We Hear Voices

By: Evie Green

Narrated by: Elizabeth Knowelden

An eerie horror debut about a little boy who recovers from a mysterious illness and inherits an imaginary friend who makes him do violent things....

Kids have imaginary friends. Rachel knows this. So when her young son, Billy, miraculously recovers from a horrible flu that has proven fatal for many, she thinks nothing of Delfy, his new invisible friend. After all, her family is healthy and that's all that matters.

But soon Delfy is telling Billy what to do, and the boy is acting up and lashing out in ways he never has before. As Delfy's influence is growing stranger and more sinister by the day, and rising tensions threaten to tear Rachel's family apart, she clings to one purpose: to protect her children at any cost - even from themselves.

We Hear Voices is a gripping near-future horror novel that tests the fragility of family and the terrifying gray area between fear and love.

©2020 Evie Green (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Prepare for major goosebumps.” —PopSugar

“The must-have for any horror fan.” —Marie Claire

“An electrifying science fiction thriller.” —Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

Needed more

I really enjoyed this but it felt like a lot of filler that didn’t drive the story, especially when hearing it from Rachel’s perspective. Overall really neat concept and great narration. I would have loved a little more of the sci-fi aspects and a little less day to day life.

Aliens with us

The story is bizarre but captivating. I spent many nights listening too late in the night. I started thinking it would end badly when Guy found Nina in Alfred's office. The ending was surprising. I would hope for a second book to continue where this book left off.

Great story

Very interesting premise & I’m glad I stuck it out! Loved the ending & how the story came to unfold. Nice little spooky SciFi novel.

Excellent debut!

Excellent novel, performed wonderfully...look forward to sequel! The authors inspiration would be proud of this effort.

Interesting story!

I was very intrigued when I first read the description for this book and once I started it I fell in love! I really liked the writing and realllly liked Elizabeth Knoweldens different voices and accents she used👍🏾

Entertaining enough, but dreadfully predictable

CW: FYI, this story leans heavily on spiders. Actual spiders, spider webs, spider imagery, etc. Lots of spiders.

CW: Pandemic. The J5X flu pandemic is initially a reoccurring theme, but quickly becomes backdrop. If you're hesitating to read because you don't want to relive COVID19 in a book, you'll get a break from it pretty fast.

Pros: The voice performance is phenomenal. It's very easy to listen to and the storyteller has an impressive range of accents (especially the robotic ones).

The dystopian setting clashing the sorrows poverty with garishness of wealth is well defined. Comparable with Hunger Games, in that way.

Creepy kids are satisfyingly creepy. The author does a great job with their... "psychological transitions." Some of their nonviolent actions would certainly disturb a parent reader. Overall, creepy kids are creepy, however, their predictability can become dulling. See more below.


Cons: The POVs are all practically the same person, just different struggles. Rachel, Nina and Graham are almost indistinguishable to me. They're all loving people with trauma in their past who all despise the same corporation within this dystopian world. They're each altruistic, generous, willful, resourceful and that, in my opinion, makes them boring. There's a grueling lack of diverse perspective when reading the POVs so it becomes tedious watching different encounters through the same emotional lense.

Phrases, words and descriptions repeatedly given frustrates me. I read "enormous" multiple times for the description of one house. Also, I don't need new (repeated) description of the same room that was previously described in the same chapter.

The predictability of the ending was disappointing. I saw the end coming after midpoint through the book. Very unfortunate given the premise is so brilliant. It was almost too neat, tidy. There was an attempt at a twist at the end, but it was lackluster, cheap and underwhelming.

Overall, 2.5/5.

Twisted for sure

I won this book on Goodreads for an honest review. The synopsis sounded really interesting to me so as soon as I got it I started to devour it. I could not stop till I finished it. And I have to say at the very end I was so excited to say omg no freaking way! The twist at the end is just perfection! I don't want to give away any secrets so there will be no spoilers but I will say creepy creepy if you don't like spiders don't go there and creepy. Definitely would recommend!

Great performance and overall good story

Story was fun to get lost in, just found some parts a little too predictable. Some of the characters felt too safe. But overall a good listen with a lot of fun little twist and turns.

Unique, Bizarre, and Nothing Like What I Expected

"We Hear Voices" tells the story of a family living in London in the near future, where a company has basically taken over, an insane pandemic has ravaged the world, and the children who survive the "flu" come back with dangerous imaginary friends. Rachel is the mother to three children, a daughter and son from her first husband and a daughter with her current boyfriend. When her son, Billy, gets sick, all of her focus and attention goes to keeping his room sterile and keeping him alive. On the night when she believes Billy will die, she says she will do anything, pray to any god if Billy's life is spared. Somehow, Billy lives and everybody is thrilled. At first, Billy's imaginary friend, who helped him come back from the brink of death, is seen as a blessing--his way of coping with almost dying. When things turn malignant, everyone in the family becomes worried and then terrified as it worsens.

There is a lot about space exploration that is important I didn't cover in the synopsis, but it's enough to just mention it for now. I adored this story and, even though we are in the midst of a pandemic right now (nowhere near as bad as the one in the book), I found it to be an insane story and tore through it! I could not stop with this one and I found all of the characters to be interesting and well-vetted. The only thing I would have changed is having the human bad guys be more pronounced. I think this book could've had two hundred more pages and told the same story.

I'm pretty interested to see if Ms. Green left this book open-ended or if it was set up for a sequel. That ending was plain brilliant and I could not believe what happened!

This is definitely a HORROR novel, but I would say it's pretty tame compared to a lot of other books. There's no gore and anything crazy that does happened is not described in detail, which I appreciated. I don't want to hear about someone being hurt, because some authors don't do it properly.

So, for "We Hear Voices," I'm going to give the story an A- on my grading scale; it was exciting and unlike anything I've ever read. I really liked the narrator and had no real issues with her at all, so Ms. Knowelden will receive a B+.

I can't wait to read more books by Evie Green, because I LOVED this one.

Flat

Great concept but it never really goes anywhere and is quite boring throughout. When considered as a "sci-horror" novel, it falls far short. It's mostly just a weak teenage love story.