Róisín Lanigan's debut novel "I Want to Go Home But I'm Already There" presents an introspective exploration of alienation, identity, and mental health through protagonist Áine's unravelling reality after moving into a bleak flat with her boyfriend, Elliott. Although the novel offers insightful commentary on mental illness, accompanying guilt, and the journey toward authentic selfhood, the novel struggles to create a deep emotional connection with readers.

The seemingly haunted flat serves as both setting and metaphor, mirroring Áine's deteriorating mental state and growing disconnection. This spatial symbolism effectively represents her self-alienation and illness, creating the novel's most compelling element. The damp walls, persistent cold, and strange noises become extensions of Áine's psychological fragmentation, blurring the line between external reality and internal perception.

However, Áine remains somewhat inaccessible—her descent into isolation and paranoia is portrayed with quiet intensity and her internal landscape often feels remote. We witness her withdrawal from friends, her increasing physical symptoms, and her growing disconnect from Elliott, yet the emotional core driving these changes remains frustratingly out of reach.

The narrative may reflect Áine's own disconnection from herself, but it creates a barrier to reader empathy. Moreover, the supporting characters function primarily as narrative devices rather than fully realised individuals, remaining one-dimensional despite their significance to Áine's story. Several narrative threads remain unresolved, creating a sense of incompleteness, and the emotional distance maintained throughout may leave readers emotionally unfulfilled.

The novel thoughtfully examines how physical spaces shape our sense of belonging and identity, suggesting that "home" is as much a psychological construct as a physical location. The narrative also offers a nuanced portrayal of how mental health struggles can distort one's perception of reality without resorting to simplistic explanations or solutions.

While Lanigan's thematic ambitions show promise, the novel's execution doesn't consistently deliver on its potential. "I Want to Go Home But I'm Already There" ultimately presents a thoughtful meditation on belonging and identity but falls short of the emotional resonance it might have achieved.

Lanigan's haunting novel 'I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There' is an aching portrayal of what it means to be uncomfortable in your own life. Anxiety radiates from this book in a way that makes it difficult to put down, and I found myself rooting for the MC to touch some grass and get out of there.

Enjoyable gothic story about renting and relationships in London. It's also very funny and pin point accurate in descriptions of living our lives in the constant bubble of instagram. It raises questions about the precarious nature of renting substandard properties and the huge strain that puts on mental health. There are wonderful descriptions of mould! And the novel reaches its inevitable conclusion on a note of calm acceptance.

Thanks for this ARC!
I DNF'ed after chapter 2. Not because I wasn't enjoying myself or because I thought it was a bad book, in fact, it was the opposite. I thought it was really well written but the descriptions of the damp house did not vibe with me haha, I'm a baby and cannot read scary books.
So I will be giving this book 5 stars for making me feel so much after two chapters and I kind of wish I could have read more because I want to know what happens to Áine and Laura and Elliott and especially how Áine's reaction to the house will affect these relationships. And who is the scary man upstairs??
I might give this another try when I'm somewhere on a beach on a hot day, far away from my own place haha.

3.75 stars

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC!

Exit Management by Naomi Booth meets Paradise Rot or any other drippy, mouldy, nasty little horror book you’ve read recently. I really liked this one a lot, it kept me hooked, played on my own anxieties, and felt like a modern horror novel for the renters’ age. I liked the way Lanigan played with very mundane, real fears like dodgy neighbours, uncaring landlords, mould, and merged them with a tinge of the supernatural. It results in a novel that’s unpleasant to read at times, which is the intended goal.

The ending let the book down as a whole for me. There’s an awful scene with a dog that made me too sad - please leave your dogs out of the horror 😭 The tension had been ramped up all the way through, like a balloon overfilled with air, and I was expecting something more akin to a pop, but instead it was like all the air just slowly leaked out.

I’d say the rest of the book is still strong enough that I’d recommend it, but yes, I did want something else from the ending.

I had high hopes for this book as so many people had been raving about how good it was, but for me, it just fell a bit short on what I had been expecting. The writing was good and the unravelling of Ainé's experience was done really well, it was both uncomfortable and unnerving.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC.

The haunted house as a metaphor for grief, or abuse, or mental illness, or anything else, is really nothing new, and for people who read and watch a lot of horror I think it’s become a little stale at this point. It would be easy to lump I Want To Go Home But I’m Already There into that category and to dismiss it as a result of that, but I think there’s a lot more going on here and that would be a real shame.

