House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland - most popular YA thriller of 2021

Summary

Iris, Vivi, and Grey are the three Hollow sisters with a disturbing past. When they were little, they disappeared right before the eyes of their parents Cate and Gabe. The parents and the police put in every effort to find the girls, but they hit a dead end. A month later, a woman walking on the street found three girls huddled together naked in the cold. They were the Hollow Girls.

What happened in that month? Where did they go? They remember nothing. But they returned with a moon-shaped scar on their neck. Gabe could not accept that these returned girls were his dear daughters, and he went crazy with this obsession to prove it and finally killed himself.

Back to the present day, where the girls are all grown-ups and Grey is a famous supermodel. But then one day Vivi and Iris discover that she has disappeared again. The two girls set out to find their missing elder sister using an uncanny ability to be able to sense each other’s presence in the surroundings. They stumble upon a world not meant for living souls. Their quest also leads them to discover what happened in the month they disappeared. Was their father crazy or was what he said true?

My review

The fairy-tale story was convincing and the writing was catchy. But honestly, I wasn’t wowed by it. Also, the scary parts were not so scary for me. I wanted something that keeps me up at night, but sadly this book didn’t fall in that category.

Also, I was a little disgusted with the amount of throwing up in the whole book. I think at least one person was vomiting some crazy shit out on every other page. Yack!

But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good book. It was definitely worth 3.5 to 4 stars or something mid-way.  The story had me turning pages and finding out if the conclusion I had come to was matching with the actual story or not. And I loved the concept of a doorway – that leads somewhere but now leads to somewhere else. It was sufficiently spooky. And yet again the concept that sisters can be exactly similar in every way and yet they can be different had me appreciating the book much more.

Read it if you like YA fairy-tales turned to spooky stories or if you like stories about the sacred relationship between sisters.