolved with a conversation and I became frustrated with characters that failed to take this opportunity.
Our House is still a good read and worth your precious reading time.

My Thoughts

‘The lights are out in all rooms except the kitchen; if you walked by the house now, you wouldn’t know it has changed hands. You wouldn’t know one family had been replaced by another.’

What an interesting book! Louise Candlish creates a story that will draw you in from beginning to end. You will find it hard not to pass judgement on the lives of Fi and Bram as you watch their lives slowly unravel. Separated after Bram’s infidelity, they work around the custody of their two young boys by adopting a ‘bird’s nest’ strategy - each parent takes turns alternating on a roster of either living in a shared apartment whilst the other maintains the family home. All in the name of stability!

‘The house sheltered us and protected us, but it also defined us. It kept us current long after our expiry date.’

Then you come home one day to find not only all your possession gone, but another family moving in and an estranged husband that cannot be located! The story then proceeds to go back and forth between past and present events to backfill leading up to this disastrous day. Clever - as puzzle pieces are slowly produced and the full picture becomes abundantly clear. For me, there are also two ‘WHOA’ plot twists that will most certainly take your breath away.

The story is told in a most unique way with both Fi and Bram presenting events from their alternating viewpoint. Fi’s is via a victim of crime podcast in the aftermath, where listeners can tweet their #theories and #opinions! Bram tells his via a typed Word Document, also after the event. I did enjoy this tale but, at times, was frustrated by both the lack of pace and frustrating events and characters. Still it was fascinating, even if the end left me speechless and perplexed.

So a big thumbs up for such an original concept, complex plot, crazy secrets, really unlikable characters and some incredible twists. This mystery is sure to please as an easy but engrossing page turner. I mean, imagine coming home one day to find new people moving into your home and no one can tell you how it happened? This is a mystery involving relatable people who suffer from terrible lies and manipulation, where the loved ones you are trying to protect are the very people you may ultimately destroy.

‘..it is also quite fitting that it’s ended the way it has, because it has always been about the house. Our marriage, our family, our life: they only seemed to make proper sense at home.’




This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher and provided through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The quoted material may have changed in the final release

Fiona (Fi) Lawson thought the worst thing to happen to her was her husband Bram's infidelity and their subsequent separation. But that's not the worst thing he will do to her as she discovers when she arrives home to find strangers in the process of moving into her house, the one she and Bram bought and then lovingly renovated all the while feeling smug about the rise in property prices in their exclusive suburb. Now Bram has disappeared and Fi is unable to find him just when she needs him t help unravel this mystery.

Fiona's story told through a popular podcast called 'The Victim', is interspersed with notes from a document written by Bram filling in the gaps of how this nightmare came about. Bram's actions are truly cringe-worthy as he digs himself a bigger and bigger hole from which he can't seem to escape. The story is tense and gripping and overshadowed with menace resulting in an excellent psychological suspense that draws the reader in. And Oh, that sting in the tail made me gasp!

Fiona Lawson comes home in the suburbs of London in Trinity Avenue to find another couple are moving into her house; they tell her that they have purchased it and it is legally these. Unbelieving she gets angry but she can’t contact her husband Bram and doesn’t know where her children are. She doesn’t know what to do! This is terrifying! How can this happen? So this is how it starts.

This is an extraordinary story and structured was unusually creative. We follow the story from the present to the past with the intriguing use of The Victim podcast for Fiona as #VictimFi with a range of different comments from followers (which does add a bit of light relief) and interchanged between a dialogue of Bram’s version of events as well as the chronological narrative of the story. While it does sound muddled it actually does work. We are taken on a journey of different perceptions and insights into events with many unexpected twists. A story of lies, deceptions and unfortunate decisions made by many of the characters. Gradually the mystery unfolds. But the ending left me unsettled.

Thank you to publisher Simon & Schuster (Australia) and Netgalley for an ebook ARC to read ad review.

Can you imagine? Another potential horror of the modern age. It IS possible for your house to be sold to another party without your knowledge. If there is a way to defraud and steal, there will always be an enterprising criminal out there willing to take it to the next level.

Bram and Fiona have two terrific kids, and the most gorgeous of London homes. So pretty from the outside that people stop to take the occasional photo. So warm and welcoming on the inside that the couple dream of their children bringing up their own families within the same walls. Comfortingly, the house is also a huge asset for the family’s financial future.

The marriage is however not going so well. When Fi comes home to Trinity Avenue one day to see another family moving in, she assumes it is just one big silly mistake. Bram and Fi separated and are sharing the Trinity Avenue house plus a nearby flat – only they are not occupying the same space at the same time. What could Bram possibly be thinking, renting a house without Fi’s consent? The new family in Bram and Fiona’s home however are the new owners and have paid millions for their new property. The nightmare begins for Fi to try and find her errant ex husband Bram, and to get back what is rightfully hers.

OUR HOUSE takes a new slant on modern crime and it is that twitchingly horrifying to know that this sort of thing can actually happen. Your homeowner’s hackles will be well and truly up and ready to attack. OUR HOUSE melds a modern relationship drama with a suspense thriller plot that plays out simultaneously with the discoveries of Fi as she tries to figure out what the hell has taken hold of her (cheating) husband. What happened to Bram that he would sell his own children’s home out from underneath them? Where has he gone?