The first thing to say about I Want To Go Home… is that it’s brilliantly written. The characters feel like people I know and have known, and it’s very keenly observed. It taps into a very specific generational issue around housing insecurity that I’d guess anybody younger than 40 in the UK has suffered through, and a lot of the time I felt like I was reading a biography of my own life. It’s often laugh-out-loud funny, and that does a great job of making the creeping dread that slowly builds over the course of the year in which we follow our protagonists feel even more impactful.

I suspect that a common criticism of this book will come from people who went in expecting a horror novel and got a piece of literary fiction. I’d argue that it is still a horror novel, but the supernatural element - the haunting - takes a back seat to the much more mundane horrors of being a Millennial (or maybe even Gen Z at this point) trying to live in London and maintain any sort of quality of life.

Personally, I liked the fact that the haunting is subtle and largely ambiguous. While you could certainly read this as a metaphor for mental health issues, the doubt that this ambiguity creates - is the haunting real? is it all in Áine’s head? - brought a depth to the novel that I really appreciated. At one point in the novel Áine reflects on the time that she took her boyfriend to Ireland to meet her parents, and how he reacted with scorn and amusement to the stories of the banshees that have plagued her family. She tells him that he isn’t a believer. She is. The ambiguity of the haunting is asking us to decide whether we’re non-believers like Elliot, or whether we see ourselves in Áine.

I really enjoyed this and would absolutely recommend picking it up.

Áine should be feeling happy with her life. She’s just moved in with Elliot. Their new flat is in an affluent neighbourhood, surrounded by bakeries, yoga studios and organic vegetable shops. They even have a garden. And yet, from the moment they move in, Áine can't shake the sense that there's something not quite right about the place...

It's not just the humourless estate agent and nameless it's the chill that seeps through the draughty windows; the damp spreading from the cellar door; the way the organic fruit and veg never lasts as long as it should. And most of all, it's the upstairs neighbours, whose very existence makes peaceful coexistence very difficult indeed.

The longer Áine spends inside the flat - pretending to work from home; dissecting messages from the friends whose lives seem to have moved on without her - the less it feels like home. And as Áine fixates on the cracks in the ceiling, it becomes harder to ignore the cracks in her relationship with Elliott...

Brilliantly observed and darkly funny, I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There is a ghost story set in the rental crisis. A wonderfully clear-eyed portrait of loneliness, loss and belonging, it examines what it means to feel at home.

I loved it so much I purchased a copy when it came out! I enjoy Irish writers and how you can almost touch the words they use to create the world they build.

This novel fits very well with a new very hyper specific subtrope of the unsound women trope and that is 'young woman at the absolute end of her tether begins to self-destruct her otherwise stable life'. The experience of reading this book was the same as when you get to scratch an itch that was plaguing you but there was no way you can take your shoes off in public so you had to live with it for under your clothes for while before sweet itchy privacy. Which is a long way of saying, it was rewarding! The title alone is so evocative, so image 200+ pages of that. But I'd say if you can't relate to the title, then this might be a struggle. This book was very similar to 'Homesick' by Silvia Saunders, another 2025 release, and now in my headcannon, the two leads have met, have a houseshare and are loving it.

I would absolutely live in a haunted flat if it was in a nice part of London.
Not entirely certain this should be marketed as horror, it’s more ‘unsettling modern fiction’, but an excellent read.

3.75 stars

Áine is in a period of new beginnings in her life. She is moving in with her boyfriend, Elliot, for the first time and experiencing a new way of living without her long-term roommate and friend. They find a flat in an upmarket neighbourhood, and despite Áine's spoken and unspoken reservations, they're moving in before they know it. Áine is immediately unsettled, by the unwelcoming upstairs neighbours, the unhelpful real estate agent, the ominous cellar, the chill that seeps into every corner, and the omnipresent mold spreading without cause. Áine sprials further into melancholy with every day spent in the flat, but with a partner who brushes off her concerns and nowhere else to go, she resigns herself to wait out the lease.

