I wasn't super crazy about this, but to be fair, it was never going to be my type of story. It was classified as a domestic horror or something, I think.
I really didn't care for any of the supernatural stuff and honestly, I zoned out quite a bit during the second half of the book.
I'm rounding up to three stars, which I believe is a tad generous.
Thanks to #netgalley and #williammorrow for this #arc of #wecametowelcomeyou in exchange for an honest review.

The premise was interesting but the story fell to come together for me. There were many plot holes, the story dragged in many places and I’m not sure how I feel about the ending. I understand where the story was going and the reason why but I don’t know that I liked it. It did make me sit with it for a while though.

I am so thankful to William Morrow Books, Vincent Tirado, and Netgalley for granting me advanced access to this galley before publication day. I really enjoyed the dialogue and plot of this book and can’t wait to chat this one up with my friends!

I heard that this was better on audiobook, so I think I will try it that way when I can. The premise of this book is so good. TI speaks to my soul. I love/hate friendly neighbors. Give me more of those.
I was not feeling this like I expected to but I am fighting a cold and dealing with my own weird issues so likely that is why. I just can't seem to get a book to get into my soul this week.
I will give this another go soon when I am not a mess.
Thank you for the ARC. I liked it. I just wanted to love it.

Sadly, this was a miss. I love social horror, I just could not get behind Sol. She was so negative and hard to empathize with, though I did really love the ending of this one. I also appreciate what it had to say about cutting ties with family members who are toxic, about the insidiousness of racism, and how hard it can be to have multiple identities that are not of the majority. I'd read this author again though!

I loved this book! I haven't read a book like this in so long. The diversity was everything I expected it to be in 2024. I found the horror elements to bit predicable in some areas while I was pleasantly surprised in other areas. Over all, it was a great read and a top read of 2024. Thank you Netgally for letting read this book as an ARC

A Touching Story with Room for Growth
We Came to Welcome You is a heartfelt exploration of grief, family, and the power of human connection. The story follows a young woman as she navigates the complexities of her family's history and the loss of a loved one.
While the author's intentions are admirable, the execution falls short in some areas. The pacing is uneven, with some sections feeling rushed while others drag. The character development is inconsistent, and some characters lack depth and complexity.
Despite these shortcomings, the book offers moments of genuine emotion and insight. The author's ability to capture the nuances of grief and loss is commendable. However, the overall narrative lacks the necessary tension and suspense to keep the reader fully engaged.
Ultimately, We Came to Welcome You is a sincere attempt to address important themes, but it falls short of its full potential.

Sol Reyes has had a rough year. After a series of workplace incidents at her university lab culminates in a plagiarism accusation, Sol is put on probation. Dutiful visits to her homophobic father aren’t helping her mental health, and she finds her nightly glass of wine becoming more of an all-day—and all-bottle—event. Her wife, Alice Song, is far more optimistic. After all, the two finally managed to buy a house in the beautiful, gated community of Maneless Grove.

However, the neighbors are a little too friendly in Sol’s opinion. She has no interest in the pushy Homeowners Association, their bizarrely detailed contract, or their never-ending microaggressions. But Alice simply attributes their pursuit to the community motto: “Invest in a neighborly spirit”…which only serves to irritate Sol more.  

That's enough to tell you things can not possibly go well...

I wanted to love this so much. First I loved the fact that the couple were married lesbians, a subject that just was not something that was in italics or bold so you knew. It just was.

I really like the character of Sol, she was the kind of woman I would befreind even with all her issues. The problem was the story just took to long to get to the good, meaty heart of it.

Just as it got good, it would peeter out and my interest would shift. it just never got to where it was heading. There were very creepy moments, then some silly Stepford Wives moments. But it never delivered on the promise it made to the reader.

Thanks to @netgalley and William Morrow for the opportunity to read this eArc in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.

I loved the concept of this book, but the story never really seemed to find itself and it missed the mark for me. I really enjoyed the character of Sol and what we learned about her; however, the pacing could be so daunting that even the most gut-punching emotional moments barely registered on my radar as I was eager to get into the meat of the story. There is some great characterization and sinister moments in the story, but I wish it had all come together much better.

thank you netgalley for the e-arc in exchange for my honest review. this was awful, from the writing to plot to the very end. the only good reviews i've seen for this are that they listened on audio, maybe its creepier.

