March’s Book Club Pick🏡
Find us on the BookClubs app & join us on 3/29 at 4pm PST for this month’s meeting!
📚Book Details📚
Title: We Came to Welcome You
Author: Vincent Tirado
Synopsis: 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.
Having recently finished reading 'We Came to Welcome You,' I can say it’s a captivating dive into the unnerving side of suburban life. Vincent Tirado masterfully blends psychological thriller with social commentary, exploring how conformity and community expectations can mask sinister truths. What stood out most is how the novel captures the tension between personal identity and societal pressure, especially through Sol Reyes—a character whose struggles with mental health, family dynamics, and cultural assimilation feel deeply authentic. The eerie atmosphere of Maneless Grove evolves from a dream neighborhood into a nightmare filled with mysterious disappearances and haunting phenomena like doors vanishing and roots invading homes. For anyone interested in suburban horror or novels that highlight LGBTQ+ experiences within complex family and social structures, this book is a must-read. The Homeowners Association’s aggressive 'neighborly spirit' and the bizarre contract echo real-life scenarios where communities enforce rigid conformity, sometimes at great personal cost. If you like suspense with macabre humor and are intrigued by stories where the setting acts almost like a character itself, this novel will keep you hooked. Watching Sol’s relationship with Alice and her battle against growing paranoia reminded me how fragile the balance is between external appearances and inner turmoil. I highly recommend joining the BookClubs app meeting on March 29th at 4 pm PST to share thoughts with other readers and dive deeper into the themes Tirado addresses. It’s a perfect pick if you enjoy book clubs that not only discuss plot but also the psychological and cultural undertones that make a thriller resonate long after the last page.