As the title suggests, this book explores the concept of what makes a home and how we grow around our environment. I really related to Áine and I loved she adapted and changed over the course of the book, gradually at first and then in a crescendo. She has great dry wit and I saw myself in a lot of her attitudes towards her partner, domesticity, friendships and work. Through Áine, the author offers commentary on coming-of-age when things aren't going well and I will read that all day everyday. Elliot is a fantastic companion character to Áine because they contrast well against one another and he's the kind of man everyone has met and can probably join in Áine's disdain to some extent. Áine's relationships outside of her newfound domestic bliss are strained across the board, including her newly estranged bestie-turned-houseboat-renovator who has become wrapped up in her own relationship and left Áine behind. The author does a great job of putting multiple forces to work to keep Áine inside the house and thus worsen her situation.

I have no idea why but I did find this quite a slog to get through for the first 2/3 or so (the end I devoured) and I often found myself only reading 5-10 pages at a time. I think it could have hit its peak sooner because there was a lot of repetition in the first half and this involved the point just be remade over and over again with little new information being added. This is described as 'a ghost story set in the rental crisis' and I feel this may set unrealistic expectations. Early on there is a super creepy ghost story moment that gave me goosebumps and I couldn't wait for more, which I sadly didn't get. It has a wonderfully eerie atmosphere but I was waiting for something else to happen and it rarely did. I appreciate literary horror because it's not as on the nose as classic horror but I just think this book didn't live up to its potential. The tagline also sets you up for a good laugh (in my opinion) and if you pick it up for that reason alone you'll be let down. There's some great wit sprinkled throughout but the tagline almost sounds sitcom-y??

Overall I really enjoyed the writing and how erratic this book is. I would be very interested in reading more from this author.

I read the title for I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There and I immediately knew I was going to love it but I really wasn’t prepared for the anxiety ridden fever dream that resides within its pages. Set in the all too familiar housing crisis in London, the story follows twenty-something Áine & her boyfriend Elliot as they move into a garden flat in an idyllic bougie area for below market rent. Seems too good to be true? Well, buckle in, because these things always are!

As Áine’s story begins it does feel like they’ve found the elusive rough diamond and I felt myself imagining somewhere like Ranelagh village filled with those cute little restaurants, organic grocery shops and that amazing butcher shop (iykyk), but as with any seemingly perfect setting there will always be the odd horror lurking behind a closed door.

When Áine & Elliot begin to settle in it becomes quite apparent that their cute little garden apartment is anything but adorable. While a strange festering mold begins to rise from the ominous basement and take over the walls, a crawling, clawing anxiety takes root deep within Áine’s mind. As the sour putrid rot begins to engulf their dream home, we also slowly start to see Áine’s and Elliot's relationship crumble into decay.

There is a subtlety to Lanigan’s writing which left me constantly on edge and questioning reality, even long after I finished reading. She plays on the real visceral fears of the modern day renter, mixed with the eerie horror trope of the haunted house, creating a very ominous sense of unease.

There are a few slow burn moments and a moment with a dog which I did struggle to read, and did honestly question its necessity but overall IWTGHBIAT is an outstanding debut which kept me compelled from start to finish.

An enthralling and claustrophobic horror story which feels all too real that will firmly take root in your every little anxiety, perfect for fans of Camilla Grudova, Julia Armfield and Ainslie Hogarth.

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Áine and Elliott are moving in together for the first time after a series of house shares. They are delighted yet disconcerted when the flat they view is still available despite being listed for two whole weeks (unheard of). But it has a garden and is in a ‘boujie’ neighbourhood so any misgivings are swept under the carpet and they jump at it.

Áine is never able to shake a rising sense of unease. Tendrils of damp rise suffocatingly from the dark basement, there’s a strange man living upstairs and the place constantly feels cold and cloying. Elliott is a loving boyfriend and tries to set her mind at ease but Áine is spending whole days there alone now that she’s working from home more frequently.

I loved the way this book spoke so accurately about the realities of the rental market for young people in London. It was the nineties when I was there sofa surfing and flat sharing with workmates in grubby subdivided terraces where you never saw or heard from shady landlords. Not a lot sounds to have changed except for the ever more exorbitant costs and the increasing competition for even the most decrepit of holes.

I liked the creepiness of this novel too and the way we start to become aware that Áine has also struggled with mental ill health. I felt this was well handled and the way the author plays with the question of whether the flat is really haunted or whether Áine’s spiralling thoughts and fever dreams are the root cause of the issues in the flat.

Despite Elliott’s amiable, loving nature, Áine starts to sabotage their relationship. The book also describes well the existential crisis experienced by many in their mid-twenties to thirties - that everyone else is getting their shit together and you’re still flailing around and messing up.

