This book is brilliant!

A mysterious flu (JX5) has caused a worldwide pandemic. Many people have passed away but there are people who recover as well. Among those who have recovered are children who find themselves on the brink of death but are able to make a miraculous recovery. Unfortunately when they recover they find they are no longer alone, as they now have a voice in their head with them, a voice that directs them to do terrible things....

We Hear Voices is chilling, well-written and a complete page-turner. In addition to frightening children, Green has also created a terrifyingly futuristic dystopian London, where the future state of the world is so bleak that space exploration and populating a new planet is mankind's only hope.

And the ending! I never saw that coming! I still have shivers now just thinking about it. This one I will definitely be recommending.

Billy caught the terrible flu that has caused a pandemic in futuristic London and the rest of the world. Then suddenly, one day, he recovers from it. Happy that her son has survived, Rachel doesn’t mind when he admits to a fantasy friend he calls Delfy. But soon, it appears Delfy is telling Billy to do things, harmless at first, but that grows into more sinister things. Like the many, many spiders he brings home from school in his lunchbox because Rachel said she wouldn’t mind dead spiders since she doesn’t care for them. Billy says he doesn’t like doing the things, and that is Delfy. Things got much worse from there.

This science-fiction horror novel reveals the tensions and fragility of family, worried that their landlord may sell their home out from under them. Rachel, her boyfriend, and her teenage daughter get help for Bill from a doctor who is also having problems. He begins to wonder if Billy and the other affected children in his hospital are really going mad or more terrifying that maybe something is really talking to the children.

Even though Evie Green penned We Hear Voices before the outbreak of COVID-19, the parallels are unmistakable and chilling.

It follows the life of Rachel Jackman – a mother of three living in London. She’s trying to make a home for her family in a city where big corporations control almost every aspect of life. She gave up a successful career as an attorney to take care of her children and would do anything in her power to make sure they were safe.

So when the deadly J5X virus that is ravaging the outside world sinks its wicked claws into her six-year-old son, there’s absolutely nothing she won’t do to save him.

“Billy was so pale that his face was a bluish green color. His hair was slicked back with sweat. His temperature soared while he shivered. She waited for the next breath. When it didn’t come, she pulled him tighter against her chest, trying to use her heart to jump-start his.
“Billy,” she whispered into his hair. “Billy, it’s Mum. Stay. Stay with me.” She looked up, her child in her arms. “Universe,” she muttered. “God,” she added, hedging her bets. “Allah. Whoever you are. Give me Billy back. Give me my Billy, and I promise I will do anything. I’ll sell my soul to anyone. Let me keep him.”
Nothing changed.
Millions of people had died. Billy would add one to the number of casualties. Children under ten were particularly at risk. Plus one for the children-under-ten statistics.
“Please,” she said. She kissed his head one more time. One more. One more. “I love you, Billy.” She pushed her face into his and rubbed her warm cheek on his cooling one and tried to imagine her life without him.
He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t breathing. He had…
“Let me keep him,” she said. “I don’t care what else. Let me have Billy.”
His body jerked in her arms, and he opened his eyes, just a fraction. She felt his lungs expand. She heard him exhale, felt the sour breath on her face. He inhaled again with a rattling noise, a vibration. He was breathing.”

Billy is miraculously spared and seems to recover fully with the help of his new imaginary friend. Everyone believes that “Delfy” is completely harmless – until the unthinkable happens.

Rachel must once again fight for Billy’s life and she never gives up - not even when the odds seem insurmountable. It’s this strength of spirit that inspired me to devour page after suspenseful page of this thought-provoking stunner…

We Hear Voices is a cool crossover between Sci-Fi and Mystery. And boy, does it work. The book takes place in London amid a pandemic similar to what we are experiencing in the U.S. In the offing is a planet where humans can start fresh, climate change, and pandemic free. On Earth, a wealthy developer is building a utopia-like community that offers strict regiments and a degree of certainty in a vastly uncertain world. Throw in a doctor trying to rehabilitate children who have been exposed and recovered from the virus, and strange side effects manifesting in children hearing and communicating with imaginary friends. Affairs go from bad to worse and the reader is left stunned and taken aback by this all to the relevant and prescient novel.

