Strange Houses by Uketsu
It's about a writer and his friend look into weird houses with strange floor plans. As they explore, they uncover dark family secrets and creepy things hidden inside the houses.

What I liked about the book is that I get to look at floor plans and solve the mystery. I liked that it's spooky, with hidden rooms and creepy houses.
It also has a deep story about family and the past, and a fun mix of pictures and story.

A fun, creepy book with cool puzzles and a sad, interesting story.

A fun and exciting murder mystery that once you start you just get addicted to solving and can’t stop reading

As someone who happily spends hours scrolling through real estate listings and browsing floor plans like puzzles, Strange Houses felt like a personal entrapment for my imagination. Uketsu's new novel scratches my brain in ways I didn't know it needed it.
I really enjoyed the straight forward prose, it was easy to follow and kept the story moving without getting caught up in anything and lagging.
I look forward to picking it up in a physical edition to make flipping between the story and the floorplans a little easier and really taking the time to appreciate it all over again.

For fans of haunted but not quite haunted houses, clever architectural puzzles, or people like me who have ever just looked at a floor plan and thought "what is wrong with this, and why??" - an absolute must read.

Thank you Pushkin Press and Uketsu for this enthralling ARC read <3

In Strange Houses, Uketsu builds on the eerie, atmospheric world introduced in Strange Pictures, crafting a novel that is as intellectually stimulating as it is unsettling. This isn’t a typical haunted house story—it’s a meticulous architectural mystery wrapped in psychological horror and familial legacy.

The novel follows a writer who becomes fixated on the oddly designed house of a friend in Tokyo. At first glance, the building seems charming, but closer inspection of its blueprints reveals anomalies—dead-end corridors, inexplicable empty spaces, and concealed rooms. Intrigued, the narrator partners with an architect named Kurihara, and together they attempt to unravel the purpose behind the strange design. What they uncover is a multi-generational mystery involving disappearances, inheritance, and a chilling tradition that’s been hidden behind plaster and floorboards.

One of the novel’s most unique features is how it uses actual floorplans as a central part of the narrative. These aren’t just set dressing—they’re puzzles the reader is invited to solve alongside the protagonist. Every room, hallway, and unused corner carries meaning. As the story deepens, the architecture itself becomes a character—silent, oppressive, and full of secrets. The way Uketsu turns blueprints into instruments of suspense is deeply effective, and the tension simmers until it boils over in the final chapters.

The emotional core of the novel is rooted in family history and trauma. As the story shifts between present-day investigation and historical revelations, we learn about the Katabuchi family, their twisted legacy, and how physical space was weaponized to hide, control, and eventually erase. These themes of generational obligation, secrecy, and psychological confinement give the book a weight that lingers long after it ends.

That said, some readers may find the pacing uneven. The slow buildup—heavy on exposition and historical flashbacks—requires patience. Conversations can feel slightly formal or stiff at times, perhaps due to the translation or the inherently introspective nature of the protagonist. There’s also an ambiguity to the ending that some may find unsatisfying, especially if they prefer mysteries to be fully solved.

Still, Strange Houses is a compelling and original entry into contemporary horror fiction. It asks its readers to engage not just emotionally, but intellectually—to trace, decode, and question every space and silence on the page. Fans of House of Leaves, Shirley Jackson, or layered, literary horror will find much to appreciate here.

Uketsu has proven once again that horror doesn't need jump scares or gore to be profoundly disturbing. Sometimes, all it takes is a house with one too many doors that don’t lead anywhere—and a past that refuses to stay hidden.

Uketsu - Strange Houses // thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

Strange Houses is Uketsu’s sophomore novel and I liked it just as much as his debut. Admittedly this format didn’t go well on kindle, but worked much better in the NetGalley reader.

I’m very fond of mixed media in books and here the entire novel was based on house and floor prints as well as architectural secrets.

The story is written in interview format with some letters interspersed. We explore the mystery of a weird house with a secret room without windows and doors which according to one of the characters is used to kill and dispose of bodies. From there is gets wilder and wilder.

The book is a fairly quick and easy read. It’s only 208 pages and you can’t put it down because the mystery is so compelling. The story was unhinged and you have to suspend your beliefs but I found it interesting and fun! The mystery is a bit convoluted and confusing, but enjoyable.

While it’s marketed as horror I didn’t find it particularly scary or creepy. I’d rather call it a good murder mystery. The ending was my favorite because it gets really meta!

I devoured Strange Pictures, jumped straight into Strange Houses and now I’m just wondering how long I have to wait for Strange Buildings?

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Brilliant! I loved the Strange Pictures novel and this really has lived up to my expectations! A whirlwind ride which had me hooked from start to finish! Just love this authors work! Can’t wait for more!

This book is part mystery, part psychological horror, and all atmosphere. I found myself feeling a sense of dread as the weird floor plan spirals into a chilling investigation of architectural anomalies.

