Both therapists and horror writers tell us that a family’s grief and pain can turn into monsters if not taken care of. THE UNSEEN, Ania Ahlborn’s latest novel, takes this trope in some wonderfully unexpected directions as it follows the Hansen family on the edge of crisis.

Isla Hansen has lost another baby; she was going to name him Adam. It has been nine months since the miscarriage, an amount of time that feels symbolic to Isla and hasn’t really lessened her sorrow. The loss has both obsessed her and challenged her emotional well-being in ways all too familiar to her family.

"To share details here is to rob the reader of some chilling delight, but suffice it to say that Ahlborn’s tension is ever mounting."

Even as Isla mourns Adam, she is in the thick of parenting her five children. Her only son, 17-year-old August, is pushing the boundaries with Isla and his father, Luke. Her oldest daughter, 16-year-old Eden, is also starting to rebel. The three younger daughters --- Olive, Willow and Sophie --- all have their roles to play in the family and, like August and Eden, their responses to their mother’s mental health issues and their father’s seeming passivity. If this setup wasn’t dark enough already, Ahlborn introduces her monster when Isla is the weakest. 

At the edge of the woods that border the Hansens’ secluded Colorado property stands a boy. Isla’s first brief thought is that she’s looking at Adam. Then she thinks that he could be one of a handful of youngsters who have gone missing in their area recently. But something tells Isla that is not the case. She and Luke bring the boy to the authorities. Weeks go by and no one claims him, and he can’t be identified. Isla and a reluctant Luke agree to take him in as a foster child, and Isla calls him Rowan.

When they bring the boy home, their usually gentle and sweet dogs try to attack him. That is just the first hint that something is very wrong with Rowan. He is absolutely silent, deformed in ways that make no physiological sense, and he never seems to eat. More importantly, everyone in the Hansen family is instinctively troubled by him or frightened of him. Everyone, that is, except Isla, who adores him.

THE UNSEEN chronicles less than a week of unrelenting terror and strange violence against the Hansens. Rowan is clearly the perpetrator, but Isla seems to be under his spell. She turns away from her children and husband in favor of Rowan, even when she knows he is hurting them. To share details here is to rob the reader of some chilling delight, but suffice it to say that Ahlborn’s tension is ever mounting. She brings ideas and twists that challenge genre conventions and blur genre lines. The characters are relatable even in these extreme supernatural circumstances and are tenderly written in the face of the violence, chaos and havoc they experience. The book explores varieties of loss with insight and skill.

This is a scary, sad, mostly propulsive (it does drag a bit before the end), weird, psychologically complex and, ultimately, very entertaining novel.