INFORMATION ABOUT THIS BOOK
Publisher : Nancy Paulsen Books
Publication date : April 2021
Format: Hardcover, Paperback, audiobook, and ebook
Print length : 304 pages
Genre: YA Dark Fantasy Fiction
WHY DID I GET THIS BOOK?
I got this book in a Buy-one-get-one-half-off sale at Barnes & Noble. Not sure why specifically this book, but I had already picked one book, and I needed a second one. The cover, in my opinion, is stunning. And the premise made it sound like a fun book. I bought it.
MY PERSONAL OPINION: “HOUSE OF HOLLOW”
I truly liked this book. From the very first chapter, the story captured me. I am not a big fan of YA because, at times, I can find the characters too… boring? childlike? entitled? But this time, in House of Hollow, the main character, Iris, was an enticing, smart, courageous teen, and I liked her a lot.
The story I found fascinating: three sisters, one on New Year’s Eve in Edinburgh, are walking together ahead of their parents when suddenly they disappear. They appear back one month later, and even though they are the “same,” they are not. Their parents, especially their dad, start having fits of delusion, saying that they are not his daughters, that they are impostors.
There are definitely strange things around them, and the three sisters grow up to become incredibly beautiful in their own way. When Grey (the oldest sister) disappears (or is kidnapped?), Vivi (the middle sister) and Iris embark on a journey to get her back. During the journey, they start to understand who they are, with the truth revealing itself at the end.
The characters were solid: the sisters, the parents, Yang (Grey’s boyfriend), and many others throughout the story. For me, the most impressive part is that this story at times was so eerie, so mysterious, and so unexpectedly scary. I was not expecting to read the last half of the book almost without stopping, trying to figure out what happened to the sisters when they were kidnapped. How did the sisters become so strange and so powerful?
I loved this book. If you like eerie, supernatural YA, this book is for you. The writing was fast-paced; it took you places through the story that were weird. It was, in my opinion, a sad story, but it was a sad story I was happy to read.
PREMISE OF THE BOOK AS FOUND IN AMAZON / GOODREADS:
Iris Hollow and her two older sisters are unquestionably strange. Ever since they disappeared on a suburban street in Scotland as children only to return a month a later with no memory of what happened to them, odd, eerie occurrences seem to follow in their wake. And they’re changing. First, their dark hair turned white. Then, their blue eyes slowly turned black. They have insatiable appetites yet never gain weight. People find them disturbingly intoxicating, unbearably beautiful, and inexplicably dangerous.
But now, ten years later, seventeen-year-old Iris Hollow is doing all she can to fit in and graduate high school on time–something her two famously glamourous globe-trotting older sisters, Grey and Vivi, never managed to do. But when Grey goes missing without a trace, leaving behind bizarre clues as to what might have happened, Iris and Vivi are left to trace her last few days. They aren’t the only ones looking for her though. As they brush against the supernatural they realize that the story they’ve been told about their past is unraveling and the world that returned them seemingly unharmed ten years ago, might just be calling them home.
MY RATING: 4.5
OTHER BOOKS BY KRYSTAL SUTHERLAND
- The Invocations
- Our Chemical Hearts
- A Semi-definitive List of Worse Nightmares
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