A perfectly plotted sci-fi horror mystery. The writing style gripped from the very start, and the ending didn’t disappoint!!

Many thanks to Berkley Publishing Group and Netgalley for providing me an ARC of this book!

Wow! Reading this book was a trip! It was unique and unlike anything I had read ever. It is part dystopian, part futuristic, part science fiction, part space travel, part horror and part YA, which made the story unpredictable. I had no idea where the story was going, and I loved that aspect!

Also, I loved the main characters. Nina is smart and amazing and wants to get to the bottom of what’s happening. Rachel is a mess and wants a normal life, but her luck keeps running out. Also, I loved Graham and his love for Imogen and his commitment towards helping others. And of course, Billy and his imaginary friend Delfy are creepy and make the entire story extremely memorable. Moreover, the setting of the story is very eerier as well. The story takes place in a near futuristic landscape that seems gloomy yet relatable. Not to mention the pandemic flu that spreads with the children, similar to what our world is facing now. I hope our future does not go in the same direction as what Ben Alford had in mind.

However, the only reason I did not give this book 5 stars is because I felt like the story shifted focus in the second half. The first half mainly focused on Billy’s condition, and his family (and Graham) trying to figure out what is happening. However, the second half shifted the focus to Nina and her quest. Although all the story-lines are interconnected towards the end, I wished the story had revolved around Billy throughout.

Overall, “We Hear Voices” is definitely worth reading because it is just so different and wonderfully weird!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

Interesting premise with so much more going on than the blurb lets on--set in near future London with the world fighting a pandemic that seems to hit children the hardest. Majority of people are struggling financially. Add some space colonization. Six year old Billy recovers from the flu but with an imaginary friend who starts to be more aggressive. Weird to be reading a book about a deadly flu while living thru a pandemic. I just hope we all don’t start hearing voices. Book has an excellent creepiness to it.

There were some repetitive bits and a few times the writing jumped and I had to back track a page to make sure I didn't miss something. That said, I stayed up almost two hours past my bedtime to finish the book. Solid twist at the end. Highly recommend.

Set in a dystopian like London in the not too distant future, millions have died in a world wide flu pandemic of unknown origins, that mainly impacts children. Recovering from this flu, one young boy begins to hear a voice in his head. While seen as a sweet imaginary friend, gradually the boy is pushed into more and more appalling acts. As his family begins to investigate, they uncover the true origins of the flu--and who is behind the attempt to hide it. Alternately horrifying and gripping, this novel also weaves in issues we are wrestling with today--poverty, equity, global warming--and how they might play out in the near future.

Review #20 WE HEAR VOICES by Evie Green and reviewing for Netgalley.
Wow! A very timely and coincidental story. A pandemic, a second problem with recovering children, and space travel. At times very unnerving with what our world has been going through lately. Great story! Four ★ ★ ★ ★ stars.

Wow. I cannot say enough good things about this book! It was creepy and interesting up until the very last page. I cannot wait for this book to come out so that I can recommend it to patrons in the library. If you're looking for a good scare, this is your book!

SO GOOD. This horror novel (not gory though) is set in the near future and there's a mysterious pandemic, killing millions and leaving some children with an unusual side effect: imaginary friends who make their hosts do violent things. The story centers around Billy and his family, and was so hard to put down. It's suspenseful, smart, scary, and eerily prescient. Well, I hope this book never actually becomes our future, but I do hope you'll read it because it was such a satisfying story.

<i>Review copy provided by NetGalley and the publisher for an honest review<i>

"We Hear Voices" is trying to climb onto three separate shelves, as represented by three its three separate protagonists: YA fantasy (the plucky teen girl with the cute but mysterious boyfriend), literary dystopia (the aging scientist running a posh psych ward for deranged children of privilege), and domestic thriller (the harried mother whose adorable six-year-old starts obeying homicidal voices in his head). These genres don't need to be mutually exclusive but Ms. Green doesn't seem to be combining categories as much as switching between them, and every time she shifts gears, she recapitulates the narrative as of she doesn't trust the reader to follow all the plot points. This lack of confidence also leads her to her characters to think in a lot of improbable declarative sentences - e.g. after breaking into an office, her protagonist will marvel "she just broke into an office." It's more than a little pedantic. If she has a little more faith in her readers' intelligence, "We Hear Voices" could be a gripping novel. She's got some good ideas, and there's a brilliant twist at the end.

