
Member Reviews

I was fully hooked from the start with Strange Houses. There’s a really eerie, unsettling atmosphere running through the whole book that stays with you. Uketsu’s writing is subtle but very effective - it’s the kind of weird, quiet creepiness that sneaks up on you rather than hitting you over the head haha!
The stories blend everyday life with the supernatural in a way that feels quite natural but still gives you the shivers. The characters aren’t overly explained, which I liked, which allows you to imagine the details yourself. It made me think twice about some of the houses I pass on my daily walks!
If you’re into unsettling, atmospheric tales with a hint of the uncanny, this is well worth a read.

I loved this just as I loved Strange Pictures.
It's basically a clever puzzle in narrative form, a little bit disturbing but absolutely riveting.
A house with murderous intent perhaps, it'll have you all checking your floor plans once you are done.
Quirky and clever. A fast, entertaining and intelligent read.

I loved strange pictures, and this book lived up to the expectations left after.
The follow along mystery is so fun and interactive, different from strange pictures but still so intelligent and unique.
I can’t wait to see what else this author produces.
Thank you for my copy!

I really enjoyed that the story was based around the floor plans of the houses as it gave it a realistic edge to the book.
I enjoyed exploring the floor plans as the story unravelled so I could visualise the story even more.
This book gets creepier and stranger as it goes along, it’s also not too long so I could not put it down!

Atmospheric and chilling
—
They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul; but are windows the eyes of a house, or a direct look into the perfection that the house’s owner wants the world to see? When the unnamed narrator of Uketsu’s next Strange book is asked by a friend for their opinion on a house that’s for sale, odd details leap out to the author. As they outline them, chills seem to seep from the book as the unlikely secrets of the house reveal themselves: rooms that shouldn’t be, hidden inhabitants, buildings designed for dastardly deeds. When the author publishes an anonymised article, a reader reaches out to him and on meeting, they discover another strange house, as in the title: surely this can only be coincidence?
Yet another disarmingly gentle book from Uketsu that will make you look at unfamiliar houses with a new eye. Is the return in that wall supposed to be there? Do these rooms on the first floor absolutely coincide with the ones on the next? This place is so light and spacious that there can’t be any hidden space, can there? And can you really know the history of the house you’ve just stepped into? But above all: are you certain that you’ll step out of the house again?
Four and a half stars

What a fascinating and gripping read! After reading Strange Pictures (which I loved), I was eager to read this one and I found myself enthralled again by the mystery surrounding these strange houses!
Uketsu really knows how to captivate the audience with an unputdownable mystery, giving only small tidbits of clues and creating a web from which the readers can’t extricate themselves until the last page. I could never have imagined the reason behind these strange houses and I do believe few people can.
As always, the use of images is genius, not only allowing the reader to follow the clues and the plot, but also to be part of the mystery.
If you love mysteries and weird plots, then Uketsu is the author for you!
Thanks to Pushkin Press and NetGalley for a copy and this is my honest opinion.

This one didn’t work for me at all. I found it completely preposterous. I accept that it’s ingenious and inventive, and it started out with some promise, then got sillier and sillier. It’s a mystery tale built around weird floor plans, dead spaces, windowless rooms and architectural anomalies, with a bit of folklore to add the fun, and the reader is invited to unravel the mystery at the same time as those investigating it. Architectural plans litter the text, which definitely doesn’t work on Kindle. Endless conversations don’t enhance the reading pleasure. But many other readers love it, so I guess it’s horses for courses.

I was so excited to receive an ARC of this after reading Strange Pictures, which blew my mind with it's ingenuity. I had really high hopes for this after the first book in the series, but unfortunately it really fell short for me. Whilst I did enjoy it, i think it was a bit of a drop after the first. I found this a bit draggy and also a bit farfetched with the theories from the characters so soon.

It’s ridiculous, It’s kooky… but it’s so perfec. Uketsu knows what they’re doing, and they do it oh so well. Apparently I’m a sucker for these types of books

this was my first book by uketsu and I loved it!! it was such a fun reading experience following the characters solving different mysteries and how it all connected at the end. the second I finished strange houses I went and got strange pictures as well. cant wait for the next book by uketsu

This was entertaining and very readable but completely implausible and so it was hard to believe in the story

Stange Houses- Uketsu
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
Firstly the cover art for Strange Pictures and Strange Houses are absolutely stunning. I received an ARC for Stange Houses and I was so intrigued at the format and design that I ordered hard copies for both.
I read both books over 2 evenings. They were both engaging and had me intrigued right from the start. I absolutely loved the pictures and trying to mull over the mystery, trying to solve it myself and find the discrepancies. I love a book that makes you use your brain and where you have the chance to figure things out with the author. I’m not going to say too much because half the fun is figuring out where the story is going, the book follows a series of pictures and a murder mystery. There’s quite a brutal section too which feels like it comes from nowhere and adds a really dark twist.
Strange Houses follows the same kind of format, with floor plans to ponder. For me I needed more floor plans and more investigating as that’s what I really enjoyed about Strange Pictures. The second half of this book didn’t seem to have any of the intrigue of the first half and was no where near as satisfying as Strange Pictures. I still enjoyed it and will definitely read the next.
These two books are also standalones, you don’t need to read one before the other.

