264 reviews for:

The Hollow

Jessica Verday

3.47 AVERAGE


I went into The Hollow hoping for a rich, atmospheric ghost story. Instead, what I got was yet another unoriginal, badly-written 500 page insight into every thought and feeling that runs through the mind of an infatuated high school girl dealing with her first crush. And although it was obvious from the beginning that The Hollow was a paranormal romance, Verday waited until there were only 50 pages left before the “surprise”… and then abruptly left the reader hanging with plenty of plot-holes and absolutely no explanations. It seems as though Verday was trying to create a modern slow-paced gothic romance. Usually I’d devour such a novel, but Verday’s writing style left something to be desired and I found myself rolling my eyes as cliché after cliché made an appearance.

Verday’s two leads, Abbey and – wait for it – Caspian – tick just about all the boxes on the Mary Sue/Gary Stu Litmus test. Caspian acts like a flatter, less appealing clone of every other romantic lead in YA paranormal romance these days. Abbey gained my sympathy at first, but quickly lost it when she went from bereaved best friend to dim-witted ghost whisperer. Even then, she seemed to have no personality other than her perfume-making skills, and despite her good grades she was painfully blind to everything going on around her. In fact, before the big reveal, nothing supernatural even crosses her mind, despite the fact that she’s supposedly obsessed with the town’s gothic legend.

The ending aggravated me most of all, because so many things were revealed but left unexplained. Silly little things. Like,
Spoilerhow could Nikolas and Katy make tea and knit scarves for Abbey if they were dead? And if the black streak in Caspian’s hair is what marks him out as a shade, why did he have it when he was still alive?
And that brings me to another problem I had with Abbey. When Caspian tells her that a stripe of his hair magically turned black after a near-death incident, she accepts this explanation without giving it another thought. Um… why? And when the same guy watches her from afar in a cemetery and then suddenly appears in her dead best friend’s basement… she doesn’t find that odd at all? If I were Abbey I would be running for the hills screaming “ghost” two pages in. But instead, we get pages and pages of awkward, painfully stilted conversation between them. Despite the beautifully gothic setting and Verday’s obvious attempt to appeal to the Twilight audience, there’s absolutely no chemistry between the two leads.

The secondary plotlines are no better. We have all the usual clichés. Bitchy cheerleaders; an unsociable girl driven even further down the social ladder with the demise of her best friend; a new overfriendly friend giving our heroine long lingering looks every time she walks by... there’s the obligatory prom scene, too. Every American YA novel written post-Twilight needs a prom scene, right? It’s pretty much mandatory.

I’ve ranted on long enough. I’ve given The Hollow 1.5 stars because I think Verday could redeem herself with the next book. I’ll read it, because I want to know if my questions are answered. But I’m not holding out much hope for it.

pmmdive26's review

4.0
adventurous lighthearted fast-paced
trupps's profile picture

trupps's review

3.0

This book was amazing! I love how it incorporated the book " the legend of sleepy hollow" by washongton irving with a paranormal reality twist! The mystery was so amazing. And the story captivating. I felt pike i could Smell abbey's perfumes as she mixed them, and the heavy rain as it drenched her. Over all, its a very creative and romantic book, unlike any ive read in awhile.

smithers815's review

5.0

There is so much to say about this amazing novel that I don’t know where to start!! Abbey is a typical teenager except for the fact that her best friend, Kristen, recently vanished from the bridge near the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and everyone thinks that she is dead. Abbey doesn’t want to believe them because they haven’t found Kristen’s body. While seeming to fool everyone into believing that she is indeed mourning the death of her best friend, Abbey meets a series of people who begin to play more important roles in her life as she spends more and more time in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Caspian, a gorgeous and mysterious boy, shows up seemingly out of nowhere at Kristen’s funeral and continues to show up and allows Abbey to explore emotions and feelings that she finds both exciting and frightening. While her relationship with Caspian blooms Abbey discovers that her best friend had been keeping major secrets from her, ones that could have changed both of their lives forever. Abbey feels betrayed by Kristen’s secrets and turns to Caspian who clearly has secrets that he is not willing to share with Abbey. She begins to feel that maybe she can come to some sort of understanding she discovers something that could easily break her façade and presents a major test when it comes to her love for Caspian and even her own well being. Abbey has to decide whether her new found love or her well being are more important in the grand scheme of things and realizes that her decision could change her life in more ways than one.

Seriously… I cannot wait for you all to get your hands on this book!! It is amazing and will have you hooked from the very beginning. I love it when an author reels you in and you become completely invested in a book so much so that you don’t realize that you are 400 pages into a book and dreading it coming to an end. I also love that it is going to be a trilogy because there were so many little things that were touched on in this novel that have me still reeling and wondering but I am going to have to wait to find out the answers until later. AHHH! That drives me nuts and makes me want to harass Jessica Verday (but I promise I won’t)!! I love, also, that she WROTE this entire book in notebooks originally… most of us are so stuck in the technology world that we forget the magic of pen and paper. Oh and another thing I love is that she is bringing back one of my favorite legends and putting a new spin on it! I am dying for the next book and hope that I get it early too!! I may have to get on my knees and beg… and believe me, with this book, I am NOT past that!!

I got into over 100 pages of this book after buying the whole trilogy. I just could not get into it and returned the books the very next day. Reading The Synopsis I was really hoping it would be great, I was horribly mistaken.

I got into over 100 pages of this book after buying the whole trilogy. I just could not get into it and returned the books the very next day. Reading The Synopsis I was really hoping it would be great, I was horribly mistaken.

I really enjoyed this book. I only gave it four stars because it seemed very little actually happened in the book, but I feel like it probably was working to set up the characters and backstory for the rest of the trilogy. I could be wrong.

I felt a lot of sympathy for Abbey. Losing your best friend at such a young age has to be terrible. I lost a friend at 13 and was devastated, and my relationship with him was nowhere near as close or intense as Abbey's with Kristen. On top of that, to be suffering the pains of first love...rough.

I love the twist the story took, and the tie-in of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, an awesome story that doesn't get enough attention. I also really love ghost stories...my favorite paranormal element.
naduah82's profile picture

naduah82's review

2.0

This book was a little disappointing for me. I thought it would be more on the paranormal YA side, but instead it could have been pretty much just YA. There was nothing paranormal about it until the end of the book. The only reason I read it all the way through is because I was waiting for the climax of the story...of course for me that wasn't until the end of the story. Overall this isn't a terrible book, just more plain YA than paranormal YA. If there is a sequel to this book I will probably read it just to see if the story gets better.
jessgaroutte's profile picture

jessgaroutte's review

5.0

Truly one of the best books I have ever read. The story was well thought put and extremely well put together, a great extenuation of a classic story. Verday is a very talented author, her ability to pull you into the story and make you feel like you are Abbey astounds me. The only thing that upset me was that I did not have the second book ready to read after finishing it. Good job:)

So the story took forever to go anywhere, and not much actually happened. Abbey's best friend, Kristen, died under mysterious circumstances, and yet only a handful of pages were about that mystery. The majority of the book is Abbey being alone or about how much she is in love with the mysterious, yet dull, Caspian. There was almost no chemistry between these two characters. I also must note that this book was over 500 pages! The page count could easily have been cut in half. I will be reading the entire series since I own it, but these books will probably be donated shortly after.