Reviews

Hollow House by Greg Chapman

artean's review against another edition

4.0

This book took a little long to get going for such a short read. once it catches it's footing though its off to the races. I, more than once, found myself making comparisons to Lovecraftian horror while reading Hollow House. For me, that's a good thing. Definitely worth the read.

dnemec's review against another edition

2.0

I'm teetering on the edge between 2 and 3 stars, but I think I have to knock it back to 2. I ran through the book in day and while I feel like it started strong, it ended rather flat.

buzzard's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Loveable characters? No

1.0

csummer74's review against another edition

2.0

Scary and creepy in some places, but not enough to make up for the boring and stupid parts. A house so evil that it infects the entire street. A dark, soul-eating entity. A cast of incompetent characters that succumb, one after the other, to the evil around them. The ending was quick, awkward, and unresolved.

erincolleen's review against another edition

1.0

Wish I'd downloaded a sample...

Given the high star rating, I didn't download a sample before buying this title. I regret that now. I only got about a third of the way into the book before I put it aside. I'm a sucker for a good haunted house story. This one has promise but it needs a good editor. The prose is painfully florid and dramatic. At times this is used intentionally (one of the characters is a suicidal emo teenage girl), but more often, it reads as the unintentional result of focusing more on style than story. The author does a whole lot more telling than showing, and some obvious errors, like misplaced commas and contradictory descriptions, could've been caught by a good copyeditor. (For instance, in one paragraph, a character strains his arms, flailing for something to grab onto. A few sentences later, he realizes his body is paralyzed.)

aziz_reads's review against another edition

3.0

I feel like this book started out well enough. It was rocky, but interesting enough to keep you reading. The introduction of each character kept me curious enough to keep turning the pages. I do feel like some characters were better developed than others, and that may just be a result of having too many characters involved. The main story itself was an interesting concept and if the Evil Thing in this book had been anything like the Evil Thing in My Best Friend's Exorcism or the Evil Thing in Daughters Unto Devils I might have been more interested. As it was, I feel like there wasn't any real moral or psychological dilemma--it turned into your average everyday Ghost/demon/boy/house/whatever killing people in graphic and sometimes disturbing ways.

I guess if you're into Man Vs God, you'll like this book. I prefer Man Vs Man or Man vs. self (although in this case I guess man vs. real demons instead of inner ones) , myself, and would have liked to see the same story, but with a different style of evil.

jbamlove's review against another edition

2.0

2 stars instead of 1 because the premise or twist or whatever is different-ish, otherwise, uninteresting, flat, even terrible at times.

elise1995's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide attempt

alanbaxter's review

3.0

A solid debut novel from Chapman, this is a clever horror story managing a wide cast of characters with aplomb. Worth a read.