Fantasy has always been one of my favorite genres to dip into when I'm in a reading slump. In 2021, I randomly chose to read House of Hollow and was left speechless when I finished it. Krystal Sutherland is a seriously underrated fantasy writer and it's hard to believe House of Hollow didn't go as viral as it should have.
Amazon Studios developed a cinematic adaptation of Sutherland's first novel, Chemical Hearts (2016).
SYPNOSIS: 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.
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I've always mentioned that the cover of a book is what draws me in first and in the case of House of Hollows, I also fell in love with the cover. It's unique in a dark, eerie sense, and I'm not complaining. Whoever designed that cover deserves a raise.
I think that the book's cover perfectly captures the tone of the novel. House of Hollow is a dark fairy tale revolved around the three Hollow sisters. The storyline is strongly original and the natural setting of the novel is exceptionally detailed. It's so aesthetic that I wanted to annotate the entire book!
“Why are you so beautiful, do you think? So hungry? So able to bend the wills of those around you? You are like the death flowers that grow rampant in your wake: lovely to look at, intoxicating even, but get too close and you will soon learn that there is something rank beneath. That’s what beauty often is, in nature. A warning. A disguise.”
You get what I mean? The words of Krystal Sutherland are so perfectly curated that they completely capture the unsettling atmosphere you experience when you first read this book. Since this novel has a horror element, I might easily classify it as such as well. I'm disappointed this wasn't a book series itself.
The novel is only 290 pages long, so it won't take long to read. Iris and Vivi were solid major characters with conflicting personalities. House of Hollow, a Brothers Grimm inspired fairytale, takes you on a journey through sisterhood unlike any other.
“We were sisters. We felt each other’s pain. We caused each other’s pain. We knew the smell of each other’s morning breath. We made each other cry. We made each other laugh. We got angry, pinched, kicked, screamed at each other. We kissed, on the forehead, nose on nose, butterfly eyelashes swept against cheeks. We wore each other’s clothes. We stole from each other, treasured objects hidden under pillows. We defended each other. We lied to each other. We pretended to be older people, other people. We played dress up. We spied on each other. We possessed each other like shiny things. We loved each other with potent, fervent fury. Animal fury. Monstrous fury.”
If you're a fan of anything gothic and mysterious, don't give a second thought and get this book immediately. You wont regret it.
TWs : alcohol abuse, nudity, drugs, kidnapping
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