We Live Here Now

We Live Here Now is a 2025 modern Gothic novel by Sarah Pinborough. After almost dying in an accident, Emily Bennett relocates to Dartmoor, Devon, England’s remote Larkin Lodge with her husband, Freddie. However, the couple’s fresh start is marred by secrets, hidden motives, and resentments. As Emily experiences increasingly eerie events in Larkin Lodge, the Bennetts’ unravelling relationship and the house’s dark history collide, exploring themes including The Duality of Human Nature, The Legacy of Trauma and the Past, and The Dark Undercurrents of Intimate Relationships. Sarah Pinborough is a British author best known for domestic thrillers with a supernatural twist. Her previous novels, Behind Her Eyes (2017) and Insomnia (2022), have been adapted into limited series for Netflix and Paramount+.

This guide is based on the 2025 e-book published by Orion.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death, sexual content, gender discrimination, addiction, substance use, pregnancy loss, graphic violence, emotional abuse, physical abuse, mental illness, animal death, death by suicide, suicidal ideation, and cursing.

Language Note: The source material uses offensive historical terms for mental illness, such as “mad” or “crazy.” This guide reproduces these terms only in quotations.

Plot Summary

The story is told from the perspectives of Emily Bennett and her husband Freddie, who move from London to Larkin Lodge, a large, isolated country house in Dartmoor on the Devon coast of England. The move comes after a traumatic accident: Emily fell from a cliff while on holiday, suffered serious injuries, developed sepsis, spent time in a coma, and subsequently lost her job. She is still recovering physically and mentally.

Strange things happen at Larkin Lodge, but only when Emily is alone. She hears scratching sounds and footsteps emanating from the upper-floor bedroom, and she is often overwhelmed by a rotting stench. In the library, four books fall from the shelves, the first words of their titles spelling “YOU WILL DIE HERE” (97). Emily’s consultant, Dr. Canning, has warned her that she may experience post-sepsis hallucinations. Freddie attributes Emily’s experiences to her frail state of mind.

Emily and Freddie are both harboring secrets. Emily slept with her boss to gain a promotion and is unsure whether the pregnancy she lost during the accident was her husband’s. Meanwhile, Freddie has a gambling addiction and owes thousands of pounds to a dangerous loan shark. The eerie phenomena of Larkin Lodge intensify the strained nature of Emily and Freddie’s relationship. Freddie is constantly cold and blames Emily for windows that open of their own accord. Meanwhile, Emily cuts her foot on an upturned nail and is furious when the nail reappears after Freddie claimed to have removed it. The protagonists increasingly dislike the qualities in each other that first attracted them.

Running parallel to Emily and Freddie’s story is the narrative perspective of a male raven. The Raven has kept watch on Larkin Lodge since his mate, Broken Wing, flew down the house’s chimney and never returned. One night, Emily is woken by the sound of the Raven trapped in the house. She opens a window, releasing him, and finds his dead mate, Broken Wing, in the fireplace.

When Emily leaves Broken Wing’s carcass outside, the Raven retrieves her. Although Broken Wing was often unkind to him, the Raven feels bound to her. As time goes on, the Raven is increasingly tempted to leave with another female, Bright Wing. One day, when the window of the upper-floor bedroom is open, the Raven drops Broken Wing’s carcass inside and flies off with his new mate.

Emily and Freddie invite two couples from London, Iso and Mark, and Cat and Russell, to stay at Larkin Lodge. They use a Ouija board to contact the ghost, and the planchette repeatedly spells “FINDIT.” The Bennetts learn from the local vicar, Paul Carr, that their home was built on a crossroads where people who died by suicide were traditionally buried.

Emily befriends Sally and Joe Carter, who lived at Larkin Lodge 20 years earlier. Joe is an artist, and Emily marvels at Sally’s relaxed attitude toward her husband’s open habit of sleeping with the nude models he paints. When the Bennetts throw a party, Emily finds Sally staring at the spot in the floorboards where the upturned nail has been removed. Shortly afterward, Sally goes home, complaining of a migraine.

