Jason R. Davis ’Caught in the Web’ Review

Written by: Tera Kirk

The spiders are spreading…and drawing major attention.

At the start of Caught in the Web, the second book in Jason R. Davis’s Invisible Spiders series, the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. military have been notified that something weird is going on in Hammond, Illinois. Can they keep this disease from becoming a national disaster? Can the people of Hammond survive their “help”?

As the spider-driven horror spreads, Davis’s focus tightens—and that’s a good thing. While I felt unmoored reading the first novelHatched with its loads of characters pelting me in rapid-fire succession, Caught in the Web settles on three major groups of people: the scientists trying to study the problem, the military trying to contain it, and the townspeople trying to survive it. For instance, many familiar faces (and some new ones) hole themselves up in a bar to wait out the disaster; just putting a bunch of characters in one place makes the story easier to follow 

Then again, I’m partial to the people in the bar—one of them is my favorite character in the series up to this point. A friend of the bar owner’s son named Sullivan, he’s watched so many horror movies that he’s a) prepared his whole life for this kind of catastrophe, and b) enjoying the hell out of it. His interactions with his best bud Jason bring much-needed levity to the story, and their closeness is nice to see. 

Caught in the Web suffers from the same grammatical errors and repetitive writing as its predecessor, but its sharper focus makes for a more engaging story. And the ending really whets my appetite for what will happen next. 

Order it here,

Rating: 2.5/5