The book did lose pace in the middle for me, and I could have coped with even more creepiness, but overall, I did really enjoy this novel. Even with the hints at the supernatural, it felt very real to me and the characters were well fleshed out. Recommended read.

With huge thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Fig Tree for granting me the digital ARC for this review.

Not a traditional horror, but is there anything more horrifying than the UK housing market?

It took me a while to get invested - the pacing was slow at first, and the writing felt a little dense, but I eventually found myself intrigued by Áine’s story, even relating to parts of it. The book perfectly captures that unsettling period in your early 20s when you’ve finished uni and are navigating the nightmare that is renting, trying to build a home and a relationship in a place that will never really be yours, the overwhelm of your first proper job, questioning if the people you met at uni are really your friends, and the creeping sense that nothing is quite fitting together the way it should.

What this book does really well is create an atmosphere of quiet dread - there is always something ominous lurking beneath the surface. I do wish the ending had been more satisfying; after such a slow build, it felt a bit rushed. But overall, it’s a solid and interesting read.

Editor and journalist Róisín Lanigan’s debut novel is a compelling take on the plight of generation rent – the 18- to 40-year-olds essentially priced out of the housing market. Lanigan draws extensively on tropes from ghost stories and haunted house narratives to craft this unsettling, fluid tale. The focus is on Áine, now in her early thirties she left home in Belfast for university, eventually ending up living and working in London. But, her easy-going existence with best friend-turned-flatmate Laura is upended when Laura suddenly announces she’s leaving to buy somewhere with her boyfriend. Áine begins to understand that everyone around her is following a set of unspoken rules: getting engaged, getting married and/or starting to produce children. So Áine reluctantly attempts to shape her own life in line with this sudden shift. She moves into a rented, garden flat with boyfriend Elliott. The area – based on East Dulwich but could just as well be Crouch End or Stoke Newington – has all the markers of ‘boujie’ London society, an upmarket bakery not unlike Gail’s has just opened, there’s a 24-hour organic supermarket, and Áine’s surrounded by women sporting eco-conscious Vejas and Lululemon, often accessorised with an expensive pushchair. All of which makes the relatively low rent for the flat seem slightly suspicious.

Áine finds this new space claustrophobic and increasingly unnerving, a strange mould covers the walls, resisting all attempts to remove it or check its growth. The upstairs’ neighbours are distant and oddly menacing. And Áine gradually realises the flat’s haunted, riddled with traces of the people who came before. The dust from their skin cells clogs her nose and mouth, making it hard to breath, this and the mould start to make her ill. Áine tries to eat healthily but food mysteriously rots as soon as it’s purchased, flies gathering around the kitchen table. Áine can’t shake the sense that she’s under constant surveillance and her sleep’s disrupted by hallucinatory nightmares. Yet Elliott remains oblivious, blaming Áine’s problems on her anxiety, hinting she may even be delusionary and unhinged. The problems in their relationship are exacerbated by their clashing cultural heritage, Elliott is resolutely rational, even though lapsed Áine grew up Catholic in a family steeped in spiritual beliefs from spectres to banshees.

Lanigan painstakingly documents Áine’s deteriorating physical and mental state, her increasing isolation and alienation. Without being overly derivative, Lanigan’s deft storytelling’s directly inspired by work like The Yellow Wallpaper and Sarah Water’s The Little Stranger, like these she creates a sense of a world pervaded by uncanny, malevolent forces. And, like her influences, Lanigan exploits the eerie to tease out issues around gender, capitalism and class – the concrete, malevolent forces impinging on Áine’s sense of self. The latter underlined by the glaring differences between working-class Áine’s and monied Laura’s experiences of London, all of which forms a timely commentary on the significance of inheritance, the ways in which it’s creating fresh, gaping economic divides. Something which also pushes mismatched couples like Áine and Elliott together, the only way it’s possible to afford to somewhere even half-way decent in cities like London. Circumstances which also make it near impossible to leave, so that Áine has to decide which is more threatening to her well-being: the supernatural or the likely loss of rental deposit, and grappling with rapidly rising rents, dilapidated housing stock, and indifferent landlords. Although, like the governess in The Turn of the Screw, it’s never clear if Áine’s dealing with the demonic or manifesting her own conflicts and trauma, she’s not an entirely reliable narrator. All of which adds to the novel’s considerable force. Admittedly there were some slow burn stretches but overall I thought this was accomplished, moving and subtly disturbing.

