LoveReading4Kids Says
LoveReading4Kids Says
April 2021 Book of the Month
This exquisitely creepy YA shocker whirls with gritty horror, witty one-liners, Insta-worthy visual conjurations and the menacing mystery of three bewitching sisters who vanished in childhood.
“Dark dangerous things happened around the Hollow sisters. We each had black eyes and hair as white as milk...We didn’t have friends, because we didn’t need them.” So explains the youngest sister, Iris. As children, the three sisters vanished one New Year’s Eve on the strike of midnight and reappeared with their hair and eyes a different colour, tiny baby teeth in place of their adult teeth, and no memory. “In possession of an alchemical self-confidence that belonged to much older humans,” Iris’ older sisters have “set off into the world, both bound for the glamorous, exotic futures they’d always known they were destined for”, leaving her alone in North London with her mother.
Sinister bells toll when seventeen-year-old Grey, a supermodel and designer of decadent couture “who looked like sex and smelled like a field of wildflowers”, fails to turn up to middle sister Vivi’s punk gig in Camden, and then there’s the mystery of the man wearing a horned skull. There are books with unexpected twists, then there’s House of Hollow - imagine losing your way in a decaying fairy tale forest, where tangled tree roots trip you up, and you have no idea what terrors skulk within its ever-shifting mists. At times grisly and always eerie, this intoxicating cocktail of contemporary horror and mythic menace is a lushly-written feast.
Joanne Owen
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About
House of Hollow Synopsis
'Stepping nimbly among the liminal spaces and eerie real-world haunts of our heroine's cipher-sister, this haunting modern fairytale will wrap you up like a glittering fog, before going for your throat.' Melissa Albert, author of The Hazel WoodIris 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. People find them disturbingly intoxicating, unbearably beautiful and inexplicably dangerous.Now, ten years later, seventeen-year-old Iris Hollow is doing all she can to fit in and graduate high school - something her two famously glamorous globe-trotting older sisters, Grey and Vivi, never managed to do. But when Grey goes missing, leaving behind only bizarre clues, Iris and Vivi are left to trace her last few days. They aren't the only ones looking for her. As they brush against the supernatural, they realise that the story they've been told about their past is unravelling and the world that returned them seemingly unharmed ten years ago, might just be calling them home.Krystal Sutherland's latest novel is a dark and twisty modern-day fairytale that expertly melds the fantastical with the real as the Hollow sisters discover just how much horror can lie beneath the surface.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781760147587 |
| Publication date: |
30th March 2021 |
| Author: |
Krystal Sutherland |
| Publisher: |
Penguin Random House Australia |
| Format: |
Ebook (Epub) |
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Press Reviews
Krystal Sutherland Press Reviews
Stepping nimbly among the liminal spaces and eerie real-world haunts of our heroine's cipher-sister, this haunting modern fairy tale will wrap you up like a glittering fog, before going for your throat. -- Melissa Albert
This dark, deliciously twisted novel has everything you could hope for as a reader - a brilliant concept, glamorous characters with secrets to hide, immersive world building, and some of the finest writing I've seen in YA fiction. I'll put it like this - I am obsessed with the House of Hollow. -- Louise O'Neill
Dark and delicious, House of Hollow hums with malice and mystery. I devoured it whole. -- Kiran Millwood Hargrave
In House of Hollow, Krystal Sutherland turns her razor-sharp imagination to new horizons and proves, once again, that words blossom at her command. This story will steal up your spine, slip beneath your skin, and stick to you like honey. -- Samantha Shannon
Utterly gripping, deliciously strange and haunting -- Katherine Rundell
Alive with lush language and a dark fairy tale feel, this is a compelling readalike for lovers of Holly Black's many wonderful fair folk standalones and series. -- Abby Bussen - School Library Journal
Iris' smart and assured narration easily carries a fast-paced story entwining themes of grief and loss with elements of folklore and some very inventive body horror. The pervasive feeling of dread builds to a shocking twist. A lush and darkly twisted modern fairy tale. - Kirkus
Author
About Krystal Sutherland
The child of Jehovah's Witnesses, Krystal was forbidden from ever reading Harry Potter, a rule she broke at the age of 10 when she stole a copy from the local library and smuggled it into her bedroom. She's been an avid reader ever since.
Krystal has lived in Sydney and Amsterdam where she worked as a magazine editor and foreign correspondent for Hijacked, one of Australia's largest youth culture websites. She was also shortlisted for the Queensland Young Writers Award. Our Chemical Hearts, Krystal's debut novel, was published to great acclaim.
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