---

I think a lot about second chances when it comes to reading. Sometimes I’m not sure where I fall. I think you just need to go with your gut, maybe. Because there have definitely been books I’ve read by authors and known that I’d likely never be interested in trying another. 

Sometimes it takes two books to realize you just don’t jibe with the author’s style. 

But I think in the best case scenario (and this has now happened to me twice recently), you read a book by an author and you’re a little so-so on it. But you decide to give another one of their books a shot & are just blown away by it. 

This happened to me with Philip Fracassi. Without question, THE AUTUMN SPRINGS RETIREMENT HOME MASSACRE is one of my favorite reads of the year. But prior to that, I had read the author’s A CHILD ALONE WITH STRANGERS and was largely indifferent to the story. 

And now more recently, I’ve had a similar experience with Ania Ahlborn. Quite a few years back I read WITHIN THESE WALLS & while I reviewed it somewhat favorably, I remember feeling a real disconnect between me & the characters. 

But now there is THE UNSEEN, and goddamn, this book…oof. This book did the one thing that not very many books do: it fucking terrified me. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I scare easy. But usually just with movies. Sometimes I’ll have to pause a movie and take a break if it’s really getting to me. Or turn on the lights. But books usually don’t have that effect on me. The experience is just something very different. Sure, things will disturb me or upset me. But really, truly frighten me? 

It’s rare. 

But THE UNSEEN haunted me, made me really reluctant to get up in the middle of the night for any reason, and had me seeing the darkened hallways of my own home in an altogether sinister way. 

I do have a handful of mixed reactions to this book, but overall I thought this was great & it has me eyeing Ania Ahlborn’s backlist for some upcoming reads.

This is the story of the Hansen family, living in a somewhat remote area of Colorado. Isla Hansen & her husband Luke have five children (all seven of these people have POVs, which is a lot to keep track of!). But when we meet Isla, she is very slowly coming out of a depressive episode in which she attempted to take her own life. While she has five children, she has also experienced several miscarriages, one of them quite recently. And they have taken a tremendous toll on her. 

So when a strange, quiet, misshapen boy appears in her backyard (amidst a series of disappearances of local children), Isla feels like it’s a sign of some significance. A chance for her to heal. They get the boy, who will later be called Rowan, in the hands of the right authorities. But no one is looking for this kid. 

So the Hansen’s, at Isla’s insistence, decide to foster Rowan. It quickly becomes clear to everyone, except Isla, that something is deeply wrong here. Rowan’s silence is unnerving. His appearance is just…fundamentally off somehow. All angles. Just…wrong. 

Strange things begin to happen around the house. Dangerous things. With Rowan seemingly at the center of it all. 

As I mentioned, every member of the Hansen clan gets their own POV. And admittedly, there were times when it was a bit difficult keeping track of which kid was which, and how old each of them was. 

For sure it was Olive’s POV that I loved the most. Olive is the extremely responsible middle child of the family, and you can’t help but feel for her. Entirely too much pressure is put on her by her family, to look after her younger sisters, and keep her two older (and sometimes hotheaded) older siblings in check. I think Ahlborn’s depiction of Olive and all the stress & anxiety she carries is so powerful. Olive’s inner monologue as she tries keeping it all together fully exemplifies the gut-churning tension of the novel. 

And I don’t think any POV drives home the primal fear of this story better than Sophie’s, the youngest of the kids. She’s five-going-on-six, and again, Ahlborn just nails the unique feel of this POV so well. Sophie is TERRIFIED of Rowan, and you can just feel her fear coming off the page. It was Sophie’s chapters that had me looking both ways down the darkened hallway in my house at night.

There are aspects of this book that are difficult to discuss without spoiling it, so I won’t. I do imagine certain elements of this book will be somewhat divisive, as will the overall grim nature of the story. But this one really worked for me & I’m so glad I decided to give another of Ahlborn’s books a whirl! One of the creepiest books I’ve read all year, for sure!

Many thanks to Gallery Books for sending this one my way!!