Publish date: July 22, 2021
Genre: Mystery, Horror, Fiction, Thriller
Content warnings: Incest (implied and discussed, child abuse, birth defects/deformity/ body horror, psychological trauma, implied sexual abuse, death and suicide
Short description: Strange Houses is a quiet, unsettling horror novel about a man investigating bizarrely built homes—hallways that lead to nowhere, rooms that don’t exist on the blueprint, and secrets buried in the walls. As he digs deeper, he uncovers the chilling history of a family marked by shame, isolation, and inherited tragedy. It’s creepy in a subtle way, more about atmosphere and generational horror than jump scares.
Creepy and had the potential to be a one-sitting read (if adulting didn’t get in the way). The whole concept was right up my alleeeeyyyyy.
But as the mystery unraveled, it started feeling less like horror and more like a long chismis thread. It’s all “speculation,” but then what we’re told was apparently like 99.9% correct, especially in that last chapter which kind of ruins the open-ended vibe it was going for.
I liked the cultural layers though, especially how it ties into real beliefs about bloodlines and birth defects. We have that sabi-sabi in Pinas, too! It’s disturbing in a quiet, almost believable way. I just wish it trusted readers a bit more to connect the dots.v
I just finished Strange Houses by Uketsu, and I have some thoughts.
I picked this up because it is annoyingly on trend and is in my FYP for many days already. And since I need a break from long (or regular-length) books, I though a fun, creepy short one should get me out of an almost-slump.
This one’s a slow-burn horror wrapped in urban legend vibes. It follows the author, who was approached by a friend looking at purchasing a house in Tokyo. When he first saw the floor plan, it already felt a bit off… Think unsettling blueprints, oddly placed walls, rooms that don’t make sense, spaces that feel like they weren’t meant to be lived in. What starts as a strange pattern in architecture slowly reveals something much darker about a certain family and their generations-long curse.
It is creepy. There’s this quiet unease that lingers throughout the book. Uketsu doesn’t rely on jump scares or gore. Just subtle wrongness and the kind of dread that builds up when you know something’s off but can’t quite name it. The concept had so much potential, and honestly, I could’ve read this in one sitting if not for life getting in the way.
But here’s the thing. For all the tension it builds, the way the story unfolds felt odd. We’re uncovering the truth mostly through secondhand speculation. It’s like being in a long tsismisan session where everyone’s guessing what happened, and then in the end, someone suddenly goes, “Anyway, remember that chika I told you about that creepy house? It is apparently 99.9% true, so mystery solved!” That final chapter from Kurihara felt like it wanted to preserve ambiguity but couldn’t resist spelling things out.
What I did appreciate is how it subtly mirrors real cultural fears. That Asian belief about incest causing birth defects is baked into the bones of this story. The horror doesn’t come from monsters. It comes from bloodlines and the shame people try to wall off behind concrete and tradition. It actually hits differently when you come from a culture that shares the same kind of inherited cautionary tales.
I liked it. I didn’t love it. But it’s the kind of book that leaves you staring at your own hallway a little longer than usual. Plus, it being a nice quick read is a 100% YES.
View my vlog when I read for 24 "hours"! LOL
I am using the CAWPILE rating system, though please remember a reader’s taste may change from time to time, so I’m not sure if you can trust me here unless this was a recent read. Leaving my ratings anyways because this was totally how I felt the time I read this book. *winks*
I thought I’d finish my current reads in just a few days, but somehow it turned into a 24-day journey 😅 In this vlog, I take you along as I slowly make my way through my TBR including Strange Houses by Uketsu, a quiet horror that left me feeling unsettled in all the right ways. If you’ve ever underestimated how long “just a few books” can take, this one’s for you.
Here are other reads if you liked or interested with Strange Houses
Click the book covers to go to Goodreads.
The spine-tingling bestseller that has taken Japan by storm—an eerie fresh take on horror for fans of Hidden Pictures and Junji Ito, in which a series of seemingly innocent pictures draws you into a disturbing web of unsolved mysteries and shattered psyches.
An exploration of the macabre, where the seemingly mundane takes on a terrifying significance. . . .
A pregnant woman’s sketches on a seemingly innocuous blog conceal a chilling warning.
A child’s picture of his home contains a dark secret message.
A sketch made by a murder victim in his final moments leads an amateur sleuth down a rabbithole that will reveal a horrifying reality.
Structured around these nine childlike drawings, each holding a disturbing clue, Uketsu invites readers to piece together the mystery behind each and the over-arching backstory that connects them all. Strange Pictures is the internationally bestselling debut from mystery horror YouTube sensation Uketsu—an enigmatic masked figure who has become one of Japan’s most talked about contemporary authors.
Shirley Jackson’s beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family’s dark secret.
Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features an afterword by Jonathan Lethem.
On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses—until things become much more serious. Most of the island’s inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten.
When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.
A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.