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A review by mollyofgreengables
Hollow by Karina Halle
3.0
I was given a free ARC to review this book.
The premise is great - Sleepy Hollow retelling, school for witches, age gap, MMF. There’s a lot of creepiness to be had, and that’s perfect for the spooky season.
I enjoyed the plot and liberties that KH took with this retelling. I think it has great potential, and I’m hopeful that I enjoy the sequel more.
I think this one just wasn’t for me. Some of the sexual aspects just didn’t jive. I love a good smut book, but this, at times, felt like sex for the sake of it and it didn’t really drive the relationships or plot forward. It’s also a little insta-love/insta-lust. I’m not a fan of insta-love, and I do believe there’s a reason for it coming, but for now it’s just something I’m not a fan of. We’ll see if there’s more to it than that in Legend.
Part of the issue for me was with the monster. He is possessing one of the MMCs and is driven to have sex with her and it just feels so random and gross. It’s aggressive and predatory which is probably the point. But it’s not good. I don’t like where that’s going - if he, as the monster, sleeps with her, I’m gonna feel some type of way about it. It just didn’t work for me. It was just too sex for the sake of sex the way it came across.
Some of the dialogue didn’t sound realistic but that’s also probably because of the who the character was - she’s supposed to be odd.
I think this book just needed more time and another pass by a developmental editor. It could have been so great, and that’s why I’m so hesitant to rate this 3.
I think there are a lot of good elements. But there also several that just took me out of it and I couldn’t get past. I love KH, so I’ll try Legend.
The premise is great - Sleepy Hollow retelling, school for witches, age gap, MMF. There’s a lot of creepiness to be had, and that’s perfect for the spooky season.
I enjoyed the plot and liberties that KH took with this retelling. I think it has great potential, and I’m hopeful that I enjoy the sequel more.
I think this one just wasn’t for me. Some of the sexual aspects just didn’t jive. I love a good smut book, but this, at times, felt like sex for the sake of it and it didn’t really drive the relationships or plot forward. It’s also a little insta-love/insta-lust. I’m not a fan of insta-love, and I do believe there’s a reason for it coming, but for now it’s just something I’m not a fan of. We’ll see if there’s more to it than that in Legend.
Part of the issue for me was with the monster. He is possessing one of the MMCs and is driven to have sex with her and it just feels so random and gross. It’s aggressive and predatory which is probably the point. But it’s not good. I don’t like where that’s going - if he, as the monster, sleeps with her, I’m gonna feel some type of way about it. It just didn’t work for me. It was just too sex for the sake of sex the way it came across.
Some of the dialogue didn’t sound realistic but that’s also probably because of the who the character was - she’s supposed to be odd.
I think this book just needed more time and another pass by a developmental editor. It could have been so great, and that’s why I’m so hesitant to rate this 3.
I think there are a lot of good elements. But there also several that just took me out of it and I couldn’t get past. I love KH, so I’ll try Legend.