House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland

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.

Goodreads Synopsis

Overall Rating

3/5

Quick Take

House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland is like nothing else I have ever read. It is filled with fantastical elements that border on horror, and the entire is laced with thrills. I was utterly captivated.

Tell Me More

So, I was super intrigued by this book. A trio of sisters who go missing and come back different, but can’t remember what happened to them? Yes, please! That’s right up my alley. The mystery and intrigue were palpable from the get-go, and I found the story to be compulsively readable. It was creepy and fantastical at the same time, and while it is a YA novel, it did not feel like it.

The story is told from the perspective of Iris, the youngest of the three sisters. It follows her as she tries to find her eldest sister, Grey, with her other sister, Vivi, and Grey’s boyfriend, Tyler, after Grey goes missing. Grey is a rather elusive character, and I got manic pixie dream girl vibes from her, which I wasn’t too fond of (however, I think, now, that this might have been used as satire). Grey was wholly self-absorbed and pretentious (especially the descriptions of her as a fashion model and her designs as a fashion designer). But the mystique surrounding her and the sisters’ situation kept me entertained, especially since none of them seemed exactly human.

The beauty of the novel was that information was given to the reader in a trickle, which always kept me guessing. I also found the fantastical elements to be completely original, and Sutherland’s idea of life after death and those who get left behind was incredibly fascinating. I have never read a novel like this one, and I have already begun to collect Sutherland’s other novels.

The only reason I gave this novel 3/5 stars and not a higher rating is because of how short it was and that I felt it didn’t allow time to fully develop the complex ideas that were represented. The story started abruptly and ended the same way, and I would have loved to see the book be longer in order to allow time for these fully fledged ideas to form.

However, if you enjoy creepy fantasy with a thriller edge, I highly recommend this book for you! It will keep you thinking for a long time, as it has done for me.