Reviewed and recommended in the October print issue of BookPage, both individually and as part of an October feature.
Terror and grief are a killer combination. Gus Moreno delivers them both to devastating effect in his latest novel. Thiago Alvarez lost his wife in a tragic accident. Months later, he may also be losing his mind. This Thing Between Us provides an inside view to a husband’s worst nightmare. What’s unclear is his role in these events. .

Moreno’s writing is powerfully immediate and immersive. The story feels like a fever dream, but it’s actually written like a conversation Thiago is having with his dead wife. If psychological horror is your thing, this is probably a great choice.

DNF @ 62%. I've had so many disappointments recently! I just can't bear all the dog death and violence in this. It's disgusting. I do not want to read about the protagonist attacking a dog. I'm done.

"Alexa, play "Somebody's Watching Me by Rockwell on Spotify"

A very timely horror novel about a man grieving the loss of his wife and the unsuspectingly sinister home smart speaker she had purchased .

Both a staggeringly poignancy portrayal of grief and a commentary on the pervasiveness of modern technology, Moreno weaves a modern tale of cosmic horror that will terrifying for generations.

This is definitely not reading as horror to me. Grief is the main vibe here and technology issues get handled early. Ended up not finishing this one.

“𝚃𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚜𝚊𝚢 𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚐𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚎𝚜 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚋𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚙𝚎𝚘𝚙𝚕𝚎 𝚝𝚘𝚐𝚎𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛. 𝚃𝚑𝚎𝚢’𝚛𝚎 𝚛𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝. 𝙰𝚗𝚍 𝚒𝚝’𝚜 𝚜𝚞𝚏𝚏𝚘𝚌𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐.”

For Max Porter, grief may have been the thing with feathers, but for Gus Moreno, grief is haunted virtual assistants, strange monoliths & sinister resurrections.

But don’t let me get ahead of myself. For about 40% of this book is *just* elegantly written meditations on grief, on the fallout of losing a wife in an abruptly violent manner. It is a reflection on all that swoops in to fill that massive absence: overbearingly well-meaning relatives, possessive friends & the mundane minutiae of ‘moving on’. Moreno writes about grief from personal experience, crafting some of the most moving passages on the loss of a loved one I’ve read since Julian Barnes’ devastating ‘Levels of Life’. Written in 2nd person to his dead wife, Thiago’s narration is moving in its intimacy.

What Moreno does so well here though is gradually infuse this with a sense of menace, an escalating awareness that there’s more going on than meets the eye. And what is infused is a heady brew of Mexican-tinged supernatural (“I already told you, Thiago, I’m from Mexico. We’re all a little haunted.”) ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ is a major referential, but there’s echoes too of ‘Solaris’ via ‘The Exorcist’ with little splashes of ‘Pet Sematary’, ‘Cujo’, ‘& ‘It Follows’ in there. A proper smorgasbord of sci-fi horror!

There’s some cultural commentary on race & the media too, but above all this is both a poignant & palpable reflection on grief & a genuinely frightening ghost story. Moreno balances these disparate elements superbly for a debut writer, using the horror tropes as apt metaphors for the predatory yet undefinable nature of grief. An excellent Halloween read.

One tip though: you may want to turn off your Alexas, your Siris or your Cortanas as you do…

CW: distressing animal death, violence, gore

This Thing Between Us (TTBU) has a highly fascinating premise: our main character Thiago is grieving and haunted by his smart speaker device, Itza (like Amazon’s Alexa or Google home). Packages arrived at his home he shared with his late wife containing weird, unexplainable objects they didn’t order: industrial lye, a samurai sword, a sex toy.. all ordered by Itza. So after his wife passes tragically, Thiago chooses to live in seclusion and purchases a cabin in the woods in Colorado. There he meets (and later adopts) a stray Saint-Bernard outside of a hardware store he calls Wilford Brimley.

This book is a modern horror story, with a dark and ominous atmosphere, perfect for spooky season! It gave me serious Pet Semetary and Black Mirror vibes all the way. I really loved the way that Gus Moreno’s writing feels personal, which makes it all the more eerie. It was also really nice to see Mexican-American main characters (the horror genre can oftentimes be very white) and have some Mexican folklore added to the story which made it a lot more interesting!

