House of Hollow: A Gothic Modern Fairytale That Will Seep Into Your Skin

• Author: Krystal Sutherland

• Genre: YA Fiction, Horror

• Published by: Hot Key Books

• Published date: 2021

• Pages: 296

• 3.5/5 stars

• Available at Waterstones or Amazon

“What you don’t understand,” she said to me once when I told her how dangerous it was, “is that I am the thing in the dark.”

How I came across this book

During the spooky season of October, my need to watch anything horror related takes over me. I become a little obsessed scrolling through Netflix and Prime Video in search of something that will have me hiding behind my hands for the majority. But I’ve never made a huge effort to seek out horror books, and booksellers, namely Foyles and Waterstones, never really make that much of a splash in celebration of Halloween. This

year I took to the Googles and searched for various horror reads, which is how I came across House of Hollow.

Less scary and more eerie with a strong gothic element, this dark fairy tale was rich in description, well-paced and completely binge-worthy. However, since finishing the book and reflecting, my opinion on it is somewhat torn. Let’s kick off and I’ll tell you why.

What’s it all about?

When three young sisters, Grey, Iris and Vivi, mysteriously vanish and then reappear one month later, everyone wants to know what happened to them during that time – even the girls themselves. But something is different about the sisters: they’ve returned with milky white hair, black eyes, matching scars on their throats, and milk teeth that had regrown during their disappearance. Now, odd and eerie things happen whenever they’re close by. You could say their presence is almost spellbinding…

When Grey goes missing, Iris and Vivi must solve the mystery and follow the set of clues left by their big sister, but time is against them as they are no

t the only ones hunting her down.

This journey has them travelling around a modern London where a dark, magical existence sprouts from the corners, and leads them back to the world that returned them all those years ago.

The verdict

A short, pacy read at 292 pages, I burnt through this book very quickly. I found the enigma around the three girls the most compelling aspect of the story. I needed to know why they disappeared, what happened where they went, who took them, why did they return so different? They were like ethereal creatures, with the ability to manipulate the people around them. Others were fearful of them, which meant the sisters stuck together more, strengthening their sibling bond so it was them against the world. As much as I love a good romance, reading about a strong friendship or a familial bond like this one is very refreshing.

My interest did start to wane in the latter half of the book. Sutherland’s descriptions are very macabre and her botanical references were vivid and deliciously repulsive, but when you get 50 pages in, there really are only so many ways you can describe rots and smells and over the course of the book – it gets a tad exhausting.

“The forest crept in and around them, tearing them apart, but they also rotted from inside, sagging into the water, their walls collapsing into soft masses of putrefaction.”

The journey the sister’s went on also felt convoluted, not many answers were revealed quickly enough and the twist at the end fell a bit flat. Minor characters were introduced for too short a period of time, or weren’t fleshed out enough for me to be able to sympathise whenever something major happened. My brain also struggled with the rotting botanical references in a modern London, like some demented version of Kew Gardens. I’m not sure it worked for me at all. Although, tell me there’s a magical platform at King’s Cross Station that takes you to Hogwarts, I’m totally willing to believe.

The more and more I read nowadays, the more LGBTQ+ representation I’m seeing. This is especially important in books aimed at a younger audience who are still in the process of carving out their own identities. One of the sisters is bi, and the other is gay, the point isn’t laboured, it just is what it is. Loved that.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the various triggers littered throughout the book. I’ve listed them separately below, but the one main thing I’d like to call out here is the descriptions given to the sisters who were all beautiful and thin. After their disappearance, they came back with an insatiable appetite where they would binge eat to curb their craving, and yet they were ‘still skinny, not so much a bump’. This personally feeds into a bit of a warped depiction of what beauty is and glorifies binge eating which is dangerous territory to be in. It could have been avoided as it didn’t do much to the overall plot.

“I ate until my mouth bled and my jaw ached from chewing. Even when all the new groceries were devoured, I downed an old can of beans, a box of stale cereal, and a tin of shortbread.”

While reading House of Hollow, I did enjoy it more than my final thoughts may suggest. It’s funny how some books make you feel something in the moment, but on reflection you can come out somewhere else entirely.

Negatives aside, this book was “unputdownable”. Similar to the way the people fell under the Hollow sister’s spell, I felt a compulsion to keep reading which lead to me demolishing this book within a few days. What this book has definitely done, is reignite my passion for magical realism. When the world right now is like a dystopian novel, why not spend a couple blissful hours believing in magical lands, in all its technicolour glory?

Other books from this author: Our Chemical Hearts, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares

Trigger warnings: Alcoholism, violence, guns, suicide, kidnapping/abduction, blood and gore, assault, eating disorders

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