The synopsis had me utterly intrigued and I honestly can't say no to creepy kid-based horror books. There is a strong start to this read that has you quickly sucked in but as things unravel and more POVs start to come in the plot seems to overstretch itself into different directions. Mind you there is a reason for it, and it ties together epically in the end. Getting there was a slight sluggish battle for me though.

There was a decent number of extra scenarios occurring that took away from the overall plot for me. The inner monologues were repetitive for the mom and daughter even though I could understand the weight on their shoulders. I also debated the necessity of the doctor's POV outside of the institution he ran. I liked the inclusion of the pandemic and the tie in to looking to settle on another planet. Very time appropriate for our current era and it really makes you sit back and think.

Overall, I was hoping for more horror but even though that aspect was minimal I still found myself flipping Kindle pages pretty fast. The characters are easy to root for and the plot is unique from others I have read. I look forward to finding more by this author in this genre.

A creepy debut novel with an assortment of genres such as horror, sci-fi, and thriller. We Hear Voices takes place in an apocalyptic setting of Earth facing the brink of collapsing. Technology took over a fair bit with virtual reality and artificial intelligence being prominent in this dystopian society. The answer to saving humanity is to train a new generation to launch into space to create a new life. On top of the plan for colonizing space there is a pandemic going on that is similar to the flu, called JX5 that is untreatable and killing people all over the world. Sound familiar?

Billy recovers from the mysterious pandemic but with the recovery comes a new imaginary friend named Delfy. His mother Rachel thinks Delfy is a blessing and believes that this is how Billy will be able to deal with the traumatic experience he just went through. At first what seems like harmless pranks by a six year old boy, quickly takes a dark turn for the worst. Billy claims that Delfy is the cause of these bad actions and is controlling him to do things he doesn’t want to do. Is it really Billy or is something far more sinister at play here? Meanwhile, Billy’s older sister Nina is training to become one of the pioneers to start over in space. Nina does her own investigation in trying to figure out what is happening with Billy and finding other children who are in the same position as him.

At first, it seems like the multiple plot lines are arbitrary and may be part of two entirely different books. As you read on, these plot lines come together seamlessly and everything is actually far more interconnected than you realize. The characters are well developed and strong, as well as linked together in ways they may not even expect. The book also explores economic equality and the concept of corporations taking control of people’s families, jobs, homes, and more. We Hear Voices kept me up well into the night, quickly flipping the pages in anticipation of what Billy will do next. Everything comes together full circle with a surprising yet satisfactory ending. I definitely will be on the lookout for Evie Green’s future novels!

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Berkley Publishing for providing an ARC in exchange for review. The novel is set to release on December 1st, 2020. Originally posted at mysteryandsuspense.com

Thanks to @netgalley and @berkleypub for a galley copy of Evie Green’s We Hear Voices in exchange for my honest review.

This book is eerily similar to the current state of affairs, but also, thankfully, different. A pandemic hits that is killing a lot of people. Some kids start recovering, but at what price? Everything seems fine at first, except the kids wake up with an imaginary friend. Their behavior starts to take odd and sometimes deadly turns, which the kids blame on their friend.

Trigger warning for anyone who wants to read this book: SPIDERS (wish I had known that)

I feel that this book could have been really great, but missed the mark a bit for me. I enjoyed the plot of this book, with the creepy kids and pandemic, but I ultimately didn’t enjoy how it all came together. For one, this is a pretty long big with a fair amount of buildup, but the conclusion seemed rushed and a bit unjust for the book. Basically, poof and the ‘voices’ were gone. I get that this comes back around at the end as maybe a cliffhanger or a possible lead in to a second book, but it really made it unworth it for me as a reader. The juice was not worth the squeeze.

3/5 stars

Not quite the level of truly scary I look for in a horror novel, but an interesting concept that’s worth giving a shot!

Now this books makes me terrified to have kids. This book mirrored too much of the world as it is today, socioeconomically, and the children all had their own personalities that shined through, but the real kicker is the reasoning behind it all and that grips you in from the very beginning as your try to figure out what it is before you're told.

Back in my younger days, I ripped through sci-fi books with a passion - I think it was largely because technology, and all the possibilities it brings, has always been a fascination (probably because my formative years were spent using a crank telephone on a party line and getting news and music from a floor-model radio, so Sony's Walkman was enough to blow my mind). But my tastes these days lean more toward mysteries and thrillers, so when I was offered a pre-release copy of this book, I was a bit hesitant.

