This is Sarah Enright with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.
The book I’m recommending today is We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough. She’s best known for writing fiction that sits just on the edge of reality, where the familiar can suddenly tilt into something strange. In this newest novel, she gives us a story that starts in recognizable territory but slowly shifts, until what feels ordinary becomes anything but.
The novel follows characters who are trying to hold together the routines of daily life while the world around them begins to show cracks. Small disruptions build into larger questions, and before long, the reader is left wondering what’s real, what’s imagined, and what might be lurking just beneath the surface. That tension—between the everyday and the uncanny—is where Pinborough does her best work.
She is not an author for everyone. Her stories often ask readers to accept a touch of the surreal, and not everyone enjoys that. But for those who do, Pinborough is a master at weaving magical realism into suspenseful narratives that pulse with emotion and atmosphere. Her thrillers don’t follow the usual formulas. Instead, they feel fresh, unpredictable, and thought-provoking.
If you enjoy novels that mix suspense with just enough strangeness to keep you guessing, We Live Here Nowis an excellent choice.
Check out We Live Here Now—and discover more imaginative, genre-bending reads—at the Sioux City Public Library.
Support for Check It Out on Siouxland Public Media comes from Avery Brothers.