Perfect for fans of Get Out, Don’t Worry Darling and Stepford Wives.
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Sol Reyes is struggling even though she and her wife, Alice Song, just bought their first house together. She’s on leave from her professor job at Yale for plagiarism, her father is a homophobic alcoholic, yet she still visits him every week at the nursing home and now her neighbors in Maneless Grove seem very odd. The HOA is pressuring Sol and Alice to join, despite their reluctance. Sol also struggles with clinical depression, panic attacks, an aversion to social events and alcoholism so when weird things start happening, she wonders if she’s losing it. What is happening in this seemingly perfect community?
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I can always count on @v_e_tirado to bring the creepy/horror vibes in their writing. This story is full of topics surrounding racism, homophobia, sexism that reminded me of another recent title I read: One of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon. I love that Tirado has ventured into the adult horror foray and I can’t wait to see what they write next!

CW: racism, homophobia, alcoholism, alcohol, sexism, gaslighting, body horror, suicide, child death, fire, physical abuse, car accident, child abuse, death, blood

So much potential, but what was that ending?!

Vincent Tirado's We Came To Welcome You is a well-intentioned exploration of immigration and cultural identity, but it falls short of truly capturing the complexities of the subject matter. While the novel offers moments of insight and poignant storytelling, it ultimately feels uneven and somewhat predictable.

The central premise of the novel, revolving around a young man's journey to reconnect with his immigrant roots, is a promising one. Tirado does a decent job of portraying the challenges faced by immigrants and their children, particularly in terms of balancing cultural traditions with the demands of a new society. However, the narrative often feels rushed, and the characters lack the depth and nuance necessary to make them truly memorable.

The novel's strengths lie in its exploration of themes of family, identity, and belonging. There are moments when Tirado's writing is evocative and thought-provoking, and he succeeds in conveying the emotional weight of the characters' experiences. However, the pacing is uneven, and the plot often feels contrived. The ending, while satisfying in a certain way, feels somewhat rushed and leaves some questions unanswered.

Overall, We Came To Welcome You is a worthwhile read for those interested in exploring themes of immigration and cultural identity. However, it is far from a masterpiece. The novel's uneven pacing and lack of character depth ultimately prevent it from reaching its full potential.

They had me at HOA horror. What can I say about We Came to Welcome You? I was hooked right from the beginning, when Sol and her wife Alice move into what seems to be the perfect home. Right away, Sol can tell there's something off, whether it's the pushy HOA board members who show up at their door with a contract immediately, the suffocating atmosphere of the house itself, or the neighbors whose microaggessions against Sol are almost unending. But Sol thinks she's being her usual mistrustful self, a thing she's been trying to work through during the therapy Alice suggested she start. So what happens when twigs show up under Sol's skin, or steps disappear in their house? THAT couldn't be all in Sol's head...could it?

There was a lot I really enjoyed about this book. I liked Sol as a main character, I liked Tirado's cinematic writing style, and I really loved how layered it was. The supernatural elements were woven really well with the more human horrors of racism and homophobia. I do wish that Sol and Alice could've been a bit more unified of a couple -- from the beginning, it felt like every scene with them was a constant argument and/or needling. I understand WHY their relationship was that way, but the brief glimpses of their past weren't enough to make me really root for them together. I also wish that some of the threads throughout could've been tied up more neatly -- some characters felt dropped.

Like a lot of readers, I also struggled with the ending. There's a twist at the end which definitely lives up to The Other Black Girl comp, but it felt very abrupt and I would've liked more exploration of the supernatural elements behind it. Basically (spoilers here!!), Sol discovers that the tree behind her house is a parasite, belonging to an older cult which feeds off of Maneless Grove. About half of the horror elements that Sol's attributed to Maneless Grove throughout the novel are actually the work of this parasite -- so, to strike back at Maneless Grove, Sol decides to embrace the parasite and join that cult instead. It's a good ending in theory, but was revealed with only about 20 pages until the novel's end. I guess I just wish it hadn't ended so abruptly.

Still, I really enjoyed Tirado's blend of social commentary and horror. It's very well done, and if they write any more books in this genre, I'll definitely check them out.

Many thanks to NetGalley, William Morrow, and Vincent Tirado for gifting me this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review!

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC.

I wanted to loved this book until I got to the end. It was super creepy and thought it was the perfect October read, but I guess it left me wanting more in the end. Sol was a bit of a mess in her work life and personal life and her behavior throughout the book was based off of her interactions with the past so she is hyperaware of her surrounds and interactions with people. Moving to Maneless Grove has caused her to lose herself even more, whether that be racist neighbors and just feeling completely out of place. It doesn't help that everyone around it seems to be adding fuel to the fire with cryptic messages. Off topic, but Veronica was really my favorite character, even though her only job was to raise the creep level. There were a lot of plot lines that didn't get wrapped up and was disappointed in the end.