I needn't have been. It was, literally, hard to put down. And while I won't describe it as anywhere near terrifying or horrifying, it was totally engaging - and eerily familiar because it takes place amid a pandemic, climate change devastation and people hopeful of a new beginning on a different far-away planet. Elsewhere, a mega-developer has created a highly regimented, communal living/working utopia with Big Brother overtones and a doctor is secretly trying to rehabilitate children who recovered from illness and suddenly began hearing "voices" in their heads.

The pandemic has taken the lives of thousands of earthlings, and many, many more have contracted and recovered from the J5X virus. One of those is Rachel's young son Billy, and although her life is far from perfect, she's grateful that his life was spared. She's even willing to overlook his newfound imaginary friend Delfy, who appeared in Billy's head shortly after his recovery. But her acceptance doesn't last long; soon, Delfy seems to have taken control - telling Billy to say and do ever more frightening things. Billy realizes what's going on, but he claims he's powerless to stop Delfy or ignore her commands.

Meanwhile, Rachel has two daughters - Nina, who is in school and hoping to be on one of the rockets that will take people to start a new world - and Beth, who, amid all the chaos, is almost the perfect baby. Rachel and her partner Al have been barely able to make ends meet since she stopped working to care for Beth, but both are resolute in their refusal to sign up for the communal work/housing program. But then Delfy starts commanding Billy to do decidedly unchild-like things.

As readers will suspect early on, these seemingly separate things - the space program, the work-life community and the doctor's hideaway - may be intertwined, and finding out how and why is what keeps the book a mind-grabber. The ending, while not a total surprise, wraps things up yet leaves future possibilities up to the reader's imagination. All told, very enjoyable and thought-provoking.

This story had horror, suspense, sci-fi, murder, mental health issues, and a very strange ending. Not sure if I enjoyed this as the ending was too bizarre for me. I thought the strongest character was Nina, she persevered in fingering out what was happening while her life was in danger.

Nothing is worse than seeing your child sick. Especially a child near death in the midst of a pandemic. When Rachel’s son Billy miraculously recovers, she doesn’t question it, she rejoices.

Things take a strange turn when Billy develops an imaginary friend named Delfy. Rachel doesn’t think much of this until Billy starts doing dangerous things on Delfy’s orders.

Everything gets worse and Rachel’s family is in serious danger. Rachel will do anything to keep Billy and her family safe.

I wasn’t sure I’d be up to reading about a pandemic, considering what we are going through right now, but this was quite addicting. It’s a mix of science fiction and drama.

The characters are all well developed, even the imaginary one. The situations are a bit far-fetched, but not that much considering what we are going through now. Although, in this story, the people mostly effected are children.

We Hear Voices is very difficult for me to summarize. I don't want to give anything away. It is an edge-of-your seat reading. A tense story I couldn’t stop reading until I got to the end of the book. The author does a great job of keeping the reader wanting to know what would happen next. This would make a good movie. I can see a sequel in the air. I’d definitely read it.




Nothing is worse than seeing your child sick. Especially a child near death in the midst of a pandemic. When Rachel’s son Billy miraculously recovers, she doesn’t question it, she rejoices.

Things take a strange turn when Billy develops an imaginary friend named Delfy. Rachel doesn’t think much of this until Billy starts doing dangerous things on Delfy’s orders.

Everything gets worse and Rachel’s family is in serious danger. Rachel will do anything to keep Billy and her family safe.

I wasn’t sure I’d be up to reading about a pandemic, considering what we are going through right now, but this was quite addicting. It’s a mix of science fiction and drama.

The characters are all well developed, even the imaginary one. The situations are a bit far-fetched, but not that much considering what we are going through now. Although, in this story, the people mostly effected are children.

We Hear Voices is very difficult for me to summarize. I don't want to give anything away. It is an edge-of-your seat reading. A tense story I couldn’t stop reading until I got to the end of the book. The author does a great job of keeping the reader wanting to know what would happen next. This would make a good movie. I can see a sequel in the air. I’d definitely read it.




FTC Disclosure: I voluntarily reviewed a free Advance Reader Copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. All opinions expressed are my own.

This was a debut and I thought it was really solid! Creepy kids, a pandemic, conspiracies, I enjoyed it! I think it suffers a little bit from editing and throwing one too many things at the wall, but overall? Good job, Evie Green! I'm excited to see what she comes up with next.

