“Sometimes, the membranes between worlds thins and something slips through…

Taking their kids on a hunting trip to Maker's Woods, Sergeant Kris Jensen and her Special Ops friends, Brooke and Melanie, soon realize they are the ones being hunted.

As a covert military base sends out units to neutralize the threat, Kris, her son, the kids, and friends fight to survive against an enemy ripped from a loved one that will stop at nothing to infect them and overrun our world with its offspring.

Kris battles the ultimate nightmare. One that refuses to end and might ultimately destroy her and the entire human race.”

There’s something out there and it ain’t no man. Or woman. Or of earth.
Alone in the woods, three women and their children find themselves up against a horde of beasts like no one was ever set eyes on before…and survived. But luckily the three women concerned are highly trained soldiers on a hunting trip, so don’t take the appearance of their antagonists lightly and quickly become a force to be reckoned with.
Lock and load.

Part Aliens, part Predator, Obsidious is an enjoyable, but by the numbers, guns and gore military bullet fest. It doesn’t break any new ground in the monsters vs humans genre, but the female leads are plucky enough to keep it interesting as endless piles of marine meat fill the forest floor.

If you want something short, that gets stuck into the action within the first few pages, doesn’t let go until the last page, and is action packed from cover to cover with guns and bombs and blood and brains and teeth, Obsidious is a B-movie read that harks back to 80’s horror with plenty of references to look out for.

In a suburb on Boston's North Shore, a catatonic little girl is found behind a dumpster. She is a mystery. As Social Worker Debbie Gillan pieces together the puzzle of the child's identity, she discovers the child had disappeared two years earlier along with a twin sister. She also discovers HANNAHWHERE, an alternate world that is both a haven and a prison.... Life altering trauma becomes the key to unravelling the truth about the children, about Hannahwhere...and about Debbie herself. Truths that could either save them or destroy them all.”

As a father of twins, I can understand some of the spooky closeness experienced in Hannahwhere. Twins are more than just siblings; they have an uncanny friendship which some will struggle to understand. My two for example, are convinced that they’re going to marry the same woman. Twins aren’t two people, but two halves of a whole. Not it in a ying and yang sense, it’s far more complicated that. McIlveen captures an understanding of this twinship in Hannahwhere, in which sisters Hannah and Anna are divided by a tragedy, but remain linked in a world like no other, the truth of which will shake the foundations of reality for every living (and dead) person on Earth.

Despite keeping its locations small, Hannahwhere barrels on with great pacing, keeping the reader engaged throughout. Utterly heart-breaking in parts, fantastical and humorous in to others, it feels like early Dean Koontz when he diverts from his usual monster and crime lore and concentrates of the more saccharin supernatural elements of speculative fiction. Not that this is a bad thing. It’s good to read a novel that can be both horrific and uplifting at the same. It’s not an easy task to pull off, but McIlveen gets the balance just right, putting the reader right behind Hannah and her social worker, Debbie, in their quest to right a wrong and find happiness.

Mary Ann Jacobs reading, scratch that, performance is fantastic. Juggling voices, ages and genders with ease. When a narrator goes the whole hog and immerses themselves in a story, not just telling it, but becoming the characters, squeezing every emotion from every line, I find I enjoy it much more.
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Hannahwhere is fantastic little read if you want something to uplift and take you a journey of emotions. If you enjoyed What Dreams May Come or The Lovely Bones, then Hannahwhere might be worth a visit.