I’ve been enjoying Ania Ahlborn’s suspenseful, horror novels for a few years now so I was very happy when I was given the opportunity to review The Unseen. Grief, discomfort, and creepy kids form a center of the novel’s horror. When a grieving woman named Isla Hansen is greeted by a young boy in her backyard, she is inclined to bring him into her family.
Hailed as a writer of “some of the most promising horror I’ve encountered in years” (Seanan McGuire, author of the Ghost Roads series), Ania Ahlborn delivers a novel that pushes the boundaries of horror into a new realm.
Isla Hansen, a mother reeling from a devastating loss, is beside herself when a mysteriously orphaned child appears on the outskirts of the Hansens’ secluded Colorado property. Although strange and unexplainable, the child’s presence breathes new life into Isla. But as the child settles in, Isla’s husband, Luke, and their five children notice peculiarities that hint at something far beyond the ordinary—anomalies that challenge the very fabric of reality itself. The tension within the Hansen household grows, and with it, the sense that there is something very wrong with the new kid in the house.
The Unseen is a haunting tale that walks the line between the familiar and the unknown, drawing us into a chilling narrative where reality itself feels just out of reach.
Isla is grieving because one of her children passed away. On one hand, her inclination to “replace” that deceased child with the feral child who appeared in her yard is understandable. On the other, Isla and Luke still have a large family of five children. The boy cannot communicate and is not very far-removed form being a wild animal. His wild nature makes her husband uncomfortable, her five children uncomfortable, and unsettles the family dogs. But Isla is driven and determined to “save” this boy. She ignores all evidence that would otherwise deter her…the aforementioned dogs who are normally docile are aggressive towards the feral child. Her five children are unsettled by the young boy and feel pushed aside and forgotten in favor of the feral child.
One of Ahlborn’s previous novels, The Devil Crept In, leaned heavily (and very effectively) on the “creepy child” trope. If anything, that trope was even more effective in The Unseen and I think part of that is the utter blind willingness of Isla to ignore all the blatant, obvious signs that this kid should be nowhere near her family.
Rarely have I had such anger and disdain for a protagonist/main character in a novel. I absolutely hated Isla for the majority of the novel, how she ignored the living children she had. Ahlborn did such a good job in the scenes from Isla’s children’s points of view that I had that much more contempt for Isla. Only towards the end of The Unseen did I start to find a sliver of sympathy for Isla and her plight. I felt uncomfortable with so much anger for a character suffering so much grief, but I also couldn’t forgive the consequences of how she reacted to that grief.
There also happens to be a history of missing children in the region where the novel takes place. It is an additionally unsettling contrast to the feral boy appearing just when Isla is most vulnerable and in a mental state where she can only invite the child into her family. The characters we are following (Isla’s family) think the missing children a strange background thing, but like everything Ahlborn does in her writing, there’s something very deliberate going on here. Every element of the story serves some purpose and most often, part of that purpose is to creep out and unsettle the reader.
Horror novels and stories often require a suspension of disbelief and there is a level of disbelief required to buy into how much Isla’s grief over the loss of one child blinds her to the “replacement” child she can save. If you alter things a bit and swap Isla’s obsession with this feral child to substance addiction blinding her to her husband, children, and dogs’s warning signs, her obsession with the child becomes more believable. That doesn’t make Isla any more likeable, but maybe a little more empathetic. It is a testament to Ahlborn’s powerful storytelling skills that I was magnetically compelled to continue reading despite how much I disliked Isla.
Grief is often at the core of horror stories and Ahlborn uses that as a foundation for everything that happens to Isla and her family. Grief and depression can blind people to very dangerous degrees and when you throw in some not so natural elements, the stakes can become higher.
The Unseen is a novel where every interaction is filled with dread, where the kids think of their mother with unease and discomfort. It is a powerful, gripping novel that kept my attention rapt throughout. I’m still trying to sort out what I think happened at the end and I how I feel about it, but that’s another sign of a well-crafted novel.
Ania Ahlborn continues her streak of excellent novels.
Recommended
© 2025 Rob H. Bedford
Hardcover | August 2025 | 384 Pages
https://www.aniaahlborn.com/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
