Hillary Monahan

If you like ghost stories and the legend of Bloody Mary you're going to have a blast reading this one.

A solid horror novel, filled with action and creepy imagery. Well written and with fleshed-out characters. It's always refreshing to read clever, empathising teenage girls that love and support each other without being written as pefrect little dolls. I absolutely LOVED it. If it had an actual ending I would rate it 5/5 stars. Too bad it has that tacky cover that makes it seem like it would show more be a more campy, badly written story. I almost skipped it because of that.

I don't really understand why it wasn't released as one novel instead of a series. It's fast paced and sucks you in, I almost felt compelled to read it in one go. One moment I was going to peruse through a single chapter before going to bed, and suddenly the book had already ended and I was pretty bummed not to have the second installment ready at hand.

Now I know, many books are easy to read and that doesn't speak much about their content -far from it. Sometimes it's the second worst compliment you can pay a novel (the first being that «well, at least it was short”). But it does immerse you into the story, the action is constant and the mystery tones are intriguing. After all, it is a bloody Mary story. It tells you so from its title. It's filled with ghosts and gore and teenage girls. You know what you're in for, it's not like you're going in expecting a Bonjour Tristesse, or a Zone One kind of book. And it freaking delivers everything its premise promises.
Except for a true ending.

But you'll read the second book too so maybe that's not a bad thing after all. Because the storytelling was so addictive I didn't want it to end, and secretly I was glad to have an excuse to stay longer in this world. Rotting fingernails, foggy mirrors and candles in the night and all. show less

A shrewd interrogation of rape culture - now with dark magic!

(Full disclosure: I received a free electronic ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for violence, including sexual harassment, stalking, and rape.)

“The single most important thing to know about magic is that there is always a price. Making the impossible possible is difficult, as it should be, so I must weigh results against what I am willing to pay. It is never a gratuitous thing. This makes some people—people show more like Silas—disbelievers. They see my unwillingness to perform on command as a sign that the magic is untrue. Let them drown in their ignorance. When it is time for them to know a witch’s wrath, they will know it—and there will be no mistaking it.”

Seventeen-year-old Bethan Jones is a diddicoy: born to a Romany mother and a gadjo father, she was left in the care of her caravan's wise woman, Drina, after the death of her mother Eira during childbirth. Her apprenticeship under the drabarni should have kept her safe - and might have, under other circumstances. But the chieftain's son, Silas, has set his sights on Bethan. Silas is spoiled, entitled, and cruel; a dangerous powderkeg of toxic masculinity and male privilege that his father Wen (himself a recovering teenage bully) lacks the fortitude to extinguish.

So it's no surprise when Silas's sexual harassment and stalking of Bethan escalates to rape. Silas and his four cronies ambush Bethan and her would-be beau, Martyn, on the way home from market. The assault leaves Bethan physically and psychologically scarred - and desperate to save Martyn, who's left for dead after the attack. With the help of Gran and her dark magic, Bethan just might be able to resurrect Martyn, while exacting revenge on her assailants too. She has three days to collect a finger, an eye, a nose, a tooth, and an ear from the five boys. What becomes of them after the harvest is entirely up to Bethan.

I was super-excited when I first heard of The Hollow Girl. Lately I'm really into rape revenge stories; as I said in my review of A Guide for Murdered Children, if done right, rape revenge stories can provide a satisfying outlet/alternative to real life, where rape is more likely to be excused and minimized than punished and condemned. Throw in the supernatural twist and diverse cast of characters, and I'm sold.

The Hollow Girl is a really solid story. It's like I Spit on Your Grave meets Drag Me to Hell - but not nearly as brutal as the former, and much more culturally sensitive (read: accurate) than the former. While I appreciate the compassion with which Monahan handles the subject matter (beginning but not ending with her awesome foreword), I was hoping for a little more graphic violence and gleeful vengeance (directed at the rapists, I should add) than we actually get.