Sol and Alice has just moved into a gated community, Maneless Grove. Sol has been put on leave for accusations of plagiarism and spends a lot of time at home while Has gone to work and Sol hfrom her parents. It starts with the neighbors being very pushy about joining the HOA. Sol doesn't want to because she wants to be able to have a backyard garden which is forbidden under the HOA among other issues. The children are strange and the neighbors are never really seen and Sol is digging to find out why when she finds a journal buried in the backyard but what Sol doesn't know that in Maneless Grove, either you become a good neighbor—or you die.

As a queer, multiracial person, the ending of this book was “turn butch into femme and persons of color into white.” A whole person’s culture and identity are warped. This book gave me the ick.

We Came to Welcome You was a surprisingly fun book, not gonna lie.

It's very heavy-handed in its dealing with racist themes. The main character is an academic with a fairly enviable position at Yale, but is often underestimated since she's Afro Latinx. People are very unsubtle in their assumptions that she only got to her position through affirmative action (as opposed to fighting twice as hard to be there and taken seriously). And while her Korean wife can sometimes sympathize, she gets a lot of model minority privilege.

The two of them have recently moved into their first home in a very suburban, very White neighbourhood and thinks are fairly sus out the gate. I definitely liked the sense of unease and the gaslighting, and appreciated the attention to micro-aggressions. I think some of the villains could be a bit over the top, or a little under-explained, but overall it was a good time.

The main weaknesses for me were that 1. the ending is fairly rushed and you don't get a lot of explanations and closure so that could bother some readers, and 2. because of the entry-point and the POV character I never really got a sense of these two as a couple. I wish I could have seen more of their marriage when they really liked each other so that I could appreciate the strains and changes in their relationship; because at the end of this they seemed more like they were in the first month or two of a relationship, rather than having been together for over a decade.

Sol and Alice move into their new home only to be greeted with some...odd neighbors. Overly friendly and just a little off, who are very invested in them joining the homeowners association. As they live there longer, both begin to change, and Sol notices odd occurrences. A disappearing stair. An odd little girl. Bodies that disappear when she calls 911. And why is one of her neighbors always different when she seems him?

Mixing modern terrors of bigotry with the supernatural, We Came to Welcome You is a wonderfully spooky queer horror novel. Sol and Alice are interesting characters, simultaneously dealing with family dynamics, homophobia, a white man who thinks he has the right to ruin Sol's life just because she's black, and their own marriage trouble due to everything going on, and the village around them, constantly encroaching and changing them, seeping every part of them that makes them themselves out and replacing it with the sameness of the community they're in.

This story kept me invested til the end, which I certainly was not prepared for. I would happily read even more of this, I loved the characters, and the mystery of the world was so engaging.

Thank you to the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

We Came To Welcome you attempts a very interesting premise that puts a slight spin on a newer horror element we've come to know. It has a lot to say and sets out to bring to light the suburban horrors of minority individuals. I know as a trans person, that those horrors are very real and that feeling is awful. However, the writing and storytelling in this book is a bit awkward. I'm not sure how exactly to place it, it just doesn't feel like a fully flushed out story or characters. The writing is pretty one dimensional at times and doesn't feel like something to sink your teeth into. I do appreciate what this story is trying to point out, it just didn't work well for me.

I thought this book had good potential but it just fell short for me. It’s more of a slow burn thriller and personally I do like them a little more fast paced, but I would still recommended this book!

This review has been posted to Goodreads and Storygraph on October 2nd, 2024. Links provided.

After plagiarism accusations at her university lab lead to probation, Sol Reyes’ mental health takes a hit and her alcohol dependency increases. In an attempt to move forward, Sol and her wife, Alice, try to focus on the positives of their recent move to idyllic Maneless Grove. However, soon after moving in, Sol feels uncertain about the overly friendly neighbors and intrusive Homeowners Association, which seems to embody a community motto that she finds more troubling than comforting. When strange events like disappearing doors and odd plant growth begin to occur, Sol starts to question whether her perception of reality is accurate. While Alice becomes increasingly concerned about Sol’s drinking and erratic behavior, Sol uncovers a journal from a previous resident who mysteriously vanished, shedding light on why their home was so easily obtained. Now, Sol must hang on to her sanity if she wants to discover the true nature of Maneless Grove and the residents within.

While the premise of this book really intrigued me, it unfortunately fell quite flat in the end. I really enjoyed the build up and mystery of the first half of the book, but the second half was not enjoyable at all. The explanation of everything in the end was far too science fiction for my liking for what was supposed to be a domestic thriller. Also, I could not stand the MC, Sol. She was incredibly pessimistic, selfish, and angry all the time. The constant pity party was such a deterrent from the actual plot that it unfortunately made the whole book very unenjoyable for me. If I had known this book was going to lead more towards science fiction than domestic thriller, I probably would have skipped it from the get go.

Thank you to Willam Morrow and NetGalley for the opportunity to read to an ARC of We Came to Welcome You in return for my honest review.