I had such high expectations for this one, but it ultimately just wasn't for me. I think stories that conceptually lean towards the speculative, but in practice are deeply rooted in the realm of litfic are such a specific niche, and everyone's likely to approach them from a different place, expect different things from them, and take away very different things from aforementioned books.

Thematically, I appreciate Lanigan's exploration of the haunted-ness of a housing crisis, and the tension of feeling the oppressive natural of this house that cannot be a home, yet being unable to leave it much as you might wish to. In terms of characters, I also found Áine and her circle to feel true to life, and I particularly found her almost feverish descent into madness to be compelling on paper, but I never got fully invested in her narrative, which oddly felt both static and chaotic to me. I can see the argument for this dichotomy serving to drive in the nonsensical nature of this post-modern, late stage capitalist horror tableau, but it didn't help make me wish to pick up the book once I'd put it down, or keep reading.

I think if you like stories in the vein of THE PALLBEARER'S CLUB or WOMAN, EATING, you'll want to give this a go. Overall, I can see this working for a lot of readers, it just felt a little bit middling for me.

Áine and her boyfriend Elliott have managed to find a flat they can afford in a nice London neighbourhood, so everything should be going well, right? However, from the moment they move in, Áine can't help but feel that something is not quite right. From the strange upstairs neighbour to the mysterious damp basement, even to her own relationship, she is gripped by the feeling that something is wrong. But perhaps that's just renting in London?

I was really excited to read this. As someone who has had their fair share of London renting stress (I had to move twice last year), I know how pervasive housing stress can be. I've read a couple of nonfiction books (highly recommend Vicky Spratt's Tenants) but was excited to see it tackled through fiction.

I really liked Lanigan's writing style, it was my favourite aspect of the book. While this is her debut novel, she is a journalist by trade and you can tell she is a writer.

I feel slightly conflicted as while I enjoyed the writing style and the topic, I think the book was too long. You quite quickly grasp the general direction of the story and at times, it felt repetitive. I quite like long books but I'm not sure why I really felt this book was too long while reading. If it was around the 200-page mark, I think I would have found it far stronger as a story. While adopting a dog called Puca while thinking your house is haunted made me chuckle (though perhaps that's a reference for Irish audiences), I think that whole storyline could have been cut, for example. But then again, I think the length was probably deliberate to show how long Áine was stuck suffering in this slowly worsening situation.

After complaining about a book's length, I haven't exactly been brief in my review. Overall, I think if you are interested in books about housing, mental health, and 'sad girl' books, I would recommend. I will definitely pick up Lanigan's next book as I really liked her writing style.

This is a powerful book that has the potential to polarise readers into lovers or not fans of the novel. I think during my reading of I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There I was both a lover and also not a fan!

In my mind, there are many discussions to be had on what the author's intention is - this novel is set in London but it could be in any number of cities but highlights the helplessness you can find yourself in when you rent a property that has flaws that you didn't see before moving in. Áine's state of mind during the year in her house changes dramatically as does her relationships with Elliott and Laura - can that all be attributed to this rental property and how much it gets her down?

I would love to hear from the author - but isn't the ambiguity what makes a novel interesting?

Well done, Róisín Langan, this is a novel that will likely divide opinion but keep people talking!

I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There by Roisin Lanigan
⭐⭐⭐ 3 stars
Publication date: 20th March 2025

Thank you to Viking Books and Netgalley for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Áine should be feeling happy with her life. She’s just moved in with Elliot. Their new flat is in an affluent neighbourhood, surrounded by bakeries, yoga studios and organic vegetable shops. They even have a garden. And yet, from the moment they move in, Áine can't shake the sense that there's something not quite right about the place…

How interesting that this was tagged as Horror on Netgalley; it isn't. It is however about the mundane horrors of the current rental market, about the horrors of having to deal with elusive landlords, about the horrors of existential dread… I would categorise this as Sad Girl Fic, for sure, but not Horror. Though it is not without its tense moments as Áine unravels, with nothing or no-one to anchor her, with her friendships and relationship fraught and tense.
This was very readable, with great characterisation, but it was exhausting being in Àine’s mind and overall, ended up feeling a bit repetitive for me.