I absolutely adored Strange Pictures and read it on one sitting when it came out. So when I saw that this was up for request I couldn’t help myself. I really enjoyed this one. Not quite as much as the first, I feel like I found this one a little hard to follow. However I am not sure of it was due to the format of the ebook. The house floor plans were really confusing and not set out so you could visualise them which I think had an impact on my experience. I did like the suspense and I have this on preorder so that I can give it a go again as I think my experience will improve.

I love Uketsu’s way of storytelling, and I mostly enjoyed this. I think this could’ve been 5 stars though if it was a bit more fleshed out. A lot relies on assumptions, and maybe that’s the point if you take Kurihara’s afterword at face value.

Overall another really good creepy page-turner.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this arc.

I really love these little mystery books from Uketsu, I think they're perfectly paced, a great length, not too long and I love the image aspects of the stories. I loved that it was creepy and tense, I think it was brilliant and it makes me want to read the manga!

Mixed feelings about this book. I really enjoyed this at the start with all the talk about mysterious floor plans and I was excited about where it was going to go. But so many of the assumptions made about the house and people who lived there, just from a floor plan, were SO outlandish that the whole thing leaned more silly than actual ‘horror’. On the whole it was a nice, quick read and I loved the what it did with the mixed media elements but think it rushed into the deductions/assumptions made that meant it lacked any real tension.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pushkin Press for the ARC.

Uketsu is back, and he is determined to sway our thinking with this infectious obsession with *strange* things again! This time, the focus is on weird houses.

Uketsu was contacted by one of his acquaintances to get his opinion on what seemed to be a strange layout of a house. At first glance, the layout did not seem to be out of the ordinary. But once you start questioning the placement of certain features of the house, you’d see why his friend was concerned.

A string of incidences kept Uketsu’s interest in the house and he sought professional help from his friend, who worked as a draughtsman. Once they started questioning why, more bizarre things unfolded..

This book was fast-paced and its mystery kept me going till the end that I finished this within hours. I loved how the conversations allowed us readers a peek into the characters’ deduction. Although personally to me, the first book Strange Pictures had more interesting points, this one was better structured, and less repetitive, which made for easier reading. The story reminded me of another famous Japanese murder mystery that I shall not name, else I’d give away the resolution and the mystery!
Highly recommended for mystery lovers!

Special thanks to Pushkin Vertigo and Netgalley for this advanced copy!

Das war im wahrsten Sinne "strange" :-)
Der Autor erfährt von einem Haus, welches ein Freund kaufen möchte und das einen sehr seltsamen Grundschnitt hat. Nachdem er sich den Plan des Hauses angeschaut hat und auch noch einen Kollegen zu Rate zieht, taucht er immer mehr in die Geschichte des Hauses und der Familie, die dort vorher gelebt hat ein.

Mehr möchte ich zum Inhalt gar nicht sagen, da man sonst bei knapp 200 Seiten zu viel vorweg nimmt.

Die Geschichte wird sehr schnell sehr absurd, aber ich fand es trotzdem oder gerade deswegen so unterhaltsam.

Einzig mit den Namen und dem sehr sehr sehr umfangreichen und etwas komplizierten Stammbaum der Familie, hatte ich Schwierigkeiten und da
hat mich die Geschichte etwas verloren. Auch das Ende fand ich etwas zu übereilt und abrupt. Da ist für meinen Geschmack zu viel offen geblieben.

as always a masterpiece from Uketsu. this was so creepy and thrilling— me and my partner absolutely enjoyed reading it together and trying to solve the story!!!! but OH WOW THOSE PLOT TWISTS THO!!!

I loved Uketsu’s Strange Pictures when I read it earlier this year, so I was excited to see another of his books, Strange Houses, available on NetGalley. Like the first book, this one has been translated into English from the original Japanese by translator Jim Rion. Also like the first book, it contains a number of illustrations and diagrams that form an important part of the story.

The novel begins with our narrator, a freelance writer, being approached by his friend Yanaoka, who is searching for a suitable house in which he and his wife can raise their first child. Having viewed a house in a quiet residential area of Tokyo, Yanaoka and his wife have both fallen in love with it but are confused by the floor plan which shows a ‘dead space’ – in other words, a tiny hidden room with no doors. The narrator has another friend, Kurihara, who is an architect, so he decides to ask his opinion.

When Kurihara studies the floor plans, he picks up on several other unusual features of the house. These, together with the hidden room, lead him to form a bizarre but terrifyingly logical explanation for the design of the building. Yanaoka chooses not to buy it, but the narrator is intrigued and continues digging into the house’s history, uncovering connections with some other equally strange houses!

I really enjoyed the first half of this book, almost as much as Strange Pictures. It has a similarly interactive feel, where we are encouraged to look at the illustrations and identify the clues in them along with the narrator. Although Kurihara’s theory about the design of the Tokyo house seems ridiculously far-fetched, it does also make sense when you consider the layout of the rooms, the positions of doors and windows and the location of the house itself. I would never have imagined that floor plans could be creepy, but the ones in this book certainly are!

