The Hollow by Jessica Verday

Plot

There isn't really much of a plot to the book and in a way that's not the negative thing that it probably should be. The book focuses on Abbey, a girl who has just lost her best friend Kristen. Kristen has vanished from the bridge near Sleepy Hollow cemetery. While Abbey is at the memorial service she sees a mysterious guy in the distance. This guy turns out to be Caspian, a guy who seems to appear around Abbey a lot. Thats about as much as I can tell you without giving anything away.

Writing Style

The writing style is beautifully descriptive and in that sense it reminds me of Michelle Zink's prophecy of the Sisters. As much as I liked the writing it had its flaws as descriptive as it was, it was lacking where it really needed description. At the end of the book all I knew about Abbey was that she had black curly hair, she liked to make perfume and that she wasn't tall enough to reach the bottom of a bin. The same has to be said of all the characters. Though this has it's advantages because, as the reader, you have pretty much free reign to imagine what the characters look like.

Characters

The characters are, for me, believable. Kristen is definitely my pesonal favourite. All you know of her is from memories and diary entries and that's precisely why I like her. In my opnion it's Kristen's story because her death is at the heart of everything, she's the one who started these chain of events, even if it was unintentionally.

Abbey is a beautiful character who is filled with such sorrow that sometimes it overwhelmed me. I love her quirky hobby, it's nice to see a character like her who isn't into poetry or art.

Caspian (whose name reminds me of Narnia #4) is really hard to explain although I do think he's a bit of an idiot.

Other characters in the book aren't really worth mentioning as they are just a means to an end. None of them are really fully developed.

Overall

Overall I'm not entirely sure what to make of this book. It's beautifully written but there feels like there's stuff missing. I would recommend the book but only because I think it's one of those books where everybody sees it in a different way. The story is beautiful and I love that about the book. So many stories have a different variation of the same plot but this is different.

I can't help but wish that there was more to it though, something was lacking but maybe these issues will be resolved in the next book, The Haunted.

I'm going to give it three stars for some awesome description and some characters that stay with you after you've put the book down.

I got the image off google. No copyright infringement was intended.