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A pair of domestic/psychological thrillers
These books paired well together, so I figured I'd put them in the same post. Also, this type of book is all about !!TWISTS!!, so it's impossible to talk about them without spoiling the !!TWISTS!!, so beware of that.
Room for Rent - Noelle Ihli: I met her at Indie Capstone in March, and she's currently wildly Tiktok-popular and her books are topping bestseller lists, so I decided to read one and see what they're like - and they're good! I really enjoyed it and got thoroughly caught up in all of the everything.
Nya is a college student raised by rural fundamentalists in a small Idaho town. Financial circumstances force her to choose between dropping out, or taking a rented room in a house owned by the Worst Roommate Ever, a slobby dude who walks around in his underwear, gets in her personal space, etc. Still, she clenches her teeth and decides that she can handle it, but things get steadily creepier as she starts finding signs that someone's been in her room, hints that there might be hidden cameras, and indications that her food might not be safe, and she can no longer can trust that it's safe to sleep there at night. Also, she starts hearing rumors about a previous roommate whose mail keeps showing up at the house who may or may not be dead.
This book definitely hits the "creepy roommate" buttons in a major way.
I can see why Ihli's books are popular, and I'll definitely be reading more by her!
We Were Never Here - Andrea Bartz: On a sightseeing trip in Chile with her longtime BFF, Emily comes back to their shared room to find that her BFF, Kirsten, has killed a guy and needs her to help hide the body. (Not really a spoiler, it happens in the first couple of chapters and is also spoiled in the blurb.) Also not really a spoiler for the same reason: this is the second time this has happened, because someone tried to rape her on their previous trip last year to Cambodia, and her friend killed the guy to rescue her, and then they had to hide the body that time too. Once is bad luck, but twice, Emily thinks, is starting to get a bit unlikely.
As they work to conceal what they've done, first in Chile and then once they're back in the US, Emily starts looking back on their friendship and gradually realizes that what she's always taken for sister-like closeness might in fact be an attempt to isolate her and drive away anyone else who gets close to her. She also realizes that the murder happened right after she told Kirsten about her new boyfriend, and Kirsten is now trying to insinuate herself between them, pick at his flaws, and either derail all their plans or invite herself along ... which is what's happened with all of Emily's previous boyfriends.
Then she finds out she's not Kirsten's first extremely close BFF. Kirsten's past turns out to be littered with dead people, including her dead parents (killed in a house fire when she was a teenager) and her first BFF Jamie, who Kirsten never mentioned and who turns out to look a lot like Emily. Jamie died under Mysterious Circumstances when Kirsten was younger, and all the pictures of her that Emily can find among Kirsten's things have the faces scribbled out ...
This was tense and fun and kept me reading, though I'm not sure if it came together at the end quite as much as I wanted it to.
What I enjoyed best about this book were the more subtle details of a toxic friendship, as Emily begins to realize just how thoroughly Kirsten has involved herself in Emily's life (including taking the same yoga classes, showing up at Emily's therapist and trying to get herself taken on as a client, etc) and all the little ways that Kirsten has gone out of her way to make Emily emotionally dependent on her. There is also a really excellent "ticking clock" overlaying all of this, as we intercut to bits and pieces of the murder investigation in Chile, and news articles on the ongoing development of clues being found, and Emily's life increasingly teeters on the edge of collapse as she has to hide details of the events in Chile from everyone around her. Oh, and Kirsten is also into playing a game with Emily where she leaves little clues for Emily to find that point to a solution, which starts off fun and increasingly gets creepy as Emily figures out how much Kirsten is headfucking with her.
I'm not quiiiiite sure I bought the happy ending after all of that, but it was a good time and I read most of it yesterday because I couldn't stop reading! Also interested in checking out more by this author as well.
Room for Rent - Noelle Ihli: I met her at Indie Capstone in March, and she's currently wildly Tiktok-popular and her books are topping bestseller lists, so I decided to read one and see what they're like - and they're good! I really enjoyed it and got thoroughly caught up in all of the everything.
Nya is a college student raised by rural fundamentalists in a small Idaho town. Financial circumstances force her to choose between dropping out, or taking a rented room in a house owned by the Worst Roommate Ever, a slobby dude who walks around in his underwear, gets in her personal space, etc. Still, she clenches her teeth and decides that she can handle it, but things get steadily creepier as she starts finding signs that someone's been in her room, hints that there might be hidden cameras, and indications that her food might not be safe, and she can no longer can trust that it's safe to sleep there at night. Also, she starts hearing rumors about a previous roommate whose mail keeps showing up at the house who may or may not be dead.
