*Warning: Hallucinations and highly intense daydreaming may occur*

"We dream of shadows. And that's exactly where I am now. A world of shadows."

"Silvers Hollow" by Patrick Delaney dives into an illusionary world reminiscent of lucid dreaming except for the dark, sinister atmosphere haunting the town and the young woman traveling within it. Delaney brings to life hidden fears of being trapped in a nightmare, tossed in a realm both familiar and unfamiliar, in which the only way out is through.

A young woman ends up at the train station of her hometown, Silvers Hollow. The station has been closed for years, which raises the question of how she got there and why she's returned. A cop offers to drive her home but takes a detour through the town that is exactly how she remembers it and yet ... is completely different. Things only become stranger from there.

Time doesn't exist. There's no night or day which makes prying apart the days and hours nearly impossible but explains why the neighbor is watering their grass in the dark. On top of it all, residents keep speaking about an emergency but clam up every time the woman asks them to elaborate. What emergency? Does it have something to do with the odd inner workings of the town or is that due to something much more sinister? Why won't anyone talk about it? Most importantly, does it have something to do with the woman's memory loss and her sudden and inexplicable return home?

This story mirrors a dream perfectly. It's disorienting, fluid, lacks a concrete sense of time, and the only purpose of memory is to create a further sensation of alienation to the strange events taking place. What is even more incredible is Delaney's ability to skillfully craft a coherent story while keeping the reader (and main character) completely unhinged the entire time.

Despite the odd turn of events and the disorienting nature of the story, it was easy to follow and understand. A lot of questions are raised throughout the novel, but it's what drives the reader to dig through the details, read between the lines, and find whatever hidden clues are embedded in the story itself to figure out what kind of rabbit hole they've fallen in. Only by cracking open these pages and diving into the deep unknown will readers find any answers (maybe).

Not only is this a crazy, psychological thriller with elements of horror guaranteed to be a joyride from hell, but Delaney is a stunning writer with a knack for creating highly intense and vivid detail that brings a lifelike aspect to their stories. "Silvers Hollow" is highly recommended and worth the possibility of any hallucinations and daydreams that may occur.

The expected publication date for "Silvers Hollow" is August 15th, 2021. Save the date and add it to your reading lists!

A big thank you to NetGalley, Oblivion Publishing, and Patrick Delaney for providing me with a free e-arc of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

"I am fire. I am electricity. I am loss. I am regret. But most of all, I am love. I am all the things that I never thought I was, never believed I could be."

We are plunged into the story just as disoriented as the narrator, and the intrigue quickly builds up as we wonder what exactly has happened to her and where she is. She’s hurt, alone, and seems to have some kind of memory loss. I love the concept of an uncanny place that has everything you know, but isn’t quite right, the in-between place that fails to replicate reality. This book has some really vivid imagery, very poetic and dark. I liked the theme of time, the town being stuck in time, the father obsessed with time, the narrator unable to learn what time it is. I don’t think I fully understood the ending, but this was a really engaging and thoughtful story that I couldn’t put down!

Thank you to NetGalley and Oblivion Publishing for providing me with this eARC to review!

You may like this book if you were a fan of more jumbled narratives like The Sound & the Fury, Inception, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind where you’re wondering WTF is going on the whole time and that is what compels you to keep reading. However, unlike mine-banding movies, I don’t think the end has a satisfying payoff. Rather than keeping you guessing and ending with a twist you didn’t expect, this seems more like a bait and switch end & there are still some vague concepts and unanswered questions through the POV of a nameless main character. I expected about four other endings, but was overall disappointed to hang with this whole book to feel like the ending was a “Gotcha! Fooled you!”

3.5 stars rounded up.

Silvers Hollow follows the same vein as The House That Fell From the Sky, but without some of its magic. Set in the same universe, it follows an unnamed protagonist as she wanders around the desolate streets of a place that looks sort of familiar, without knowing why she's there or how she got there, all leading up to an ending that may or may not have made sense.

The story left me in a constant state of confusion. I was so eager to get to the end but when I finally got there I had so many unanswered questions. I don't mind a little ambiguity but this was on a whole new level. Not necessary to read THTFRTS before this (definitely read that one) but if you like The Twilight Zone you'll probably like this.

Thanks to Oblivion Publishing and Netgalley for my auto-approval.

Thanks NetGalley publishers and author for this advance readers copy!
Talk about a good book! This is everything a reader wants! I enjoyed everything about this read!
The writing was fabulous! The story even better! The characters development was awesome!
Great book!