Regarding the dog.. I will say that I am someone who actively avoids anything that depicts harm or violence against animals; however, I read a review that summed it up pretty well for me, saying: “it’s sad at first but then let’s just say it’s not so bad later..”

This book has many twists and turns to keep the reader in suspense and I found myself never knowing exactly where this was going to go. There is one twist that gave me a VERY frightening visual and was something straight out of a horror movie. TTBU is a limitless, cosmic horror story about grief, loneliness, and our attachment and intimate connection to technology. Fans of haunted house/haunted object horror will definitely like this one.

Thank you very much to Farrar, Strauss And Giroux and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

At the beginning of This Thing Between Us, Thiago Alvarez is mourning the recent death of his wife, Vera. In heart-wrenching second person, as though he is speaking directly to Vera, Thiago recounts the events that led to her death: the purchase of a state-of-the-art, whole home smart speaker called Itza, and the subsequent strange happenings that occurred in their newly-refurbished Chicago condo. Grief-stricken and full of rage, Thiago decides to leave the city and purchases an isolated cabin in the Colorado mountains. But it turns out, he didn't quite leave everything behind when he left Chicago.

This Thing Between Us is a wild ride of a book, starting off as a meditation on the complexities of grief and descending into the realm of cosmic horror. Moreno's portrayal of grief and loss is perceptive and poignant, with several sentences that made me catch my breath. It feels raw, personal, and real, an unflinchingly intimate narrative that immediately connects the reader to Thiago and his pain. When horrific events begin happening to him, we're inclined to believe him because we care about him so much, but the things he experiences nevertheless make us question what is real. It's well- and thoughtfully-crafted and a total mind trip.

In addition to balancing horror and heart in the narrative, Moreno also raises interesting questions about the pervasiveness of modern technology and the exploitation of a person's private pain to fulfill a public agenda. I'm not quite sure I entirely followed what was happening at the end of the novel -- there is a lot left to interpretation -- but I found This Thing Between Us to be utterly original, unsettling, and completely engrossing. Moreno is an exciting new voice in the horror genre and I can't wait to read more of his work. Thank you to MCD x FSG Originals and NetGalley for my review copy.

CW: Animal harm.

With Halloween just around the corner, Gus Moreno’s debut novel — a supernatural horror thriller — has arrived like a plum pumpkin picked from the patch. This Thing Between Us is, in part, a book that focuses on the prevalence of technology in our everyday lives, as its central feature is a super-smart smart speaker called Itza. The smart speaker starts to control every aspect of its main characters’ lives to the point where the weird truly starts to get weird. But I may be getting ahead of myself. The novel also, refreshingly, features Mexican American main characters, and part of the book is about what makes a Mexican a Mexican, because the book’s protagonist, Thiago, barely knows any Spanish and doesn’t seem all that enthralled about his culture, something that got him picked on when he was a young boy. It’s also a novel about grief, so there’s a lot of depth to this short novel, and there is much to graze upon here. Sadly, I felt This Thing Between Us didn’t really work all that well, despite being particularly atmospheric and well-written. Thiago makes choices that I would have made, but, in the end, there just might be no escape from the things that torment him. Or is there?

Going back to what this book is about, it concerns a married couple named Thiago and Vera who have moved into a condo in the Chicago area. Vera orders a smart speaker that’s particularly sophisticated (named, as mentioned before, Itza), but, soon, the speaker seems to be malfunctioning. It orders a massive dildo for the pair — perhaps saying something about their sex lives in the process — and other strange gifts and packages arrive that the pair didn’t order. What’s more, there’s strange scratching coming from the wall that an exterminator can’t find a cause for. It also turns out that the previous tenant on the spot where Thiago and Vera lived carried out a bizarre animal sacrifice ritual, possibly in retaliation for being evicted. In any event, Vera is killed in a subway mishap, and Thiago is left to fend for himself and quickly finds himself on the run from all varieties of horror, including a dead dog that comes back to life.

