Horror comes to the suburbs in 'We Came to Welcome You'

"The Other Black Girl," "Midsommar," "Lovecraft Country" and Jordan Peele are all trotted out on the back cover of "We Came to Welcome You" as inducements to read Vincent Tirado's new book, subtitled "A Novel of Suburban Horror."

As enticing as those comparisons are (and perhaps erroneous — I mean, "Midsommar"?), I would temper your expectations.

The concept is compelling enough. An interracial gay couple — Sol is Dominican and Alice is Korean — buy a house in a gated community and their presence is immediately at odds with Maneless Grove's perfectly perfect pleasantness and uniformity.

The houses are of the "little boxes" variety, made famous in the Malvina Reynolds song used as the theme for the Showtime series "Weeds" (maybe that should have made the back of the book), where "they all look just the same": With pastel yellow paint and manicured lawns, "which barely stood taller than an inch," the community resembles its brochure, Sol thinks.

Sol notices, too, that the house she and her wife bought is different from the rest, but this doesn't necessarily give her pause, despite her enormous trust issues and anxieties, as well as a penchant to drink way too much Everclear (she doesn't mess around). She's mostly impressed by the home's size (bigger than their old apartment) and the fact that they actually own one, after a long and seemingly fruitless search that ended when a co-worker brought Maneless Grove to Alice's attention.

Once Sol realizes someone is watching her — on the very day they move in, no less — the door literally and figuratively opens to a series of microaggressions and a string of weird occurrences that all culminate in … well, that's the problem.

Tirado's world-building leaves much to be desired. At rock bottom is a lack of tension. Tirado spends an inordinate amount of time telling, telling, telling instead of showing. Sol remembers, Sol thinks, Sol talks to therapists, Sol dreams about the growing troubles in her relationship with Alice, her horrible childhood, her job that she may or may not be losing because of an accusation of plagiarism. (She's a scientist whose colleague is sabotaging her.) Tirado constantly backfills, drowning any curiosity.

When curiosity is allowed to grow, often nothing comes of it. Sol makes weekly visits to her father in an assisted-living facility. He's a terrible person with a lecherous reputation, but she still goes. She asks herself why; we ask ourselves why. Perhaps a plot revelation? He is a former landscaper, and trees play a role, but no. About 40 pages from the end she makes a realization: "The truth could not be clearer — visiting Papi was bad for Sol. She got nothing out of it, no apologies for poor treatment, no acknowledgment of her achievements."

And that's the end of that particular plot tendril.

The rest is wearyingly repetitive. Something odd happens. Sol questions what she's seeing, but she refuses to tell her wife, who doesn't seem to notice anything. Sol investigates. She finds out enough to make her wonder if she's onto something and then she's thwarted and back to questioning her reality.

By the end, I, too, felt much like Sol when "liquid emotion was threatening to pour out of her eyes." I kid you not.

We Came to Welcome You

By: Vincent Tirado.

Publisher: William Morrow, 384 pages, $28.