This book is creepy in a way that makes me feel very uneasy and a little bit more cautious about in-home technologies. The author does a great job navigating the grief and hardship of family when one is left a widower. The connections he makes to how it must feel to lose a spouse, and the connections one can lose, or have forever altered is very well conveyed.

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* Something i could read again for sure, think its something i will have to read again! one of those "it gets better every time" kind of books

I listened to the audio book and the narrator was very good. With that being said the book has a great plot but failed to deliver for me. There was a creepiness that could have been built upon more. I kept waiting for something but it never happened.

Because of its proximity to profound pain, grief is a typical topic of exploration in horror fiction. But Moreno's This Thing Between Us amps up the reality-altering isolation of partner loss, where every unusual occurrence or sound echoes in a silo of desolation, and every paranoid thought reverberates until the narrator is wrapped in a cocoon of weirdness. Deeply unsettling and literary.

The way that Gus Moreno weaves together grief and horror in this book is nothing short of genius. The depth of the emotions behind the characters will leave you breathless as you feel what they feel and experience what they're going through.

This book will leave you unsettled and a bit on edge while reading but have no fears, for fans of horror, you are going to love this one!

Gus Moreno is a truly unique voice and I am excited to see what he creates next.

I really enjoyed this audiobook and thought that the narrator was wonderful! The audiobook made this story so immersive and creepy. I went into the book with really high expectations but I found the ending confusing and ultimately feel just a little disappointing. I enjoyed the beginning of the book so much that I still recommend it to others even if I didn't enjoy the ending.

I think the most chilling thing about this book was how utterly believable it was. In a world where smart home devices seem to almost run our lives, there's a lot of plausibility in this. Delightfully creepy.

3.5⭐ How foolish of me to presume "This Thing Between Us" is another haunted tale.

Told entirely from Thiago Alvarez's point of view, "This Thing Between Us" starts at a funeral. Initially, written in second person, we listen to Thiago speaks to his late wife. We follow Thiago as he deals with grief and recalls unusual occurrences at their "new" condo until her premature and tragic death. I absolutely love this and felt so strongly for Thiago's loss. As a way to cope with his wife's death, he left Chicago for a remote cabin in Colorado where stranger and creepier things follow.

I think Stephen King fans will enjoy this debut by Gus Moreno. I'm not sure if I understand the ending though. I wonder if I'm supposed to feel lost inside Thiago's head and with him slip into the dark.

I enjoyed this story quite a bit. This author made the grief of the main character completely palpable. Also... the horror genuinely freaked me out and I wished I wasn't reading this at night by myself. The story isn't quite what you'd expect from the synopsis. It isn't really a "haunted Alexa" story. That is just a part of the story, but not the main point. Also, it should be noted that if you have a thing about the dog dying, you should steer clear of this. I didn't see any trigger warnings before I read this. Probably people who read a lot of books in the horror genre are not overly affected by things in trigger warnings, but that particular thing surprised me and I thought I should note it. I DO recommend this book though. It is definitely creepy.

Ripe with empathy but also fantastically deranged, This Thing Between Us is a worthwhile literary horror roller coaster, even if the final destination might leaves you a little baffled to what exactly has happened. I detect influence of Pet Sematary, 2001 A Space Odyssey, and even Drag Me to Hell (a 2009 movie from Sam Raimi).

Written as continuous monologue from the protagonist to his dead wife (with no chapter stop), I highly recommend experience this novel through its audiobook, as the performance heightens the intimacy and the corrosion of his mental state.

Even though the synopsis really doubles down on the B-movie level 'haunted smart speaker' plot point, it ultimately plays a minor role to a larger story centering on grief. I particularly appreciate the writing in This Thing Between Us, which is filled with a surprising amount of levity, considering the book deals with such a bleak subject matter. The humor also acts as a false sense of safety, and intensifies the harrowing terror when it strikes; at one point I had to pause my audiobook and take a break when a certain individual got 'half-sucked' into 'something'—not only was the visual gruesome, the fact this character just had such great banter with the protagonist right before made it even more devastating.

This Thing Between Us starts out as an eerie character-focused slow burn, then turns into a nightmare gone berserk in its second half. I'll admit the ending lost me, but it has been awhile since I was so emotionally attached to a horror novel protagonist, that getting a resolution regarding his state of being overtook my need for a comprehensible plot wrap-up. Highly recommend for readers who enjoy horror being used as a device to discuss human condition.

