Patrick Delaney is too good.

Last year, I was extremely surprised by The House That Fell From The Sky. I didn't think it was perfect but it was absolutely enjoyable. I wanted more. And still want more. (Cue Colombia and Magenta: More, More, More)

Silvers Hollow, Delaney's next work, is on a whole new level. The last time that I was gripped by a book that had a deep psychological hold on me was back when I read House of Leaves. From the beginning, I was along for a ride of which I could never figure out the destination. Delaney captures the classical strokes of horror while hanging us on the brink of an unfamiliar horizon.

I am so glad I didn't go to High School with Delaney and have to settle for the second-best writer in English class.

My expectations were shattered.

Delaney's place in the genre will only become more cemented in the coming years.

I was approved to receive an e-Galley ARC for Silvers Hollow, authored by Patrick Delaney, from Oblivion Publishing and NetGalley, for review consideration. What follows below is my honest review, freely given.

I rated this novel 2 stars. I feel the 5 star system used by most retail sites is not a efficient way to rate books, yet it is required to post a review; a necessary evil. 2 stars means a book is ‘okay’ on Goodreads, personally it’s used when something doesn’t sit well with a title. I try to explain without spoilers whenever that happens, which I will do below.

The opening four sentences immediately gave me a delicious shiver down my spine, there’s strangeness in them there hills. What would follow was wonderful; chaotic happenings, dark past flashbacks, and unpredictable characters kept me engaged in the unfolding story. I had no idea what the end result was going to be but I was feeling okay about it; some things do not have to be explained.

Then the ending of the novel began to approach, and the author did have some things to explain. Unfortunately as the reader I could not suspend belief for how some character traits seemed insincerely changed, albeit for characters not actively present in the novel, and how that affected final moments. I think they were presented very believably during the 75% of the book, and the last 25% felt like it was read wrong by the person deciding that, way wrong. It was enough of a disconnect that I felt let down by what was a pretty stellar read for me, almost all the way to the end. It kind felt like King and the space spider in It. Sorry for that decades old spoiler for another novel here. But I did love this author’s writing voice, I want to check out his other released titles for personal reads. Not loving this title doesn’t mean I’m going to reject his other work, because there was much about Silvers Hollow I did really enjoy.

True rating is a 3.5, but I'm rounding up.

The story in this was fascinating, reminding me simultaneously of the Twilight Zone and the movie Vivarium. I attempted to read Delaney's previous book, The House That Fell From the Sky, and gave up because the characters just did not click with me. Even then, I did find myself enjoying his writing style, finding it to be very readable.

And it turns out- I was right! This was a VERY readable little novel, and it keeps you turning page after page. I found the mystery of it all intriguing enough to keep going, and felt mostly satisfied with the way it all tied up.

However, I did find some of the answers rather vague. I saw another reviewer mention that this book relates back to his previous one, so that could be why. Even with this factored in, I found it an enjoyable read and would recommend it. Definitely looking forward to more from this author!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

I received this book from Netgalley in order to give an honest review.

The story is very much dreamlike, it starts with the main female character waking up in a train station in a small town she grew up in with no idea how she got there, she has no concept of what the time is as she no longer has her watch. A creepy police guy picks her up and what follows is bizarre and dreamlike. The main character reminisces about her childhood in this town and about her family life which seems strange and sinister. The other characters appear tense and keep referring to an 'event' or 'accident' that has happened of which the main character has no recollection. The town although the same as she remembers appears slightly off on the detail and not quite right. Time appears to have no meaning in this town.

Overall, I enjoyed reading the book which is dreamlike and slightly confusing , this kept me hooked and wanting to work out what was going on. Unfortunately, I found the ending slightly disappointing and not what I was expecting. Can't really say any more than that.

168 pages of intensity, intrigue, suspense and fast flowing, all out tension. This is a book with an "is it this" or "is it that" type of storyline where you are guessing all the way through and your brain is spinning with all that is going on.

Straight into it - a woman wakes up at a train station in her former home town with a wound to the back of her head, and no idea how she got there. A policeman picks her up and is acting strangely. Her hometown looks the same, but also, it doesn't, there are subtle differences to what she remembers. There is no time here, and people are acting really strange. What is going on?

I compulsively read this over a day, I had to know what was happening. I definitely didn't understand the ending but think it may be open to interpretation? I'm not sure. But in any event, a very enjoyable read that I am still thinking about. 3.5/5*

Unfortunately, this book just wasn't for me and I stopped reading at around 10%. The style of writing wasn't for me. It could be a great story but I just couldn't get into it. I found the start very confusing, repetitive and drawn out. I couldn't connect with the character either and ultimately gave up.

Patrick Delaney wrote the perfect rendition of a surreal and psychotic fever dream. The characters, the setting, the prose...all of it coming together, making the reader question their own reality.

I loved the unreliable narrator. I loved the setting of Silvers Hollow; quaint, idyllic, but sinister and confusing. It was a mystery, wrapped in family trauma, wrapped in more mystery. Then the descriptions of the absolute horror done to the townspeople. Officer Smith was such a sympathetic side character. You truly felt for him and his utter loss at being able to explain the situation.

