I fell in love with T. Kingfisher when I heard LeVar Burton read Jackalope Wives, and I wanted to love this book, but I just did not like it much. There was so many descriptive parts that I really couldn't wrap my head around, so I couldn't picture it well in my head. It was extremely obvious what was causing the problem in the first place. Not a lot happened in the book. I didn't feel like I really got any answers. It was all very vague to me.

I received a free e-copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
I have never read a book like this. I'm a huge fantasy/SciFi fan. I've lately been venturing out, trying other genres. I discovered that I'm a fan of "grit lit" and not of thrillers. I moved on to horror. This genre also has a wide variety of content, many sub-genres. I knew I was excited about this book when I stayed up until 1am explaining it to my 21 year old non-book reading son, who replied, "if I wake up with nightmares about XXX, then..." This quote or blurb best describes it as "If Narnia meets Alien meets Poltergeist at a bar..."!!! Yes! I was hooked from the first paragraph where she describes her uncle, then the spooky hallway, then chaos ensuing. I promise you, you haven't heard this story and you'll stay up all night reading. I'm off to buy my own copy now. This may be one of my top 5 of the year, and I'm looking up all other Kingfisher novels! Whatever genre this is where fantasy meets horror, it's my new favorite thing!

The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher is a horror/fantasy mash up that follows Kara as she is going through a divorce and moving back to her uncle's house to help him run his museum of oddities. One night, Kara and her friend discover a hole in the wall that appears to lead to another time/place/dimension. Kara and Simon begin investigating the "bunker" as they call it and must find a way out and also a way to close it to keep the two worlds, and their inhabitants, separated.

This book will appeal to fans of horror and science fiction/fantasy as Kara and Simon investigate this truly bizarre world just on the other side of her uncle's museum. This book was fast paced although the action did slow down with a lot of short, choppy dialogue between Kara and Simon. I also found the characters to be a bit one-dimensional throughout the story; however, I did like that they had no idea what they were doing and just trying to figure it out along with the reader which did make them more likable in my opinion. The premise of perhaps another dimension will appeal to science fiction fans and the frightening things they find on the other side will appeal to horror fans - especially those that like their horror with a lot of gore. I think this book will appeal to readers who like their horror to have sci fi/fantasy links, although the scariest parts weren't necessarily these other dimensions but rather what was found in those dimensions/bunkers - especially the school bus and man in the water. With those parts being the scariest, I would have preferred more exploration of the various "bunkers" and the scary things on the other side. I would recommend this book to fans of horror and fantasy/sci fi books (for some reason it is categorized as fantasy in my store). With that in mind, it's multiple genres may make it harder for horror readers to find it.

My Thoughts
A short story, The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, inspired the author to write this book. Here are my pros and cons for The Hollow Places:

Pros

1. This story started out with a bang! I was immediately engrossed in the story and interested in figuring out what in the world was going on.
2. There were definitely some creepy scenes (the bus comes to mind) and I felt the world-building was creative and interesting.
3. I recognized elements of Stranger Things (Netflix series), Vivarium (movie), and Narnia (movie), among others in this book.

Cons

1. The odd attempt at humor throughout this book kind of ruined it for me... and it was frequently inappropriate humor at inappropriate times. I understand that that humor is sometimes used to deflate a tense situation, but it just didn’t work for me in this story.
2. The story included sexual references, race references, and religious insults that weren’t germane to the story. I personally found them to be quite off-putting.
3. Kara was kind of clueless. I mean seriously, how many times does a character need to have hints about what is going on practically smack her in the face before she understands? Ugh!
4. The first half of the book was a unique adventure. The characters were exploring this strange world, getting into danger, getting scared... it was great. Then the second half of the book became reading about reading a story. The narrative switches from an action novel to scenes were Kara sits in a room reading about someone else’s experience in the other world (as noted in the margins of a Bible she found). I am not a fan of that method of telling a story in general, and in this case, I feel like it brought the story to a grinding halt.

Summary
This book started out so well, but then it started to flip-flop way too much between oddly disturbing and mildly scary to cartoonish and absurd… and I started to lose interest. The non-stop snarky comedy element ultimately ruined the book for me. Perhaps if I had not anticipated a horror novel I would have felt differently, because I wouldn’t classify this a horror. Science fiction or fantasy or even humor? Yes... but way too much forced comedy for horror.

After reading this book, I decided I had to read The Willows (the author’s inspiration for this story according to the end notes) for myself. The Willows was incredibly engaging and extraordinarily scary. I really liked it. I am sorry to say, however, that while The Hollow Places had a lot of the same elements in the story (unusual otters, veils between worlds, strange boatmen, weird noises, unseen dangers, unsettling vibrations, mind-reading, disturbing holes, etc.) the end result was not the same at all. I enjoyed the original short story much more than this contemporary homage/retelling.