3.5 out of 5 stars. Interesting concept and some very creepy scenes and imagery but ultimately a little muddled. Still recommended for readers who like horror that's not too intense.

I listened to the audio version of this book and liked the narrator. I also found the book interesting and the actual story felt different from other books I’ve read. The book itself was easy to fall into and held my interest throughout. I would definitely read more by this author!

I thought I was going to love this but it just ended up confusing me. Thiago & Vera have an Itza. (It's like Alexa from Amazon, but this is Itza from Sahara.) Anyway, their Itza starts doing very strange things. Ordering packages that no one wanted, activating when not in use, creepily answering questions it was never asked. And then a seemingly innocent mistake by the Itza, (not setting the alarm) results in Vera's death. After that I couldn't tell you if there was an actual evil at work possessing the Itza (and poor Thiago) or if he was just descending into madness from his grief. He even moved across the country to get away from it all, and the evil (Itza?, craziness?) followed him there as well. And not to spoil it, but it sure doesn't end well for poor Thiago.

*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this early audio version.*

If you like books by Stephen King or the show Lovecraft Country (and Lovecraftian horror tales), then you should definitely pick up this cosmic horror novel.

The novel starts out with Thiago, attending his wife Vera's funeral. The book is mostly told by Thiago to Vera in kind of a second person musing, with first person accounts weaving throughout. Vera died after a fluke event occurs, and Thiago is mired in grief and self-blame. The reader gets background of Thiago and Vera's life together, the fact that he wasn't initially accepted by Vera's family, they didn't like the condo the couple chose, among other things. Thiago is Mexican-American, but doesn't speak Spanish and isn't Mexican enough for Vera's family. Then some things begin to happen. Their "Itza" (think Alexa) starts doing strange things, ordering bizarre items, randomly playing music. There are cold spots in the condo, scratching in the walls. When they start to do research into the former owner, they discover odd things.

The build-up lasts through the first half of the book. Then we move into the present and Thiago decides to move away from Chicago to Colorado. That's when so many odd and horrible things begin to happen. What is real? What is imagined? Is this a manifestation of Thiago's grief, or is it something in the universe out to get him?

I loved how the final quarter of this book peels back the veil so that the reader gets a larger picture of what is going on, yet the author skillfully doesn't reveal the entire truth. There's much left to interpretation, and I think that could be different depending on each reader. It's kind of confusing at times, but I chose to just set those parts aside and focus on the parts that I could understand and relate to and leave the rest.

As a trigger warning--this is a horror novel and something bad happens to a dog. It is sad at first and then let's just say it is not so bad later. If you can't handle Pet Semetary/Cujo type vibes, then maybe skip this one.

I will be looking for future books by this author, if you're in the mood for horror this is an excellent choice. I listened to this partially as an audiobook, and the narrator Robb Moreira does a wonderful job, especially with the Spanish, which, since I don't speak Spanish, I kind of glazed past while I was reading.

This one was somehow meditative to listen to. It wasn't super dark or really scary it just an interesting story. So the narrator was fantastic. The story could have been better. It was thrillery but it was missing some suspense or intense moments. Overall I really did enjoy it though. Mostly because it was just a calm story. And a calm story about a woman's death and weird happenings...what does that say about me?

It may be because I listened to this book on audio, but I just had a really hard time following what was going on in this book. It felt like Moreno tried to cram a lot into a short book. I also went into it expecting it to have more to do with the couple's Itza device, but that part was over pretty quickly. I had been intrigued by that concept so I would have liked to see it fleshed out more. I did enjoy the general atmosphere, the themes of grief, and the fact that the characters were Mexican-American.

Thiago and Vera has always sensed something was off about the condo they bought; noises in the night, bumps, whispers, something creepy. When they purchased an Itza, an Alexa type device, the device starts to display odd behaviors, placing orders for creepy things by itself, playing loud music in the middle of the night. When Vera is killed in a random act of violence, Thiago decides to sell the condo and move West, to some place far away from other people. If he thinks he’s escaped his nightmare, however, he’s sorely mistaken. This book has some of the most intensely creepy scenes I’ve read in any book in a long time. And it makes me so glad I never got an Alexa