I liked This Thing Between Us in that it was easy enough to read and it is a quick read. As I noted earlier, the atmosphere is sufficiently spooky, and this is the perfect book to be reading at this time of year. I also appreciated a Mexican American as the main character, as this gives voice to other cultures in fiction other than my own (as a white Canadian male). There are plenty of twists and turns and you won’t know where exactly this novel is going or how it will end. And the horror elements feel remarkably original, to boot. When was the last time you read a book about an evil smart speaker, after all? However, that’s about all that I can say about this novel that is charitable, I’m afraid. There are several flaws in this debut, including the fact that — about midway through the read — Thiago is saved by a deus ex machina type of intervention that may have you rolling your eyes. Thiago also figures out what he needs to do to rid himself of the monsters plaguing him about three-quarters of the way through the book, but it takes him a while to actually getting around to doing it. Also, what’s behind the horror is never fully revealed, probably due to Thiago’s lack of knowledge of anything Spanish, including Mexican superstitions. This will frustrate the reader, who may appreciate the haunting but will want to have a reason for it.

The biggest problem with This Thing Between Us, though, is Itza. I’m going to spoil things sort of here, so you may want to come back to this review after reading the book, but she/it gets destroyed by Thiago about a quarter of the way through the novle. What is set up as a kind of horror take on 2001: A Space Odyssey turns out to be a bit of a MacGuffin. While it may have been difficult to keep up a narrative around a defective, haunted smart speaker that could always be returned to the store you’ve bought it from, or destroyed it as Thiago winds up doing, This Thing Between Us has promise that it squanders. Instead of being a treatise on the perils of technology, the novel turns into a haunted cabin-style ghost story as Thiago flees Chicago for Colorado and the solitude he finds there.

In the end, it’s hard for me to pinpoint how I felt about this novel. On one hand, there were elements I enjoyed, but, on the other, I found the book too dour and depressing to be particularly enjoyable. That might seem to be a paradox, but there it is. This Thing Between Us is one puzzle box of a book, as it tries to pull off a multitude of things all at once but doesn’t particularly succeed at many of them. However, some horror buffs may be drawn to the atmosphere and the sense of overall dread, and the Spanish flavour of the book is a delight to read. It’s too bad that Moreno didn’t describe how his main characters looked because the anguish at the hands of Thiago might make you think of a middle-aged white guy going through a personal crisis, which is not the case of this character. (I guess I’m saying it might have been nice to have Thiago look in a mirror now and then and describe what he was seeing.) Everything all boils down to one essential fact: if you’re curious about this book, try checking it out from the library. It’s not awful, but there’s a lot left to be desired here, so you might not want to contribute personal shekels towards this one — opting instead to read it for free. That’s the impression I’m left with when it comes to any sort of recommendation for this read. This Thing Between Us has promise but ultimately doesn’t go anywhere with it towards a resolution that feels successful. Boo!

THIS THING BETWEEN US

Thanks to @netgalley and @mcdbooks for the early copy! This Thing Between Us is out now 🥰

"A bold, original horror novel about grief, loneliness, and the oppressive intimacy of technology."

I know I'm new to horror (specifically cosmic horror) but WOW -- this will not be the last I read of the subgenre and definitely not the last I read of this author, who is now for sure on my auto-buy list.

Our main character Thiago is torn apart (almost literally) by his grief, and readers watch (at times with one eye open) as he tries to make sense of a world and life that CAN'T make sense, because living in the aftermath of the death of a loved one feels like an impossibility.

Moreno's writing absolutely makes this story; he writes in a way that is both eerie yet immediately intimate. It constantly drew me in even while the subject matter made look the other way. The second person narration for much of the book only adds to the creep factor--I felt like I was reading something written by a friend, at times giggling at his familiar humor and on the next page audibly gasping in shock.

It's very rare for me to finish a book in ~36 hours, which should say a lot about the way this one kept me engaged and wanting to know more. It's the perfect read for this season and you should definitely pick it up!

My advice: unplug your smart speaker before sitting down with this one 👻

Future horror is a scary concept. I think Black Mirror has done a really good job with it, mixing technology with old school terror. This Thing Between Us walks that fine line - a ghost story about grief mixed with high-tech AI. Gus Moreno is a talent and I can't wait to see how it evolves over time.