Thank you NetGalley and Gallery/Saga Press for a free eARC of this book, which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

Quick, fun read that could have been shorter. I went into this book expecting a bit more horror but the strangeness made up for the lack of scariness. Entertaining enough that I will check out more of T. Kingfisher’s work!

Thank you to T. Kingfisher, Gallery Books, and #NetGallery for an eARC of #TheHollowPlaces in exchange for an honest review. Review will be posted on NetGallery, Goodreads, and Facebook.

If you are looking for thriller meeting fantasy and twisted land of Narnia- this is the book for you. A recently divorced down on her luck woman goes to live in her Uncle’s crazy museum. Simon is the barrister next door with an eye that can see other dimensions. He is the perfect sidekick to help her. While caring for the museum she finds a hole in the wall that will change everything she knows. Got to love stories with a zombie otter, a world with a different bible and things that can read your thoughts.


The you Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for a copy in return for an honest review. The review is my own.

That was super strange but pretty good. Simon and Kara make a great team, snarky and sarcastic but bold and scared at the same time.

Thanks to Netgalley for this book!

Several of my friends have read and recommended this book, so I was really excited to get it from Netgalley. I was told that it’s a good creepy book, but I thought it was more silly than anything with a bit of creepiness thrown in. The premise was really intriguing, though. The best part was the snappy dialogue between the characters and in the main character’s internal dialogue.

From Goodreads: Pray they are hungry. Kara finds these words in the mysterious bunker that she’s discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncle’s house. Freshly divorced and living back at home, Kara now becomes obsessed with these cryptic words and starts exploring the peculiar bunker—only to discover that it holds portals to countless alternate realities. But these places are haunted by creatures that seem to hear thoughts…and the more you fear them, the stronger they become.

So the “hear your thoughts” part really is only a tiny bit of the plot. Kara and her friend, Simon, go through the portal and really discover some horrific things. Kara’s uncle owns a museum full of crazy things, lots of taxidermied animals, especially, so when the portal begins to take over control of Kara’s real life, the silliness begins.

I still really enjoyed this story, even though it was nowhere near as creepy as I had expected. The dialogue was clever and kept me giggling. The secrets of the portal were revealed in a creative way, and Kara was a really likable character. Overall, this was a super fun book!

I'm so glad there are many readers who find Kingfisher's stories horrific and unique. I, sadly, don't.

I liked 7th Bride okay and found The Twisted Ones fine but underwhelming. The Hollow Places is Twisted Ones shaken up and rewritten in a new setting. It's the same lonely female protagonist with an unexpected and quirky helper. They stumble upon a weird place.

It's the same story. The same characters.

But neither are scary...

I didn't finish this book. Felt like a waste of my time. I read a ton of horror, fantasy, paranormal, etc., so I am indeed the intended audience. Thank you NetGalley and Gallery Books for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Author T. Kingfisher (the pen name used by children's author Ursula Vernon for her adult writing) may have the most specific niche: modern horror novels inspired by poetic sentences from classic novels. And yet, that's exactly what she did with The Twisted Ones (inspired by an Arthur Machen line), only to do it again - and even better - with The Hollow Places (this time springing from an Algernon Blackwood story). The Hollow Places opens with a similar tone to The Twisted Ones, with a likable, fun narrator starting a new life by taking over a family-run museum of oddities. But when she discovers a hole in the wall that's bigger than the building that should be containing it...well, things get weird. Vernon delivers some genuine nightmare fuel, creating a horrifying reality that echoes Jeff VanderMeer's Area X, giving us a natural world that reeks of malevolence and utterly alien intentions. If there's a knock on The Hollow Places, it's that it's more mood than plot, with some of its few plot elements feeling a little predictable. But that's a very minor knock on a deeply creepy book with some things in here that are hard to forget once you've seen them...or even when you don't. Rating: **** ½Author T. Kingfisher (the pen name used by children's author Ursula Vernon for her adult writing) may have the most specific niche: modern horror novels inspired by poetic sentences from classic novels. And yet, that's exactly what she did with The Twisted Ones (inspired by an Arthur Machen line), only to do it again - and even better - with The Hollow Places (this time springing from an Algernon Blackwood story). The Hollow Places opens with a similar tone to The Twisted Ones, with a likable, fun narrator starting a new life by taking over a family-run museum of oddities. But when she discovers a hole in the wall that's bigger than the building that should be containing it...well, things get weird. Vernon delivers some genuine nightmare fuel, creating a horrifying reality that echoes Jeff VanderMeer's Area X, giving us a natural world that reeks of malevolence and utterly alien intentions. If there's a knock on The Hollow Places, it's that it's more mood than plot, with some of its few plot elements feeling a little predictable. But that's a very minor knock on a deeply creepy book with some things in here that are hard to forget once you've seen them...or even when you don't. Rating: **** ½

+clears throat+

I am going to preface the introduction of my review by saying that I'm going to give this book five stars anyway.

