House of Hollow | ARC Review

Synopsis

Seventeen-year-old Iris Hollow has always been strange. Something happened to her and her two older sisters when they were children, something they can’t quite remember but that left each of them with an identical half-moon scar at the base of their throats.

Iris has spent most of her teenage years trying to avoid the weirdness that sticks to her like tar. But when her eldest sister, Grey, goes missing under suspicious circumstances, Iris learns just how weird her life can get: horned men start shadowing her, a corpse falls out of her sister’s ceiling, and ugly, impossible memories start to twist their way to the forefront of her mind.

As Iris retraces Grey’s last known footsteps and follows the increasingly bizarre trail of breadcrumbs she left behind, it becomes apparent that the only way to save her sister is to decipher the mystery of what happened to them as children.

The closer Iris gets to the truth, the closer she comes to understanding that the answer is dark and dangerous – and that Grey has been keeping a terrible secret from her for years.

Review

Us meets Stranger Things in this haunting, unsettling, creepy, and shocking book.

I was so intrigued with this book from the start! Creepy things were already beginning to happen around our main character, Iris, when her sister went missing. That’s when things really got interesting. The beautiful part about this book, and part of the reason I stayed so enraptured, was because of the way the author set this book up. She would feed us little nuggets of information, plant little seeds of secrets, throughout the book until she could reveal everything at the end. I was being strung along and I didn’t mind one bit.

Also, I thought it was interesting that this was classified as a fairytale. I’m so used to the pleasant and cutesy fairytales with lovely endings and valiant characters. That was not this book. This book is horror through and through. Just when you think you know someone, BAM, you’re hit with the bombshell that rocks your world. I need more fairytales like this!

Also, I thought the ending for this book was totally appropriate. It’s a little open-ended, but I wouldn’t have expected anything different. Things wouldn’t have felt right if the book had been tied up with a bow at the end. The open-ended terror at the end allows my imagination to wander and wonder.

Overall, I’m not a fan of horror books, but I couldn’t get enough of this one! It’s incredibly unsettling so if you have a weak stomach, this one is probably not for you. For the rest of you, check this one out!

Disclaimer: I voluntarily read and reviewed a gifted and advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Rating

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