The absolute unfairness of what is happening to Fi rankles throughout, and it is concern for her that will have the reader galloping through to find out if she ends up okay. It is fair cop to say that there is some middle novel lag, but this is the time needed in which to delve a little more into the backstory of how Fi comes to be in the middle of such a tangled mess. There is never any doubt about who is to blame and we realize that the bad guys aren’t only the ones doing dodgy deals with your title deeds.

Compelling reading, OUR HOUSE is a novel about suspicion, fraud and family. It could easily have been a one trick pony but author Louise Candlish has made sure there is plenty going on in this novel and alternates the viewpoints enough so that we are required to think again about what we have just read. The London suburbs prove to be dense enough to hide the most fractured of families and the deepest of secrets.

This novel was set in London in 2017. Fiona Lawson arrives home early after a weekend away and finds strangers moving into her house. The contents and personal items have vanished. Her husband Bram is not answering his phone and she does not know where her children are. What a nightmare.
The story switches between Fiona and Bram telling their versions of events during 2016 leading up to the nightmare. Fiona’s neighbor, Merle arrives and helps Fiona work through the issues of identity theft and reporting Bram a missing person. Full of twists and turns and an unexpected ending.

Her short break away with her new boyfriend ends with something Fiona Lawson was never prepared for, returning to Trinity Avenue to find someone else moving into her beloved house that she shared with her separated partner, and two boys. Her estranged husband, Bram, has conveniently disappeared, and it's left to Fiona to unravel just what happened and to try pull her life together from the pieces he left.

Fi retells her part of the story through a popular victim podcast, while we hear from Bram's side in a tell-all word document.  Small snippets of present day goings on with the strangers that have moved into Fiona's home are gradually built upon between the twists and turns that Louise Candlish weaves.

Unfortunately for me, I found the pacing in the middle two thirds of the book slow and difficult to get through and it was a bit of a struggle to keep reading. Ultimately I'm glad I did though, because I did enjoy the detailed plot and how it all unfolded in the last few chapters. Still, there is still much to love about this story: the premise of the book is different from anything else I have read and I enjoyed trying to guess where things were going, and was pleased that while I was right on quite a few of the twists, there were still a couple that I didn't guess!

Overall this would be 3 out of 5 star read for me.

* This ebook ARC was provided by Simon & Schuster (Australia) through NetGalley for an honest review.

My favourite genre is mystery / suspense, but it is getting harder and harder to find an original story that hasn’t been done before in varying shades of grey. So picture my excitement when I stumbled across the blurb of Our House on Netgalley, it sounded so intriguing! Imagine coming home from a weekend away to find that your home has been stripped of all your possessions and strangers are moving in, claiming that they have legitimately purchased the house. How is this possible? And who could have done it? This is the situation Fiona finds herself in when returning from a romantic getaway with a new boyfriend, leaving her ex-husband minding her house and her kids. Scary, huh?

If you think the premise sounds a bit outlandish, don’t worry, because Louise Candlish writes her story with such conviction and lays such a solid foundation that you will think twice about ever leaving your house again! I loved her writing style, which incorporates a “transcript” from a live true crime podcast (in which Fiona tells her side of the story) and a document in which Bram, her estranged husband, confesses his part in the events that unfold. Incorporating social media has become a popular feature in contemporary crime fiction, seeing how it plays such a big part in most of our lives, and Candlish uses this to its full potential. What ensues is a she said / he said type of story that is chilling and ingenious in equal measures.

Have you ever read a book in which one of the main characters makes one bad decision, and that little flutter of butterfly wings soon turns into a huge shitstorm of epic proportion that will alter everyone’s lives? I love those stories, even though at times they make me cringe in horror at the avalanche that is building momentum as you frantically turn the pages. Candlish proves that immense suspense can be built through putting her characters in everyday situations each and every one of us may find ourselves in during the course of our lives. Here we have a couple with small children, who try to work out their marriage problems amicably for the sake of their two sons. I marvelled at the concept of bird’s nest parenting, a shared custody arrangement of separated couples where parents take turns living in the family home where their children live 100% of the time. Sounds good in theory, and I can imagine that it is a good solution for the children involved (if it works). But is it really possible to pull it off successfully? This is a suspense novel, so of course things soon start to go wrong – and escalate with the speed of a runaway train headed for an abyss, building tension and dread as the story speeds along.

The most difficult thing in selling a contemporary mystery is often character development, and Candlish excels in that department, Although I am far from the suburban housewife Fiona is portrayed as, I could easily put myself in her shoes and constantly questioned myself how I would react. I felt her confusion and her pain, and marvelled at her constant optimism and trust in the most dire of circumstances. Even Bram, with the part he plays in the whole situation, was a likeable – if flawed – character, caught up in a terrible situation. Our House is one of those books that made me wonder why I had not discovered this author before, but feeling immensely glad that I now have.

Our House is a gripping, modern-day domestic-noir mystery built around a unique premise that had me totally enthralled from start to finish. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though it cost me hours of sleep as I read deep into the night unable to put the book down. Highly recommended if you’re a lover of the genre or just looking for a cracking good read!