I found this novel to be so intriguing and a really quick read because I could not put it down! The way the author looked at an odd floorplan with his friend and concocted a strange theory about the dead space in the middle of a house, plus the bedroom with no windows had me consuming the words and illustrations, especially when the article was answered by the woman with her own crazy story that took it all the way out into the wild and creepy field of the map. It certainly left me with an unsettling feeling when the whole story comes out and yes, it is insane but I still enjoyed it enough that I believe I am going to go see what else this author has written. Plus it makes me want to go and see if I can find floorplans of buildings that may hold their own secrets, though hopefully none as murderous as these house turned out to be!

Strange Houses is a creepy and unsettling horror story set in the present day, centered around bizarre, eerie homes with disturbing secrets. The book’s unusual storytelling style, paired with architectural floor plans of the houses, adds a chilling layer of realism that makes the horror hit even harder. The tale involves children as killers, making it especially haunting. It’s a unique and memorable read — I really liked it.

Beforehand let me mention that before I've read this book I already had started reading the manga adaptation in Japanese up to Volume 4.
In this way the first 75% percent felt relatively repetitive for me but that's not a bad thing since the story is very good. Starting from that line onward though it suddenly differs a lot from the point where we are in the manga and I'm still missing the last volume and I have no idea what will happen in the manga, as we're at a point in the manga that soes not exist in the book.
Therefore a reveal at the end makes me overthink the whole structure of the manga and its characters in a whole different way and it makes both the book and the manga adaptation even more enjoyable.
I think this book is similar to Yukito Ayatsuji's 'Another' a work that has the potential to grow more interesting with every new form of adaptation and now I kind of hope for an anime adaptation.
Needless to say I'm very excited for the upcoming translation of his most current book.
Final: 4.25/5

Translated by Jim Rion — In January, we reviewed Strange Pictures by surrealist Japanese YouTuber and dapper mask-wearer Uketsu. That was the author’s second novel, and now his debut, Strange Houses, has also been translated into English. Focusing on the disturbing hidden meanings that can lie behind innocuous-seeming floorplans, it provides architectural insight into the darkest crevasses of the human mind.
A freelance writer specialising in the macabre – a fictionalised Uketsu taking on a starring role – is contacted by Yanaoka, a friend interested in buying a certain house on a quiet residential street in Saitama, suburban Tokyo. It’s the perfect property save for one thing: there’s an inexplicable dead space on the floorplan. Unsettled by this architectural oddity, Yanaoka seeks the advice of the writer, an aficionado of all things weird.
In turn, the writer contacts another friend, Kurihara, who happens to be both an architect and a horror and mystery buff. Kurihara agrees that there is something distinctly odd about the floorplan. After a bit of back and forth on the matter, the pair hit upon a frankly diabolical explanation for the internal layout of the house.
However, before the writer can investigate things further, news breaks that a dismembered body has been found near the house and Yanaoka decides that it’s not the property for him, whatever the reason behind the dead space. Despite his advice no longer being required, Uketsu cannot forget about the odd house and so writes an article describing the strange floorplan, omitting the address of the house.
The article draws a great deal of interest, most notably from a woman named Yuzuki Miyae, who claims to know the house in question. As the writer establishes a rapport with Miyae, he learns that he and Kurihara are not the only ones with suspicions about the house and what might have gone on there. As he investigates further, the true horror of what might have occurred slowly emerges.
Strange Houses is another masterclass in the macabre from Uketsu. While Strange Pictures used a set of perturbing illustrations to tell a series of interlocking stories, Strange Houses relies of some peculiar floorplans as the entry point for a subversive story of what goes on behind closed doors in suburbia. Once again, the mundane becomes disquieting and regular folks seem to be harbouring sinister secrets.
The use of floorplans as a storytelling device is inspired, bringing the key settings to life in vivid and disturbing detail and fostering an immersive atmosphere of unease as each new deviation from a normal house – however small and seemingly benign – is noticed. As Uketsu and Kurihara study the plans with increasing focus, teasing out the details and every potential explanation for them, they build a picture of the former residents.
While the floorplan was a staple of Golden Age crime fiction, particularly in cases of country house and locked-room mysteries, it has rather fallen out of favour as a tool for unravelling a literary puzzle in recent years. Uketsu does a great service to the genre in bringing it back and pushing it to the extreme of its storytelling potential, elucidating how the visual aspects of a crime scene can be subtly but powerfully evoked to enhance the narrative dimensions.
Still, despite the clear homage to the golden age of murder, Strange Houses doesn’t exactly play fair when it comes to the puzzle mystery. While the writer and Kurihara build their case logically for the most part, their initial suspicion as to the purpose of the house is based on a quite outrageous – if not totally bonkers – leap of logic that captures their interest and points them in the necessary direction.
As such, a considerable suspension of disbelief is required at the outset, but the subsequent investigation is so intriguing – and the steady reveal of potential suspects, motivations and clues so compelling – that it is easy to look beyond this issue and go with the flow of the story. This is helped by Strange Houses being a short novel that is heavy on dialogue and graphics and light on exposition, which lends it a rapid pace.
The sense of dread that permeates the story is equally as engaging as the details of the plot, with Uketsu simultaneously building a horrifying premise and establishing a prosaic setting. Against this unsettling backdrop, the clues and the actions of the characters both inform and wrongfoot the would-be detective, rendering Strange Houses a creepy and complex puzzle mystery that almost defies explanation.