Recovery from a deadly illness, dangerous imaginary friends, what could go wrong. The recovery from a deadly illness sure hits close to home lately, but creepy children will always scary. We Hear Voices is a taught paranormal thriller with dashes of horror thrown in, that touches on family relations, between mother and son, parents, and siblings and how a family is dealt with social crisis’s due to a worldwide pandemic. The setting is great, and the plot moves along nicely, no slow moments, wanting to know what is happening/ going on with Billy/Delfy kept me engaged and turning the pages. Overall, We Hear Voices is great way to escape to the anxiety induing world we are living in right now.

Buckle up for this...

The story starts with a mother holding her young son who is sick with a new, deadly, flu-like virus.

Sound familiar?

The boy recovers from the disease but it has caused many lasting, terrible changes for him.

...How about now?

Humans are worried about the condition of Earth and are planning to launch a new community on a nearby planet.

Have the parallels creeped you out yet?

It's thoroughly weird and scary and hard to believe it was written before COVID times. The issues at hand in this future dystopia do not seem too far fetched. Perhaps that's why I found this book unsettling.

For a chilly and dark fall evening, WE HEAR VOICES is an obvious choice.

Billy, Rachel's son who begins listening to his imaginary friend after recovering from the disease, does some incredibly strange and monstrous things. At times it was actually difficult to read.

Nina, Billy's sister, is focused on figuring everything out. She's devoted to her family and space exploration too.

If those two character descriptions seem like they would be in totally different books, we're on the same page.

Although WE HEAR VOICES was in fact creepy and checked all the scary novel boxes for me, it also left me thinking, "Did that really just happen?" and not in the good way. In the way like "That ending? For real?"

Evie Green set up such an amazing story with amazing characters but the dialogue throughout combined with the most out of place ending is pushing me to give the book three stars!

I enjoyed the book, I really did. But I cannot honestly give more than three stars because I feel the ending was rushed. In my opinion, Green had an opportunity here to do so much more than.. what she did.

OHHHHHHMYYYYGODDD I am STILL screaming over the ending of this one!!! We Hear Voices is the perfect blend of horror and sci-fi. It is a gripping tale that chronicles the aftermath of a pandemic, which for some may hit a little close to home right now, but is extremely entertaining and perfectly paced. The book is officially out next month December 1st, 2020 and I highly recommend you pre-order it now!!

We Hear Voices centers around a family who’s 6 year old son, Billy gets sick with a deadly virus. He is on the brink of death when miraculously he gets better, and seems to have developed a voice in his head who everyone chalks up to being just an imaginary friend he created to help him get through the trauma of dying. But when the voice starts making him do bad things they start to think maybe it isn’t just imaginary...or a friend. And then they find out Billy isn’t the only one hearing voices. The book revolves around the supernatural but also has a strong theme of family and the lengths we will go to in order to protect the ones we love. This is set in a futuristic time, but it’s realism can be chilling at times. The premise is compelling and terrifying. Once you stop screaming about how good the ending was (and your heart rate returns to normal) readers will be left wanting more!

Billy was on the brink of death, one of many to catch J5X, the virus ripping its way through the population. But just when all hope is lost, Billy recovers. And that's when Delfy appears. Or rather, doesn't.

Rachel believes Delfy is Billy's new imaginary friend adopted, she thinks, as a response to having been close to death. But what Rachel doesn't know is that Delfy isn't the only imaginary friend to have appeared after a recovery from the "flu." In fact, a local doctor has begun focusing exclusively on such cases. And he knows that it's only a matter of time before Delfy starts to have increased influence over Billy's behavior.

As Rachel struggles to support her family and deal with Billy's increasingly disturbing acts, his sister Nina, one of a handful of students accepted into an elite space program, has started her own investigation into Billy's new friend. Soon it becomes clear to all of them that there is nothing normal about Delfy at all.

We Hear Voices is a near future science fiction with some great horror undertones. It's also a weird one to read in this current climate, but don't let Covid deter you!

Rachel, her partner, and her three children live in a London that is similar to today's except for a few things. First, a mega corporation has bought up most of the city's land and housing and a good portion of the city is employed by said company. Second, the world is on the literal brink of sending people to live in space.