“We Hear Voices” by Evie Green at first glance feels so full of promise. I went in super excited by the description and by the awesome cover art, both which are sure to get people to pick this one up. There are some wonderful ideas in this book that should amount to electricity and fireworks, but they never come together in just the right way and in the end they all sort of fizzle. Hindered further by stilted, awkward dialogue and writing that needed to be edited. There’s a lot of excess baggage here. A lot of “telling” instead of “showing” and some moments that were unbelievably laughable. Felt almost like a cheesy 50’s sci fi film, enjoyable and fun, but maybe not for the reason the author intended. Slap a silly sci fi 50’s poster cover on the book and it would speak more to what’s inside. There’s so much potential here, but it just never all clicked and left me disappointed.

This story is horror/sci fi. and while its an Interesting story, I was disappointed by the ending. It could have been better.

This book truly terrified me because even though it takes place in the future world telling a breath taking story about contagious pandemic crisis: there are so many similarities with our new normal world where we try to adjust its new rules right now! Probably the author wrote this book before Covid-19 but this means this book is great proof that human mind may imagine the worst and those scary scenarios appear on our minds may truly happen😱😱

In this book: mostly the little kids are affected by Pandemic. (So we have pessimistic clairvoyant author) And the kids who don’t die, returning back to their new lives with an uninvited host: they create IMAGINARY FRIENDS and they turn into those evil friends’ vessels to ask inappropriate questions about the organisms, sex etc. and become addicted to the spiders, finally they turn into blood thirsty, violent, little Chucky babies to kill the elders!

Let’s talk about our main characters to have a better understand how the story goes on: Rachel, ex-lawyer, divorced, living with her gold hearted, supportive boyfriend Al who works for homeless shelters. She was so close to lose her 6 years old Billy to pandemic. But her prayers were answered and he came back with his imaginary friend bitchy Delfy who forces him to heal faster and start researching more about science.

In the beginning, having an imaginary friend seemed like harmless thing for him. At least he was alive and physically he gets better. But mentally he sleepwalks, gets more agitated and disturbing at each day, watching you when you sleep, reorganizing everything in the house, making spider bouquet to scare his mom.

Rachel still thinks they are so lucky because her third child (she’s from Al) Beth who is little toddler gets also sick for one night but miraculously she gets better at the next day.
She also seems blessed to have a lovely relationship with her smart 16 years old daughter Nina who is selected for space program for creating a better future for next generations. She also dates with a charming, lovely, wealthy young man.

But the changes with Billy’s behaviors get out of control. He gets more volatile, unpredictable. His own grandmother wants to call a priest to perform exorcism to him. And things get more vicious, dark which results his captivation in a special asylum.

Nina secretly starts to a blog which goes viral, trying to reach the other families who suffer from same imaginary friend syndrome. She teams up with Graham: Billy’s doctor who observes little children in a special and secret hospital complex showing same symptoms with Billy.

Those little children hear voices who control their bodies for their great scheme. Who are they? What do they want? W

At first it felt a little strange to be reading about a pandemic during a pandemic, but the storyline immediately swept me in as I gave myself over to the enjoyment of the read. There is a flu pandemic that is killing many children but those that survive are left with an imaginary friend that’s at first fun, but soon takes over by having them commit serious acts of violence.
Although it’s easy to put the books genre as horror I also think it’s a dystopian novel. Set in what I presume to be the near future in smoggy London there’s a mega rich slumlord who is buying up blocks of apartment buildings converting them into apartments for people who work for his company. But you’re not paid with a salary, instead you’re allowed to live the apartment, have a phone etc., in lieu of money, so once in, it’s impossible to get ahead and leave. There is also a space program set up to escape the ruin that Earth has become to find other worlds, that’s not on the up and up either. So there are many themes in this book.

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review.

What a strange and fun read this was. I’m not a big fan of sci fi stuff, but I love horror, so I gave this a shot and I’m glad I did. The plot involved a pandemic that killed many children and left others hearing voices. At first the voices seem harmless, like an imaginary friend, but they begin to tell the children to do terrible things. What is going on and where did this virus come from? Are the voices related to the virus at all? This read was very campy and fun, and although the ending was a bit silly, I still really enjoyed it.

A pandemic is sweeping the world, leaving many dead in its wake. Sound familiar? Rachel feels like she’s been given a second chance when her son Billy recovers from the virulent flu. But he’s different somehow, for one thing, he has an imaginary friend, Delfy. Still, Rachel is shocked when Billy’s behavior begins to change, becoming violent and aggressive. It’s all Delfy’s fault, Billy assures her, but who or what is Delfy? A lot of people have chosn to escape in feel good books during this truly terrible time, but I find comfort in seeing fictional characters overcome similar, or worse predicaments. This is a fantastic read whenever you pick it up