I think books like this are hard for many readers. I think they expect blood and gore and ghosts and goblins. I think that grief is hard to write about because it's so personal and so...real. It's a physical, it's mental, it's emotional. It's not always something that is exciting and a page turner.

There is a reason I hate the AI device in my apartment. This book proves it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Many thanks to NetGalley and FSG for the early copy in exchange for my honest review.

This book has an irresistible premise: a grieving widower is haunted by Itza, (clearly based on Amazon's Alexa), the smart device that is slowly taking over his life and may even be responsible for his wife's untimely death. This is horror concerned primarily with the grieving process, which resonates with me. Life after death, reincarnation, the space between worlds. It is also tackling issues of privacy and security, and how agreeing to let a massive corporation listen to your private conversations maybe isn't all that different than inviting a spirit into your body or a vampire into your home.

There is a lot of DNA from other horror books here, by the author's own admission in the Acknowledgments. I found myself speed-reading, wanting to know what would happen next. The story gave me Come Closer vibes, as well as Pet Sematary. Surely other books that I haven't yet read are referenced as well. The tone was a little unbalanced; at times, the tone was humorous while at others, it was devastating. Seasoned horror readers will likely find this to be reminiscent of other works in the genre, so if you enjoy haunted house/haunted object and grief horror, you will probably like this.

I should include a content warning for death, violence, and distressing animal death.

If you're looking for a modern scary-as-hell book for spooky season, this is it. To say this book left me creeped out would be an understatement. But the writing, the story, and the characters are so compelling that I couldn't stop reading it. It reminded me of some earlier-era Stephen King mixed with Han Kang's The Vegetarian. Definitely recommend if you don't mind being wigged out by your Alexa for a bit.

Pleased to include this novel in the autumn instalment of Thrills & Chills, my seasonal round-up of the latest crime and mystery thrillers for Zed, the books section at Zoomer magazine.
Full review feature at link.

"We never lined up [on stuff] but we still worked together somehow, like two different animals that learned to hunt as a team."

Thiago Alvarez was from a Mexican family with "herniated roots...There were bullet holes in the furniture at my grandmother's house. Drive-bys. Secret lovers." "I was the quiet kid, taking after my mom and the passive, isolated way she went through life." Vera's mother thought that Thiago was a burnout, someone going nowhere. He wasn't "Mexican enough" or successful enough for her daughter. Nonetheless, Thiago and Vera married and purchased a remodeled condo in Chicago.

At night, Thiago and Vera would wake up to loud hammering noises, floorboards creaking, cold spots feeling like a polar vortex or scratching deep inside the walls. Vera's purchase of an Itza, a smart speaker that functioned as a personal assistant, added to a chain of unlikely, terrifying events. Packages arrived...a samurai sword...industrial lye, packages charged to their account, seemingly ordered by Itza. Then, an alarm set by Itza epically failed. Vera would be late for work. Tragedy struck!

The assailant was an immigrant. It was an election year and pundits fanned the flames. In Thiago's words, "You were in the news, on television, your photo in countless think pieces...The world would sooner or later have its foot on the gas pedal...no more interview requests...". There would be no more people-family or so called friends- people who didn't matter. "I didn't have to feel things anymore...the part that could care for another person, invest in them, it froze and sheared off like a glacier into the dead ocean...".

Thiago chose solitude. He purchased a secluded cabin in Colorado. Grief, loneliness, guilt and rage ate away at him. A harrowing, evil presence played havoc with his emotions. Frightening dreams contributed to his questionable grip on reality.

"This Thing Between Us" by Gus Moreno is a gut-wrenching, cosmic horror read. Written in first person narrative voiced by Thiago, he addresses Vera, expressing his sorrow, guilt and wish to turn back time. Thiago is being sucked into a vortex of madness in this chilling, creepy read. Fans of horror will enjoy the ride!

Thank you Farrar, Strauss And Giroux/ MCD and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This Thing Between Us is a modern horror novel from Gus Moreno that mixes technology, mythology, and a dab of politics to create a mostly unique story. Moreno does an excellent job creating the “why” of the story with an undercurrent of social commentary that has become almost a necessity in modern horror media, even if it inevitably suffers from the genre’s staple of an unsatisfying conclusion. Regardless, This Thing Between Us will find fans this October when readers are looking for something sufficiently spooky.

