HIDDEN: Don’t Fear the Unseen – A Review

Being a teenager is hard, particularly these days. It gets worse when the teen in question has lost a family member and life seems particularly unfair, dark, and cold. There are various ways that teens try to cope but in the case of one girl, her attempt to deal with it is to become part of the popular “in-crowd.”

Clare Thompson’s older brother Ethan died a year ago, killed by a drunk driver. Desperate not to be alone and to have some kind of meaning in a life that feels utterly meaningless, she joins the coterie of girls who follow Nicole “Nikki” Thacker, the head of the Cheer squad. This means abandoning her oldest friend, Caitlin, to the tender mercies of bullies, among other things. When Nikki demands that Clare come to a party she is hosting later that night, Clare of course agrees to go. But getting there means lying to her parents and convincing Caitlin to lie for her about where she is supposedly going.

At the party, Clare joins in the drinking and dancing, but runs away when one of the boys kisses her. Scared and with a pounding head, she drives her bike to the old paper mill, a frightening, empty old building. Unsure how or why she ended up in a place she usually does her best to avoid, Clare shivers in fear as she stumbles on something in the gravel. Looking down she finds a set of aviator sunglasses. Startled and scared off by a gust of wind through the old mill, she rushes home with them where her parents take her to task for lying to them as she is back far later than she promised. They also called Caitlin’s mom and learned that not only wasn’t Clare there, she has not been hanging out with Caitlin for quite some time.

Grounded and depressed, Clare sneaks out of the house and demands to know if God is even real. After texting Nikki and her friend Elise, she is invited to their house and bikes to it. On the way she puts on the glasses, only to be shocked into shrieking and running away from Nikki and Elise when she sees strange monsters hovering over the two girls and their boyfriends. Seeking answers, Clare eventually realizes that the glasses allow her to perceive the spiritual world. Through them she can see both angels and demons.

But what is she supposed to do with that knowledge? And how long can she keep her secret before being considered crazy? Worse, the demons soon discover she can see them. How can Clare fight them when she is the only one who can perceive them through the glasses?

This is a very good book for teens and adults alike, as it gives one pause and makes one reassess just how well they know the Lord. It also ably tackles the questions of whether or not God exists and what justice vs. petty revenge looks like. Verity Lucia crafts this book for teens in situations familiar to her, particularly if those teens may not have been practicing Catholics or who might be chasing their dreams without recourse to God and His plan for their lives. Her site includes a worksheet for conversations with one’s teen that hews to the themes explored in HIDDEN: Don’t Fear the Unseen, the first book in the series.

The book does not “talk down” to teens and it is indeed as fast-paced as advertised. The primary audience for the book is Catholic teen girls, and Ms. Lucia has promised more adventures in the series. She also has a book in progress called NO DOUBT: Why Your Teen Questioning Their Faith is a GOOD Thing. It truly is – the modern world often looks at faith and belief in a shallow manner, so questions from one’s teen or even another adult are opportunities for growth which should be embraced and encouraged. If one does not know what one believes, then he or she can be led any which way by any force – angelic or demonic.

HIDDEN: Don’t Fear the Unseen opens up the spiritual world for teens lost and seeking answers. At the same time it reminds more fortunate readers “there but for the grace of God...” since anyone could fall into Clare’s trap, or perhaps a trap similar to it. As the back of the book says, the story’s main question is a penetrating one for our time: Is evil real? If it is, then how do humans, mere humans, fight it?

Finding books worth reading that do not attack the Faith and which acknowledge that good and evil are real is difficult in this day and age. Ms. Lucia’s books are easy to miss in part because they are among the plethora of other independent writers’ novels available for purchase through Amazon; along with HIDDEN: Don’t Fear the Unseen, she has the second book in the series (SECRETS: The Truth Will Out) out as well. Book three, focusing on Nikki, is coming soon and will be titled STOLEN: All That Glitters Isn’t Gold. Thus, readers who enjoyed book one and book two have more to look forward to from this author.

Likewise, there are various sites doing their best to promote and review books that a Catholic audience might like to peruse. Upstream Reviews works primarily to boost science fiction and fantasy novels, several of which are written by Catholics, and all their book reviews come with a content warning so parents can determine if they want the book for their teen or child to read (children’s books make the review list when they fall under fantasy or sci-fi). Periapsis Press is also reviewing independently published books, while Legend Fiction does its best to promote both Catholic and Orthodox writers. They are also working to build a counter to Facebook for writers that would be well worth checking out!

A Catholic Girl Reads is another good site to visit, as is Good Books for Catholic Kids. While I contribute to Upstream Reviews as a reviewer, I have some reviews on my site that are not on Upstream and vice versa. The world of entertainment can be laden with landmines; it is in many, many horrific ways. That is why Ms. Lucia wrote HIDDEN: Don’t Fear the Unseen and SECRETS: The Truth Will Out. It is also why other authors – Catholic or not – are working so hard to write books that will entertain, inform, and uplift their audiences.

Many are loath to purchase these books through Amazon due to the company’s policies, but the fact remains that there are no good alternatives as big and as capable of printing books on demand. Traditional publishers hold all the main routes and smaller publishers are less likely to match them in output even on their own sites, with alternative print-on-demand (POD) publishers unable to match Amazon’s sheer clout. As noted by Tom Nash over on Catholic Answers, supporting authors publishing through Amazon’s printing apparatus would be a case of material cooperation, not formal cooperation. Material cooperation, particularly in this day and age, is almost impossible to avoid but it is not a sin because:

“Typically, material cooperation isn’t prohibited because of the remote nature of it. And it’s often very hard to avoid, e.g., paying taxes and not being able to control how your tax monies are used by the government for “family planning” that includes contraceptives and abortions, including for Third World countries. Also, you may end up “majoring in the minors” by becoming preoccupied with self-imposed boycotts that aren’t morally necessary.”

Verity Lucia, among others, is doing her best to reach teens whom Amazon’s programs might otherwise harm. I cannot think of a better way to charitably tell Amazon to change course than by supporting a Catholic author doing her best to save souls through her writing. Should the Catholics writing and publishing through the sole largest POD publishing branch of Amazon finally receive enough support from Catholic readers, maybe the company will pull support from various agencies against Church teaching because most of their market wants them to do so.

Or maybe some Catholic authors will make enough money to start and grow their own print-on-demand companies and make them as big as Amazon. We will not know until more readers stand up and seek what is good and true in the independent author sphere, though. So if you are looking for a book for your teen, try HIDDEN: Don’t Fear the Unseen today. It might be just what she needs – or what you need.