A local woman, Merrily Watkins, tells Emily how dramatically Sally has changed over the years, as she was intensely jealous before they married. Sally threatened to kill a young woman named Georgina Usher, whom she suspected of sleeping with Joe. However, after Georgina disappeared, Sally never showed a trace of her former jealousy. Emily deduces that Sally murdered Georgina at Larkin Lodge. However, local vicar Paul Carr, another party guest, informs her that Georgina is now a famous artist and lives in the United States.

After the party, Emily wakes in the night and hears whispering. Going to investigate, she sees Mark and Cat having sex and videos them on her phone. Emily uses the video to blackmail Mark, threatening to tell Iso about the affair. She instructs him to transfer £150,000 into an account in her name.

Later, Emily is astonished to find Broken Wing alive in the primary suite. When she opens the window, the bird joyfully escapes. The Raven forgets about Bright Wing when he sees that Broken Wing is alive and no longer exhibits the unkind traits that spoiled their happiness. They fly away from Larkin Lodge together.

Emily’s cleaner, Mrs. Tucker, reveals that her father was the gardener for Fortuna Carmichael, an actor who lived at Larkin Lodge in the 1950s. While her father was working, she often played in the house. One day, she heard Fortuna and her husband, Gerald, arguing and then saw Fortuna drag Gerald’s dead body into the primary suite. Mrs. Tucker admits that she must have been dreaming, as Gerald lived for many more years until he finally died of cancer. Emily visits Fortuna Carmichael, who declares that she and Gerald “were happy after [she] killed him” (222).

As Freddie comes under increasing pressure to pay his debts, he plans to kill Emily and pass it off as death by suicide so that he can claim her life insurance. Confiding his “concerns” to Paul Carr and Dr. Canning, he leads them to believe that Emily is mentally unstable and depressed.

Emily finds the diary of Christopher Hopper, a 19th-century surgeon, hidden in the house. The journal recounts how Hopper discovered that if an individual killed a loved one and placed them in Larkin Lodge’s upper bedroom, the murder victim would come back to life. Furthermore, they would return as the best version of themselves, while their negative traits remained trapped in the primary suite. The only way to reunite the two halves of the person was to burn possessions that contained their DNA. Hopper describes successfully trying this procedure on a close friend in preparation for killing and reviving his wife.

Emily realizes that the dark side of Sally Carter is trapped in the primary suite. Stealing some of Sally’s personal items, she burns them and sees a vision of the circumstances leading to Sally’s death. After an argument over her jealousy, Joe pushed Sally. As she hit her head on the floorboards, the upturned nail penetrated Sally’s skull, causing severe brain damage. Joe suffocated his wife and then dragged her body to the primary suite. When Sally emerged alive the next day without a trace of her former jealousy, Joe told himself that his substance use had caused him to hallucinate her death.

Sally and Joe visit the Bennetts on the way to Scotland. Sally privately thanks Emily for releasing her and vows that Joe will pay for his actions. Soon afterward, Emily is delighted to find she is pregnant. She decides that she and Freddie should sell Larkin Lodge and use the blackmail money to make a fresh start in France.

However, before she tells Freddie this news, he discovers the bank account in Emily’s name and assumes she is planning to leave him. Freddie also finds out about Emily’s infidelity with her boss when he sees emails between them. Overwhelmed with rage, he stabs Emily and hides her body in the top bedroom.

When Emily comes back to life, she has no memory of her death. Meanwhile, Freddie is delighted with the new, improved version of his wife. Paul Carr visits, revealing that Joe Carter has died in an accident, and passing on a letter from Sally to Emily. Sally expresses her alarm on hearing about Emily’s recent “transformation.” She suggests that Freddie may have killed Emily and trapped her dark half in the primary suite.

Calling Freddie up to the second-floor bedroom, Emily hands him a beer and tells him she is pregnant. When he becomes dizzy, she admits that she has drugged him. As Freddie dies, Emily explains that in order to be good parents, it is best if they are both free of their worst traits.

The novel ends with the “dark” sides of Emily, Freddie, and Broken Wing trapped in Larkin Lodge’s second-floor bedroom. The couple watches miserably from the window as the “good” versions of themselves leave Larkin Lodge, ready to move to France. Freddie suggests that all is not lost, as they may be able to persuade the new residents, Cat and Russell, to set them free. Emily agrees, secretly vowing that she will never liberate her husband.