House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland ISBN: 9780593110362
Published by Penguin on April 6, 2021
Genres: Contemporary, Horror
Pages: 302
Format: eBook
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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.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, going into this book. I remembered Shannon said it was bizarre, but nothing else. Which is the ideal way to go into this book. Be forewarned, though: there is a decent amount of body horror here (which took me a bit by surprise).
Iris and her sisters are strange. You know from page one that they’re otherworldly and somehow people have just adapted around them, writing off the strangeness. But Iris strives for normalcy, so as things start to spiral out of her comfort zone, she takes us on an unbelievable journey into past and present.
I didn’t have any problems suspending disbelief about 90% of the time. Mainly I kept asking myself how they (the family, and then Iris and Vivi) could afford to eat so dang much. One nurse’s salary buying 2 weeks’ worth of groceries every few days? It seemed a stretch.
The ending was not quite what I’d hoped for, as it seemed pretty immoral, to me. And the prose occasionally got a bit purple, more than necessary to set the scene or create a mood. But as a creepy and quick read, it did the job. I finished it in 3 days! It also went in a different direction than anticipated, which made it creepier than expected.
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