A young woman wakes up in an old train station. She suddenly realizes she is back in her hometown, although she has no idea how that happened. Her head hurts. And something is not right…

The best way to describe ‘Silvers Hollow’ is… a labyrinth.
The nameless main character tries to find a way out, tries to understand what’s happening, but no one wants to give her an honest answer. There’s some kind of emergency, some say. An event. And chapter after chapter, the woman tries to gather clues, and you as the reader try to gather clues as well, but as a first person novel you only know what she knows, and you don’t even know if you should trust her as a narrator.
It is really unnerving, sometimes frustrating but always exciting, and maybe you reach the point where you think you know some fragments of what is happening, like the red door, but then you are not sure because she is not sure, and you have no idea of that time it is, neither in the novel nor in real life because you’ve been reading for the last… how many hours? And she wants answers and you do as well, but the novel is not going to give them up without a fight, a feeling amazingly well achieved through the prose and the many unknown layers of the woman.
And then it ends. And no one, absolutely no one, saw the twist coming.
So now you want to read it again, look for clues again, try to find those breadcrumbs you did not know were important in the first place.

And the labyrinth opens its doors… again.

Silvers Hollow is a crazy book. I did not know what was happening most of the time. The story was really well-written and fast paced. I loved the authors writing style. It is confusing though, and I still am not sure what happened.

Thank you Netgalley for allowing me a copy to review.
This was my first time reading any work from this author and I found it a bit hard to get into. I found myself rereading certain parts to gain clarity. I think the overall story line is fantastic and Delaney does master the suspense and eerines needed for the story.

Thanks to Patrick Delaney, NetGalley and Oblivion Publishing for this copy.

A girl wakes up at a train station in her hometown, a place she hasn't visited in years. As she groggily wanders through Silver's Hollow, she begins to realise the town is very similar to how it used to be... And yet there are subtle, terrifying differences.

She continues her tour of the town in perpetual darkness, accompanied by a creepy police officer, who appears to know more than he admits. The nameless narrator is confused, suffering from amnesia, and the characters of the town offer no help... Other than to mention "the emergency"... The story continues to get stranger as we race to its conclusion, and we are left pondering what is real or not.


I'm finding it difficult to review this book. When I initially started it, I found the staccato short sentences quite jarring. I thought I was going to struggle to get through the book... When suddenly, I found myself halfway through, needing to keep reading!

There are a few flaws for me. There are occasional moments where I feel we are told, rather than shown certain things, but these are few and far between.

Where Delaney shines, is how he created tension. There is a feeling of dread underlying this book. The whole story is claustrophobic, and as a reader, it made me want to rip through the pages to get out of it (in a good way!).

I really needed to know what was happening. Who are these people? Where are these people? What's going on?! How can the narrator, and myself, escape this weird place? WHAT. IS. GOING. ON?!

For some, this dreamlike (or nightmarelike) confusion could be off-putting, but I found it fascinating.

If you're a fan of trippy, fast-paced horror, then this one is for you.

Book Review for Silvers Hollow by Patrick Delaney
Full review for this title can be found at: @fyebooks on Instagram!

Not for me. This is a mystery box story about a woman waking up at a train station with no memory, but I wasn't gripped by the mystery at all and didn't finish the book.

I found it all a little clumsy and almost got the impression I was reading an early draft rather than the final work. At one point a character asks "Are you alright?" and the other character replies "Nothing. Nothing at all." ??

The book is certainly fast=moving and many readers will no doubt enjoy unravelling the mystery but I didn't connect with this one.

Y’all, I needed someone to talk to the whole time I was reading this. ‘Cause, WOW! My head was spinning, and my mind was all fuzzy and stuff. I didn’t even know what I was reading.

I’m going to try to explain this, but fair warning, it’s not going to pretty—or even remotely coherent. Deal?

Okay, so, this woman is at a train station, right? The train drops her off and leaves, okay? She doesn’t know why she’s there or why her head’s bleeding. Following me?

Then, this creepy cop picks her up and demands to know why she’s at the train station—because the trains haven’t gone through there in 20 years. Mmmm-kay.

But see, it turns out that she’s in her childhood hometown, but things are kinda different. It’s darker and colder, or something. Oh, and time is all funky. Apparently, the town doesn’t have it anymore. Time, I mean. Like, it’s not allowed. Or something.

The other people there are just odd, and our main character has some...baggage. And then, this other thing happens. I can’t tell you, but...what the what? Plus, there’s this hint of... Nope, can’t tell you that either.

She doesn’t know. I didn’t know. I just really kept hoping the author knew. ‘Cause this whole kerfuffle is on him.

I swear, it was like I was reading a dream. Like, the author had this bananas dream, and he’s telling me about it, and I’m nodding politely while secretly wondering if I should call someone, you know?

Anyway, I absolutely loved every word of it, and I read it in one sitting. Side note: there aren’t chapters, per se, just breaks, which I can only assume is a stylistic choice because chapters help readers keep track of time, and in a story without time, the lack of chapters adds to the disorienting feel of things. Patrick Delaney is bloody brilliant!

Fingers on the preorder button, y’all. This is a good one!