I am going to introduce my review by saying that this book has some problems.

Much like T. Kingfisher's previous story, The Twisted Ones, there are moments in this book that just hit an off note. They strike a wrong chord. You know what I mean. It's a horror story, and it's a slice of life, and those are two things that Kingfisher does startlingly well. But there are moments when one creeps into the other and you just have to wince a little and go, "No, that doesn't work the way you think it does." There was a moment in this book when our hero Kara (aka Carrot), a graphic designer, is in grave peril, and she thinks to herself that the sky above is French grey, which she then, in an extended parenthetical, goes on to describe as the grey you know that has a bit of brown mixed into it, and maybe that would have been fine, except that every time she has a thought like this, she prefaces it with the fact that she is a graphic designer which is why she knows that and this book is not what you would call long so it's not like I have forgotten that she is a graphic designer and the whole moment, the whole world, for a brief instant, just falls flat.

There are also moments of weird repetition that felt equally as unnecessary. I don't know how many times Kara is described as having some kind of borderline hysterical giggling fit where she almost giggles but doesn't, and lordy I know the feeling but I don't need to hear about it five times in the space of... a week? Ish?

That said.

This book is so deeply, powerfully visceral.

The body horror here is profound. There were moments when I was holding my ereader in one hand and holding up my other hand and just flailing wildly at the wrist as though I could shake the visuals in these pages away - and at the same time just completely, viciously engrossed in them. Maybe blame 2020, but there was more than one occasion in this book where I screamed inside my heart.

And the characters? The characters are as tangible as the distress. I am in love with Carrot and Simon. I love the conundrum that is Uncle Earl. And I desperately want to visit the Wonder Museum. I know these people. I know Kara's divorce. I know Simon's wall art. These are real people. I've met them. The are beautiful and funny and surreal. And Beau, you beautiful stupid orange cat, I have never loved a creature more.

There are moments in this book that seem banal and make you go "hmm," but the moments that make you gasp and squirm and shudder, and smile and laugh and nod outweigh them by a metric ton.

And then?

And then there are the moments that you pray that They're hungry.

The Hollow Places is creepy and . It got into my head and I can't get it out...I love stories about alternate universes but after reading The Hollow Places I do not love them as much as I used to...

Just like the other books by T. Kingfisher, The Hollow Places is very well-written, keeps you at the edge of your seat the whole time and has lovable characters you can root for.

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for my copy.

Magical, memorable, tantalizing, horrible, upsetting. Great story and well written but, sadly, falters near the end.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit I am not a fan of the horror genre at all. This was the first book I have read by T. Kingfisher's. I loved her writing style.

I picked up T. Kingfisher’s The Twisted Ones last year, and — as was the case for many horror fiends — it rapidly established itself as one of my favorite reads of the year. Naturally, I had to grab The Hollow Places as soon as possible, and it did not disappoint.

There’s good news here for anyone who has a soft spot for physical spaces not behaving as they should, as well as for alternate or alien planes of existence: The Hollow Places starts like House Of Leaves as protagonist Kara, known by her loved ones as Carrot, and her friend Simon venture into the walls of the museum of the strange and unusual run by Kara’s Uncle; then, once they’re through, the whole thing quickly turns into something akin to Annihilation/The Southern Reach Trilogy as the pair find themselves in an environment similar to, but definitely NOT our own.

In the end, though, it’s all Kingfisher. If the effigies from The Twisted Ones sent a delightful shiver down your spine… well, there’s something you’ll like in The Hollow Places, too.

Don’t take my word for it, though. Better for you to find out for yourself.

I must admit that I was really into this book. I really liked the premise of another world hidden through a portal within an antique store. The other world is unsettling and creepy and it instantly made me think of Lovecraftian horror. It is not horror in the traditional sense, but more of the psychological horror that infiltrates your nightmares.

There was some great humor to break up the creepy stuff and it was needed to bring a change to some repetitiveness. The ending was slow and it really tumbled downward once the portal was closed and I am not sure what I was expecting, but the last couple of chapters just felt like a dead stop of entertainment. There was some exposition that was just thrown out there without real build-up and it was ultimately what made me give the book a 4 instead of a 5.

One thing that I really liked was the idea of the willows being able to track you with your thoughts. There were a couple of moments that my heart was racing alongside Kara’s as she desperately tries to think of something, anything, other than the horrors that she is facing. You get the sense that something bad is going to happen and you definitely don’t want to wait around to see what it is. I also really appreciate the nods to Lovecraft and the otherworldly ventures and the fear of the tricks of the mind.