Another great mystery from Uketsu! The plot is definitely far-fetched, but I didn’t mind - it doesn’t take itself too seriously, even with the darker elements, and Uketsu has a way of pulling you into the story and making the surreal feel completely believable.
Unlike Strange Pictures, which follows different characters’ stories, Strange Houses focuses on a single narrative but still weaves in intergenerational layers. It took me a bit longer to get into, but once I did, I was invested in finding out how it all came together. The ending is quite ambiguous, and I’m not entirely sure what to make of it, but I like that it kept me thinking after I finished reading.
Overall, an entertaining read, and I’m excited to see what Uketsu does next!
Side note: The Kindle ARC formatting is pretty bad and did take away from the experience a bit as it has affected the translation on the images as well as the script-style dialogue. Not the author’s fault at all, so I won’t dock points, but hopefully it will be tidied up for the final release.

3 1/2⭐️
This novel was absolutely fascinating, the way the author uses floor plans to seamlessly tell a story is a work of art in itself. I adored that in this novel you could play detective, all the hints and clues were provided for you to work out, even with the clues being left out for you to work out, I still didn’t see some of the plot twists coming; this book combines crime fiction with horror, with a healthy amount of Japanese culture, I won’t say more as I do feel that everyone should read this novel for themselves without knowing too much about it!
Overall this was a very different kind of read for me, after reading this ARC I have instantly bought the authors other novel ‘strange pictures’ as despite some of the characters having some far fetched explanations for things, this book had a charm that had me hooked from the moment I started, so much that I read this book in one sitting, which is unheard of for me.
#StrangeHouses #NetGalley

Strange House by Uketsu opens with a compelling setup: a writer interested in the occult is invited by a friend—an architect named Kurihara—to investigate a strangely constructed home in Tokyo. The house is full of oddities: dead space, unnerving layouts, and a past that refuses to stay buried. As they explore its design and history, they encounter unsettling documents, cryptic floorplans, and a widow whose story deepens the mystery.
The novel’s strength lies in its atmosphere. The writing is eerie and disorienting by design, and the shifting timelines and layered perspectives create a sense of constant unease. It kept my interest throughout, especially during my long commutes—there’s something deeply engaging about the way the story slowly reveals itself, piece by piece.
Where it fell short for me was in the resolution. While the buildup is intriguing and the premise original, some of the final turns didn’t deliver the impact I was hoping for. The novel leans heavily into ambiguity, and though that will appeal to some readers, I found certain plot threads less satisfying than expected.
Still, Strange House is a distinctive and original work of psychological horror. Readers who appreciate open-ended narratives, experimental structure, and stories that blur the line between memory and reality will likely find it rewarding.
Many thanks to Pushkin Press and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"Can you uncover the dark secret of these strange houses? When you do, an unforgettable truth will be revealed."
This is one of the strangest books I've ever read. It's fairly short, I read it in a couple of hours, & it's based around the floorplans of three houses. It's difficult to give a synopsis without giving anything away - I will say that it is dark in tone. It also read very much like true crime rather than a fictional mystery, in fact, I had to doublecheck the genre.
I did think it was farfetched though to have the characters of the author & the architect immediately jump to what seemed an outlandish explanation for the floorplans, only for them to turn out to be right. It was all rather convenient but I suppose it kept things brief. Overall, it wasn't quite what I was expecting but I have another book from the same author in my TBR pile & this has piqued my interest enough that I will be reading it sooner rather than later. 3.25 stars (rounded down)
My thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Pushkin Press/Pushkin Vertigo, for the opportunity to read an ARC.