The sadness the reader feels from the narrator and her strained relationship with her parents. The father aloof and almost cruel, the mother silent and uninterested and her little sister a victim.

Loved this! I’ll be reading more from Patrick Delaney in the future!

I DEVOURED this book whole in one sitting. It’s ominous and eerie nature had me turning pages so fast because I just needed to know what was going on.

With that said, I wish I would have read The House That Fell From The Sky first to give it a little more context but honestly, this book blew my mind. And that was definitely intended.

I love mind boggling books and this fit the bill, big time.

A woman wakes in a train station. And she doesn’t remember how she got there. Just that she left Silvers Hollow and never intended on coming back. She finds a family photograph at her feet but she has no idea how it got there, let another anything else. She’s confused, disoriented and has a laceration on the back of her head.

A police officer finds her and puts her in his cruiser. But there is something eerie and troubling going on. The mist is creeping around the lights and she still can’t remember anything. She hasn’t seen a clock and her watch has mysteriously gone missing....There is no time here.

Was it all a just dream? More like a nightmare.

The main character comes back to her hometown, but finds that things are different. Everyone there seems to know her, but she doesn't know why. She tries to find out what is going on, but it ends up being more than she bargained forPatrick Delaney did a really good job coming up a very suspenseful story that really keeps you guessing. This book gave me major Matrix vibes mixed with some horror elements and it did it really well honestly.

I highly recommend it!

WHAT A MIND FUCK!
This book was so so trippy. I'm still not even sure I understand what I've read.
Patrick Delaney strikes again. I swear this author is some sort of twisted genius.
This is my second book by this author and it absolutely didn't disappoint.
Short but straight to the trippy point.

What a thought provoking book this was. Everything you think you know, you don’t. Questioning motives and wondering who people are. Why things are they way they are. It was hell but more. It was thoughts, but more like dreams. I couldn’t put it down. I had get answers to all the questions.

What the heck did I just read! I have never done drugs but after reading Patrick Delaney's latest novel I think this must be what it is like to use them and I almost feel I need to read it again to see if it will make any more sense. Having said this though, I didn't dislike the book I just don't get it. Yoou have been warned lol

You know that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where Buffy is stuck between two realities and can't figure out which one is real. That's this book. Nothing ever made sense. Was it The Truman Show? Was it Fifty First Dates? Was it The Escape Room? Were the people aliens? Androids? A dream? Definitely, an episode of The Twilight Zone.

I saw the cover for Silvers Hollow on my Goodreads recommendations page, recently, and was drawn to it like flame. I saw that it hadn't been released yet and immediately ran to Netgalley to see if it was available. It was. I requested. I was approved within a few hours. Silvers Hollow isn't something I would normally read. I don't read/watch a lot of horror. This book (a novella, really) was entertaining. It kept me turning pages to see what happened next. It was unpredictable. It was infuriating. It was twisty. And And you will never look at time in the same light.

TW: [death, blood, gore, hints of rape (doesn't actually happen, it was something else entirely), abandonment, isolation, hallucinations, mentions of abuse of animals and people]


***Thank you to Oblivion Publishing and Netgalley for providing me with a review copy.***

Silvers Hollow by Patrick R. Delaney - 3/5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley for access to a review copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The build-up of the mystery in this book is phenomenal. Unfortunately, the ending is nowhere near satisfying. This book is a perfect example of one with an unreliable narrator. Throughout the store, the narrator has no idea what is going on or what is wrong with the town they are in, so neither does the reader. However, you as the reader are willing to suspend that need to know in hopes that at the end all the loose ends will be tied up and you'll finally know all that's been in question the entire time. What happened in this person's past? What happened to her sister? What is "The Emergency"? Why does this town seem to be a place out of time? Why can't the main character remember things relevant to their current situation?

The ending of the store brings up more questions than it answers, and the answers it does give are not nearly detailed enough to be satisfying. I tore through the book searching for answers that were never given, and this is a bit disappointing. However, other than that, the experience of reading this story wasn't necessarily a bad one, just a bit of a letdown.

If you enjoy puzzling out mysteries as you read a book, this is definitely one you will enjoy, just be prepared to still have some questions left unanswered when you finish.

Talk about a mind-f*ck! Silvers Hollow takes off from the start in a super-psychedelic psychological thriller - try to say that three times fast! Our protagonist wakes up in an abandoned train station in her hometown and has no idea of the time, date or how she even got here. She’s picked up by a sketchy cop with a bizarre behavior and from there they roam around town before being dropped off at her family’s home.

Nothing is the same, the people are uber weird, her family is nowhere to be found and everyone she comes across is mentioning the “emergency” but refusing to divulge. The town and the people in it definitely gave me Wayward Pines vibes. It was a nightmare in the best way possible!

I received an e-arc via Netgalley, but all opinions are my own.