Overall, I liked the story. I thought the end was flat but perhaps I think that because the rest of the book is so active and interesting. I would be interested in reading other books by this author and while this may not be horror as most would classify it, I think it has its place within the genre. I would recommend this book to someone who is looking for a mystery novel with some horror elements that definitely have the creep factor.

Thank for the ARC and I look forward to other books by this author. You can find this review on my personal blog as well as Goodreads and Amazon.

Strangely Enjoyable

This is my first read by T. Kingfisher this is one of my first attempts at reading the genre of fantasy in 2020. I have a hard time connecting with the genre there for I am super selective. The book however had many spooky qualities that made it closer to horror for me which made me intrigued enough to want to read it. To me this book is like Alien meets The Chronicles of Narnia which shockingly enough I just finished a day ago with my nephew. At page one I fell in love with Carrots relationship with her friend Simon and what made it more enjoyable for me is that one of my closest friends has the name Simon. I felt like I was Carrot and he was in the story with me. I loved how Kara (Carrot) moves in with her Uncle and pretty much runs the museum as her uncle recovers and what is more entertaining is that while he is recovering the world comes undone. I loved every minute. There is a hole in the wall of the museum that leads to a new creepy place that the readers get to explore. creepy willows, shadow things, scary people, other worlds, bizarre bunkers, and so much more to keep the pages turning. I want to apologize for my delayed review to all involved because my delay has no baring on how good this book is. I recommend this to anyone who loves horror mixed with a little bit of fantasy. Also a Finalist in the 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards very well deserved!

The Hollow Places: A Novel by T. Kingfisher (  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Gallery/Saga Press, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1534451124

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, audio CD

T. Kingfisher is the pen name for Ursula Vernon, author of a webcomic and also the middle-grade Danny Dragonbreath books. In The Hollow Places, the author shows she can successfully and satisfyingly navigate from one genre and audience to another.

Recently divorced, Kara has moved into her uncle Earl's combination museum/curiosity shop/living space and is cataloging his jumbled collection of objects and taxidermy while she figures out what to do with her life. While she's there, a box of oddities arrives at the museum with a carving labeled "corpse otter" inside. When Earl hurts his knees badly enough that he'll need major surgery, Kara takes over running the museum in his absence, and a few days later finds a mysterious hole in the drywall in the otter room, which showcases a giant taxidermied Amazonian otter and also displays the corpse otter carving.

Kara asks Simon, the quirky (and very gay) barista at the coffee shop next door, if he can help her patch the drywall. When Kara and Simon look through the hole, they see that it opens into a hallway that shouldn't exist and decide to explore the hallway to see where it goes... that is, once they've packed flashlights, string, a tape measure, and a thermos of coffee. Both of them have seen enough horror movies to know not to split up, but not, apparently to leave locked doors alone, because they open the door at the end of the hallway to somewhere very like the Wood Between the Worlds in the Narnia books, except that instead of a wood filled with pools, it is a water world of islands swamped by willow bushes, each with a door to another world.

I had not read it before I read The Hollow Places, but at the end of the story, T. Kingfisher credits Algernon Blackwood's The Willows as an inspiration for this book. As much as I could see the influence of C.S. Lewis, it is very clear that The Hollow Places, in setting and atmosphere, owes a great deal to Blackwood's story. Kingfisher has taken elements from both authors and created something wholly original. Kara and Simon are both well-developed characters. It's enjoyable to see them interact: they are sometimes snarky, often supportive, and protective of each other. They are funny and resourceful,  and make a great team. The setting is almost a character itself: both the museum and the willow world with its many doors seem to have lives of their own. Without giving away the entire plot, I'll just say you will never look at taxidermy the same way again.

The sense of creeping dread and the feeling that we are, as Kara puts it, just a pixel away from a hostile, alien dimension, is even more disturbing and compelling in Kingfisher's book than it is in Blackwood's story. While the plot doesn't move along speedily, it has some great action sequences, especially near the end.  Certainly it is worthy of consideration for a Stoker. Highly recommended.

The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher was a good mix of horror and fun and sarcasm. I have never read any other books by this author, but I will now. I liked the "secret world" aspect of this story. The characters were unique and I enjoyed learning about them. If you like horror with some wittiness you should definitely read The Hollow Places. Thanks to the publisher and Net Galley for the advanced copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

The hollow places is about 30 year old woman who is recently divorced that finds a mysterious place in her uncle shop. Overall found this book okay but nothing super exciting, and couple parts feel dragged. The characters were okay but I did find the mc annoying couples of times, usually when she mentions reading underage smut(ew). Overall a generic horror that was nothing special