People refer to J5X as a flu, but it's nothing of the kind. There's no cure and it's killing swaths of people across the world. And yet some people do recover. Billy is one of the lucky few. Which is why Rachel doesn't see what Nina sees from the start, that Billy's new "friend" isn't an innocent response to isolation and loneliness.

We Hear Voices is not without flaws. I was somewhat underwhelmed by the ending, especially considering the momentum that drives the plot up to that point. But I did love Rachel and Nina and the world-building involved in this particular story. And even with Covid running as background noise throughout my reading, I found this to be excellent escapism. I'm actually kind of hoping that there'll be a sequel, but I'm not at all sure if that's in the plans (the deal announcement is only for the one book, sadly).

If you're not necessarily a fan of science fiction or horror, I should point out that this is more in line with a thriller that has a lot of family drama components. The main thrust of the novel is Rachel's concern about her family. The genre elements definitely take a backseat to this, making the novel one that I think will appeal to a very broad audience.

If there would be anything that would freak me out more, it would be a book about a little boy that hears voices that tell him to do terrible things, after he survived a disease of pandemic proportions. I can't deny that hit a little too close to home.

I have to say, I had a hard time connecting with this book. The beginning seemed bland and slow for me and there wasn't much that the characters were able to give to the story. Things started to pick up eventually and I was able to be sucked into the story.

It really was a good creepy read that gave me the chills and a lot of people loved it. Worth a read.

My review will go live on the Book Confessions Blog on 11-11-20.

⚠️trigger warning for sickness in a pandemic.
I will first say I did think this was a horror now exclusively but it was mixed with Sci-fi which I didn’t mind. But wasn’t expecting. It interesting and creepy what do you do when you think your child is dying of a sickness and survives but with a voice in his head. Billy and the other kids really had me creeped out. This book had strong themes of the rich having a lot of advantage. Overall I enjoyed it but I felt like it was a little to long. 3.5⭐️

I took a chance on something different and I really liked it! We Hear Voices by Evie Green is largely the story of a young boy named Billy and his mother. As the story begins, Billy is near death from the flu, which has been raging as a deadly pandemic. Billy ends up surviving. As he gains his strength after recovering, it becomes clear that Billy now has an imaginary friend named Delfy. Whether or not this imaginary friend came to Billy during his illness or immediately after is not really that important to his mother, because all she cares about is that he survived. At first, everyone passes Delfy off as a harmless way to cope with near-death, but it soon becomes clear that Delfy may be a bigger deal than anyone anticipated.

In choosing to read We Hear Voices, I took a chance on something a little different and it ended up paying off. Yes, the pandemic in the story has some eerie similarities to the one we are currently experiencing and I wondered how it would feel to read something like that during this time. But the details of the pandemic aren’t the big part of the story here, and I was easily able to separate the story-pandemic from the real life one we have going on.

Billy is essentially a “creepy kid” in this story, and the addition of the imaginary friend really amps that up. Some of the things Billy says and does are darn right horrifying, but it is when he begins to blame Delfy for these big, bad actions and words that the tension and suspense begins to build. I loved the sense of foreboding that I felt the entire way through the story, like something dreadful was about to happen on the next page.

My favorite part of the story was Billy’s mother, Rachel. Rachel has a lot of hard stuff going on in her life while Billy is sick and then recovering. The family has been hit hard economically by the pandemic, and there are three kids in the family in total-not just Billy. When Billy’s issues begin, Rachel throws herself headfirst into caring for him, during his sickness and during all of the craziness that happens after. Her stress is palpable on the pages. She cannot think of anything besides making sure that her child (children, really) are okay. She is desperate for most of the story, and I love the way that really came through to me as I was reading. Her desperation was a living, breathing thing, and I feel like it may have been the most real and true thing about this story. I connected with her emotionally as a mother, caretaker, and provider. I could almost put myself in her situation, trying to juggle everything while also being willing to get into some trouble to protect her child. The tension and suspense were already there in the story, but Rachel made it great.

So, yeah, this was a fun read. Definitely a distraction when the real world outside seems to be more and more stressful by the day. The world in We Hear Voices doesn’t exist, but it is close enough that we can almost imagine it. You almost have the ability to forget that this is a sci-fi/dystopian story sometimes with the way the world is written, and I think that made the story quite good. The way the big reveals come out in the end may be a little quick for some readers, but I enjoyed them and I couldn’t have predicted that ending!

We Hear Voices will be released in the US on December 1, 2020.