This book definitely hits the "creepy roommate" buttons in a major way.
The big twist
The big twist is that the ACTUAL person who has been sneaking into the house, stealing and drugging her food, and otherwise stalking her is not the creepy roommate, it's the Nice Guy on campus who has been dating her and supporting her in all of her "creepy roommate" stories. This all comes together in a very tense climax in which Nya has to escape from the house after being drugged so that she can barely stand up. Nice Guy is also the mysterious missing other roommate, and all of this is mainly aimed at revenge on his old roommate (Creepy Dude), with Nya more or less a pawn in all of it. She gets plenty of agency at the end, though, and frees herself from both of them and goes off to live a happy life somewhere else.I can see why Ihli's books are popular, and I'll definitely be reading more by her!
We Were Never Here - Andrea Bartz: On a sightseeing trip in Chile with her longtime BFF, Emily comes back to their shared room to find that her BFF, Kirsten, has killed a guy and needs her to help hide the body. (Not really a spoiler, it happens in the first couple of chapters and is also spoiled in the blurb.) Also not really a spoiler for the same reason: this is the second time this has happened, because someone tried to rape her on their previous trip last year to Cambodia, and her friend killed the guy to rescue her, and then they had to hide the body that time too. Once is bad luck, but twice, Emily thinks, is starting to get a bit unlikely.
As they work to conceal what they've done, first in Chile and then once they're back in the US, Emily starts looking back on their friendship and gradually realizes that what she's always taken for sister-like closeness might in fact be an attempt to isolate her and drive away anyone else who gets close to her. She also realizes that the murder happened right after she told Kirsten about her new boyfriend, and Kirsten is now trying to insinuate herself between them, pick at his flaws, and either derail all their plans or invite herself along ... which is what's happened with all of Emily's previous boyfriends.
Then she finds out she's not Kirsten's first extremely close BFF. Kirsten's past turns out to be littered with dead people, including her dead parents (killed in a house fire when she was a teenager) and her first BFF Jamie, who Kirsten never mentioned and who turns out to look a lot like Emily. Jamie died under Mysterious Circumstances when Kirsten was younger, and all the pictures of her that Emily can find among Kirsten's things have the faces scribbled out ...
This was tense and fun and kept me reading, though I'm not sure if it came together at the end quite as much as I wanted it to.
Big spoilers from here; suicide tw
Just exactly how much of a monster Kirsten is, and how much of her gaslighting and stalking of Emily is intentional (and she's definitely doing that!) remains a mystery. It turns out that Jamie's death AND her parents' deaths aren't Kirsten's fault; Kirsten's dad was sexually abusing Jamie, who killed Kirsten's parents in a house fire and then committed suicide later. So basically most of the Badness in Kirsten's past wasn't Kirsten's fault, and it does seem like her clinging to Emily in the present is mostly a reaction to having lost everybody when she was a kid. But then again, she did actually kill a dude to keep Emily from leaving her, she did keep blackmail material on that murder and the previous one to make sure Emily doesn't talk to anyone about it, and when Emily finally confronts her about this, Kirsten tries to kill her by pushing her into traffic. This results in Kirsten herself being run over by a car that swerves to avoid Emily and kills Kirsten instead. So that all definitely happened!! In the end, Emily finds herself in the middle of a media circus regarding the Two Actual Murders she was involved in covering up, but all the evidence of her involvement was lost with Kirsten's death, so she ends up living happily with her boyfriend at the end of it all. Okay then!What I enjoyed best about this book were the more subtle details of a toxic friendship, as Emily begins to realize just how thoroughly Kirsten has involved herself in Emily's life (including taking the same yoga classes, showing up at Emily's therapist and trying to get herself taken on as a client, etc) and all the little ways that Kirsten has gone out of her way to make Emily emotionally dependent on her. There is also a really excellent "ticking clock" overlaying all of this, as we intercut to bits and pieces of the murder investigation in Chile, and news articles on the ongoing development of clues being found, and Emily's life increasingly teeters on the edge of collapse as she has to hide details of the events in Chile from everyone around her. Oh, and Kirsten is also into playing a game with Emily where she leaves little clues for Emily to find that point to a solution, which starts off fun and increasingly gets creepy as Emily figures out how much Kirsten is headfucking with her.
I'm not quiiiiite sure I bought the happy ending after all of that, but it was a good time and I read most of it yesterday because I couldn't stop reading! Also interested in checking out more by this author as well.
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