Publication Date: September 3, 2024
The Other Black Girl meets Midsommar in this spine-chilling, propulsive psychological adult debut from highly acclaimed author Vincent Tirado, in which a married couple moves into a gated “community” that slowly creeps into a pervasive dread akin to the social horror of Jordan Peele and Lovecraft County—We Came to Welcome You cleverly uses the uncanny to illuminate the cultish, shocking nature of systemic racism.
Where beauty lies, secrets are held…ugly ones.
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.
Suddenly, a number of strange occurrences—doors and stairs disappearing, roots growing inside the house—cause Sol to wonder if her social paranoia isn’t built on something more sinister. Yet Sol’s fears are dismissed as Alice embraces their new home and becomes increasingly worried instead about Sol’s drinking and manic behavior. When Sol finds a journal in the property from a resident that went missing a few years ago, she realizes why they were able to buy the house so easily…
Through Sol’s razor-sharp tongue and macabre sense of humor, Tirado explores the very real pressures to assimilate with one’s surroundings to “survive,” while also asking the question: Is it survival when you’re no longer your true self? Because in Maneless Grove, either you become a good neighbor—or you die.
Buying a home in Maneless Grove should have been a new beginning for Sol and Alice. Then came the push to join the homeowners association.
We Came to Welcome You delivers a psychological thriller tightly woven with a horror fiction twist courtesy of author Vincent Tirado.
Aside from the creepy vibes from the community, Sol’s character oozes dysfunction. Her relationship with her father is volatile, which, along with a suspension from work, illustrates her fragile mental health. Couple that with her defensiveness as a Dominican lesbian married to a Korean, and social interaction is clearly not her preferred activity.
Alice, on the other hand, serves as a social butterfly. She quickly embraces the neighborhood and dismisses Sol’s suspicions. As a series of events take place, Sol is adamant there is something sinister happening. With dry wit, she plunged deep into an investigation that could have a lasting impact.
We Came to Welcome You takes neighborly spirit to a completely different level.
Vincent Tirado is a nonbinary Afro-Latine Bronx native. They ventured out to Pennsylvania and Ohio to get their bachelor’s degree in biology and master’s degree in bioethics. Their debut YA novel Burn Down, Rise Up was the 2022 winner of the Pura Belpré Award and was a finalist for the 2022 Stoker Awards and 2023 Lammy Awards. Their sophomore YA novel We Don’t Swim Here was called “a chilling ghost story” by Publishers Weekly.