This book really draws you in from the start. I found myself always wanting to know what was happening next. The story is intriguing as you follow the main character through what seems to be her hometown. She can't quite place what's wrong, but something is definitely off about this place. The residents seem almost hostile and it's almost always night. I did enjoy the storytelling and the end was not something I would have guessed.

However, I felt like this book could have benefited from more world building. While, I mostly understand the main characters arc, the world didn't really make sense. I felt like the reader isn't given enough background information and by the end of the book I was left with more questions than answers. I would like to read more by this author, but this novella fell a little flat for me.

This is a pretty quick read that pulls you along like some kind of lucid fever dream. No massive info dumps or exposition here. You go in as blind and confused as our protagonist and feel as though are you only piecing things together as she is. The story is engaging and quick but I didn’t feel the ending was the payoff I hoped it was. Much still left unexplained. (The tiger??) I enjoyed the journey, but a little underwhelmed with the destination

This book definitely did the creepy thing well.. When our main character wakes up at the train station of her home town she is disoriented, and that feeling never went away. The town of SIlvers Hollow seems to be overshadowed by darkness and time has no meaning.. There are no clocks anywhere and only landline phones that can only dial to other homes in the town. Everything is very disjointed as our main character is having trouble rememering much of anything at all, and the town only seems to have a few people living in it. She can't find her parents anywhere and is told to stay in due to this town "emergency" that everyone seems to know about except her.
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It gives off a creepy dream vibe, which I did like, but I think I would have liked it moreif we ended up getting some answers about her family, and how she ended up in town, and found out exactly what was going on outside of the town that had everyone so scared. She seems to have glimpses of memory that we do see but I don't think we get all of the answers so I felt kind of unsatisfied by the ending.
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However since alot of other people seem to really like this book, so I think it just might not have been for me.. So if the synopsis sounds like something you would like to read I would recommend checking it out.

While Silvers Hollow was less detail-oriented than I expected for a book by Delaney, but it was full of his trademark atmospheric writing. Delaney is a master of crafting an atmosphere of dread and tension in his stories and with all the mystery and unreliable narration in Silvers Hollow this craft is brought to the forefront of the reader’s attention.

I also found myself compulsively turning pages to find out what was actually happening and what would come up next. The short chapter chunks made it easy to continue on “just one more chapter.” And I had lots of fun trying to figure out all the mysteries.

What ended up not working for me was the ending itself. I felt like I never really understood what was going on and was left with more questions than I had at the beginning of the book. Personally, I don’t particularly enjoy a vague ending, but those that do will love this book.

Thank you so much to Oblivion Publishing and NetGalley for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!

Any time I don’t have a watch on my wrist, I am conscious of its absence. It’s a lot simpler to look at my watch than it is to reach for my phone and get the time from there. I’ve always worn a watch and I feel close to naked if I am, for whatever reason, not wearing one. I suppose I’m like most people in that I need to know what time it is, what day it is, and–in these pandemic times–what month it is. So imagine waking up one day with no recollection of any of these mundane facts. That would be scary, right?

The main character in Patrick R. Delaney‘s latest novel, Silvers Hollow, faces such a bizarre and disconcerting situation. She is anonymous to the reader, remaining unnamed throughout the book, and despite having some memories, she is practically anonymous to herself. The premise is a simple one, if deceptively so. A woman wakes up on the platform of a deserted train station, with the train she may or may not have been on pulling away. She has no memory of how she got there, or where she is–or what time it is. Leaving the station she meets the first of the supporting characters that drift in and out of the narrative. The woman finds herself in the back of Officer Smith’s ancient police car, and he takes her on a strange and meandering journey through what seems to be her childhood town of Silvers Hollow.

Nostalgia ain’t what it used it be, the saying goes, and this particular trip down memory lane is anything but comforting. Delaney’s main character is put through the wringer, emotionally and physically. Silvers Hollow itself seems stuck in time, with none of the modern amenities you would see and take for granted today. And it’s always dark. The story, as it unfolds, leaves the reader and the woman without any light at all. There is a reason for this, but you need to stick the course to find out. Meanwhile, the woman has to contend with the mystery of why she is where she is, and what, if anything, her family has to do with her predicament.

The people she meets on her journey are equally as scared, but of what, they can’t or won’t say. This adds to the sense of menace and dread that permeates the book. Delaney’s decision to allow the reader to follow closely beside his main character is an excellent one. All throughout the book I felt the same things the woman felt. It was like being a companion to someone else’s dream, and it wasnt a comfortable experience at all. But I kept reading because, like the woman, I wanted answers.

Silvers Hollow makes full use of its brief running time, coming in a couple of pages shy of 190. But don’t let its brevity fool you: there’s a lot going on here, and nothing is what it seems. Patrick R. Delaney has crafted a well-written, atmospheric, psychological horror story. The end is both dystopian and apocalyptic, and you’ll never ever want to have a dream like it.

NetGalley and the publishers of Silvers Hollow provided me with an ARC in return for an honest review. I thank them for the opportunity. The book will be published June 1, 2021, and is available to pre-order.