A difference between this book and Strange Pictures is that the other book is made up of several separate but interconnected stories, while this one consists of just one plot and one set of characters. The change in format means this book feels less varied and innovative, but it also allows us to follow the story of one family – the family who built the houses – through to the end. In the second half of the book, the focus moves away slightly from the plans and layouts and concentrates more on the history of the family. Things become quite convoluted, with complex relationships between the family members, rivalries between different branches and tales of curses and traditions going back several generations. I was reminded of Seishi Yokomizo’s mystery novels and I wonder if these, as well as Yukito Ayatsuji’s Bizarre House series, have influenced Uketsu.

In an interview, translator Jim Rion has talked about how Uketsu wants his writing to be easy to read and accessible to all readers and I think Rion has done a great job of keeping that same clarity in his translations. I’ve also discovered that a third book, Strange Buildings, is coming soon. Something to look forward to!

This creepy, interactive work uses floor plans and family trees to solve a grisly mystery.

I love translated Japanese fiction, and this did not disappoint. I loved how interactive it was. I loved the documentary style progression of the story with the interviews and sketches. I loved the both odd and dark joy of being able to figure out the inner workings of someone's life based on something so simple. And this did get pretty grim.

The only reason it didn't get the five stars is because of one gigantic leap a character made that caused me to suspend my disbelief way beyond what I would usually do comfortably without some really solid clues. And that one leap provided scaffolding for a lot of what came next, so I felt robbed of the joy of working that one out.

Nonetheless, I was gripped and wanted to finish it all. It's a quick read too, although I recommend not allowing yourself to race through the last third no matter how hungry you are to find out the ending... There are several names that come up and you need to keep on top of who they are to get the full satisfaction of the ending!

Great choice if you want an unusual horror and have a spare evening. Would definitely read more from this author.

My Selling Pitch:
A translated mystery that starts by allowing the reader to investigate floor plans but devolves into a far-fetched family drama monologue.

Pre-reading:
I LOVE horror that plays with form. I hope I get to play detective.

(obviously potential spoilers from here on)
Thick of it:
It’s giving child trafficking.
I like that I zeroed in on it immediately. (I've made some Sims prisons in my day.)

I went to child abuse, not child serial killer lmao.

Kurihara speculates so much it's like he's speaking from experience. Is he the architect designing these houses?

I just assumed the door only opens from the inside.

Everything’s just so far-fetched.

Post-reading:
I think the drawings are fun brain teasers, but once it got into the family curse and incest nonsense, it lost me.

It’s not a fair play mystery unless you give me all the relevant information before your narrative starts explaining it. I feel cheated out of the game now. I wanna play detective god dammit.

I think the translation hampers this a lot. It’s very stilted for an American reader. A lot of names are thrown at you all at once and the family tree is unnecessarily complicated. Characters make massive assumptive leaps with no real basis to them to move the story along, and miraculously, they're always correct.

It’s a novelty book that’ll kill an hour or two of your time, but I don't think you need to rush out and pick this up. I'd be interested in trying another book by this author though. I like the interactive concept.

Who should read this:
Translated work fans
Interactive mystery fans

Ideal reading time:
Anytime

Do I want to reread this:
No.

Would I buy this:
No.

Similar books:
* Everyone in My Family has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson-campy, fair play mystery, family drama
* House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski-horror, meta fiction, satire, unconventional formatting

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

(review goes live on social media tomorrow!)

The ending, WHAT, I NEED MORE!

🔸Had me hooked from the first 10 pages, I immediately needed to try and figure out what was going on. I looked at those floor plans at least 5 times and though, that looks normal...oops.
🔸Doesn't have the same twists and turns as Strange Pictures, but it builds up to the cliffhanger of all cliffhangers and I went down a rabbit hole of theorising after I'd finished reading it.
🔸Once again the writing is so good and so easy to read, I whizzed through this in one sitting. Absolutely spectacular work from Uteksu and translator Jim Rion.
🔸I felt so bad for the poor kids by the end and all of that for what? 😭

Thank you @netgalley & @pushkin_press for the digital arc copy 💕

I loved Uketsu’s Strange Pictures (SP), so of course I was looking forward to reading this one since I saw the promo video! And I was not disappointed!

While this book was similar to SP, it is less complicated and much shorter the SP. It’s the kind of read you can finish in one sitting and the kind I’d recommend people in a reading slump to pick up. The similarity to SP was in the way the story unraveled the mystery of the pictures (house plans in Strange Houses). But to me, the story itself was more similar to Seishi Yokomizo’s Kindaichi mysteries. Since I love both, this is a perfect marriage for me!

To be honest, I was considering to deduct a 0.5 rating point because I did not like some things that went on (won’t be mentioning them here because they would be spoilers) but the ending made me decide that I truly did enjoy this too much to minus my rating.

Another 5-star read from Uketsu for me!

Thank you netgalley and Pushkin Press for the review copy.

This read really is a wow wow wow.

It is eerie and atmospheric and one of those books that is completly satisfying for a reader.

it is tragic and at times emotional and it weaves it tale so soundly that I got completely absorbed and for me this was a one sit read.

I was amazed at how well the story unfolded and it was so different to what i was expecting.

It's brilliant