The novel follows Thiago in the days and months after his wife dies in a tragic accident. In his grief, Thiago retreats into himself, but continues to experience strange supernatural phenomena in his home, which predated his wife’s death. Specifically, their purchase of this world’s analog to an Alexa or Google Home, Itza, coincides with strange goings-on. Thiago eventually decides to uproot his life from Chicago to the remote mountains of Colorado in order to escape the haunting in his home. This is when the spooky turns violent.

I appreciated many of Moreno’s reference points from horror literature and film, even if it means that the book tends to follow a pretty linear and expected path. The inclusion of the media in the aftermath of his wife’s death is an interesting touch as it involves political issues revolving around immigration. This gives the novel a nice modern undercurrent and creates a unique point of view for the book to balance itself on. The ending didn’t really land for me, but I imagine it may for others. Besides, horror isn’t ultimately about resolution, but rather the terror that punctuates daily life, which Moreno does satisfyingly.

One of my favorite horror books of the year. It’s clear the author is going places. I don’t read much in the way of “cosmic horror” but this definitely gave me some John Carpenter vibes.

I'm a bit confused about the marketing emphasis on the Itza. While it is spooky and does lure you in, I don't think it is the scariest part of the book. If someone picks up the book just for the "haunted Alexa" element, I'm not sure if they would feel as satisfied as I do.

I was very intrigued by this seemingly strange novel, but unfortunately it was a little too strange and dark for me. Not my particular cup of tea.

I debated for a while on what to give this one because there were certainly some 5-star scenes and I had high hopes for it somewhere in the middle, but ultimately, it just didn't pan out for me.

I enjoyed the author's writing itself and would be more than willing to give his work a try again someday. There are topics I felt were handled well, including the protagonist's grief arc, and some of the descriptions in the flat-out horror scenes had me wanting to crawl out of my skin (as intended). Personally, the middle of the story worked the best for me, right where the action was picking up, and the framework of something more complex was being laid. I was excited to push on with the story and read the final 50% in one sitting, but I found that my momentum slowed more and more toward the end, and the very beginning felt either too long or too short - it went on for quite a while, but by the end of it I still didn't feel like I really knew or cared for the character that the protagonist had lost, only his surface thoughts on their relationship from his POV.

Ultimately, I feel a bit like I just read 3 books at once. It's not so much the fact that there were so many elements, as some have mentioned, as it is that the way they were tied together just didn't click for me. The synopsis of this book gives, to me, quite a different vibe than a majority of the story itself, and overall I just wasn't sure what it was going for. I'm still trying to untangle bits of it in my head even now.

That said, I'll still be watching for what this author does in the future, as I think he has both stylistic skill and interesting concepts, even if the collection of those concepts didn't click for me this time.

🔖 This is a book about grief.

It feels very personal and uncomfortable, but you can really see the love of the main character for his wife, who died in a banal way in a subway station.

It is written in second person, like a letter to his wife, in very informal language.

So you might think this is a kind of romantic drama, and this is what I thought (because I didn’t read the description) - but it is actually a sci-fi meets zombies kind of book. Weird. But I enjoyed it.

Indeed it is a horror-thriller as it says in the description, but it is not very scary - it is gory with gruesome details, so if you don’t have stomach for blood don’t read it.

The ending is confusing and I was a bit frustrated because there isn’t a big explanation for the weird trippy things that happen, but the epilogue (or Itza Manual) has enough tips so I could take my own conclusions.
Itza is a smart speaker like Alexa, but it is a character on its own in this book.

𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑘 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑁𝑒𝑡𝐺𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑦 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑀𝐶𝐷 𝑥 𝐹𝑆𝐺 𝑂𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑑𝑣𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑝𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑘.

From the premise, this horror novel had a lot of potential for me. Unfortunately, the actual story was severely lacking. It followed all the horror tropes without bringing anything new to the genre. I am a tough horror reviewer, but it's because I know how amazing the genre can be. This was just incredibly average. 

Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.