In many rape revenge stories (or at least every one I've read to date), the hero grapples with the morality of revenge and justice; Bethan is no exception. I anticipated this, but was still disappointed by the conclusion Bethan reached by story's end (which I won't discuss here, because spoilers). I kept rooting for Bethan to embrace her inner vengeance demon, but ultimately she is more Lumen than Dexter. Not that there's anything wrong with that, necessarily. In the words of Gran, “Strength comes in many guises, Bethan. Knowing yourself, your limitations—knowing what you will and will not do, following your heart—that is strength. Enduring what you endured and still being merciful and hopeful? Also strength."

What also impressed me about The Hollow Girl is Monahan's deft portrayal of rape culture, as well as the aftermath of rape for survivors. While the Romany way of life may be different from many readers' experiences, rape culture is depressingly similar across time, space, and peoples. From Wen's "boys will be boys" excuses for his son's behavior, to blaming the victim and equating rape with sex (in one especially heartbreaking scene, Bethan realizes that she now has to cover her hair, since she's no longer a virgin - even though her maidenhood was taken from her, not given freely), readers will notice obvious parallels between Bethan's society and their own.

Likewise, Monahan's portrait of a rape survivor is brimming with compassion and insight. The book's title describes how Bethan feels after the assault - like a ghost, an imposter, a hollow girl. Bethan struggles with connection and kindness, unable to bear even Gran's touch (rare as it is). When Gran prophesies that Bethan will find love one day, she has to trust in the truth of the magic, for her battered psyche cannot possibly imagine trusting a man, any man, after all she's been through. Yet, despite the violence and trauma, The Hollow Girl ends on a hopeful note. Given that one in nine girls under the age of eighteen - i.e., this book's demographic - has been sexually assaulted by an adult, this is a Good Thing.

Pair with: The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis; Kady Cross's Vigilante; and season five of Dexter.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2017/10/13/the-hollow-girl-by-hillary-monahan/ show less

I really really really enjoyed this.

I love a good ghost story and this was an amazing ghost story with a particularly terrifying ghost. The sheer relentlessness of Bloody Mary and the danger she posed to the main characters even when she wasn't physically present was so well-done. This isn't a story that messes around; the ghost appears and things get serious real quick and for the most part, the characters act in very realistic ways to the situation. You can feel their frustrations and show more fears, their despair, their desire to help one another even if they may not agree at all about what "helping" constitutes. I love how the personalities of the characters were exhibited through their actions...they felt like real people, with real lives--messy, sometimes cruel, sometimes gentle, sometimes frustrated, sometimes desperate to do anything and everything to save each other.

The characters are all teen girls. I love reading books where the focus is on girl/women characters...where their friendships are deep and complex and have nothing at all to do with boys. In fact I think there are only two or three boy characters who say more than a few words throughout the novel and I love it. I love stories about girls that are really and truly ABOUT GIRLS.

The pacing was excellent throughout; there wasn't much lag at all. I find in some YA pacing can be an issue because it tends to create a narrative imbalance--time is spent on things that aren't at all relevant to what the story is trying to accomplish. Not this book. It's so clean and sharp and, like Bloody Mary herself, relentless. You can't help but to keep reading.

I'm embarrassed that I've waited this long to read one of Monahan's books but now I can't wait to read more!! show less

Ugh if more urban fantasy books were like this, I'd read more urban fantasy. I love how queer this book was, how respectful it was of its characters, how there was no torture porn, no egregious suffering, how there was pain and fear and death but not schlocky, violence-for-violence's sake. There were characters of all ages and body-types, characters with all different sorts of relationships AND OMG THERE WERE SO FEW CIS STRAIGHT MEN IT WAS SUCH A BREATH OF FRESH AIR!! The narrative was show more concerned with women: queer women, trans women, fat women, all sorts of women who were given the space to be flawed, complicated characters and I loved it.

I love the concept of urban fantasy but far too many urban fantasy books don't treat their characters with the sort of care and respect that Monahan does. I was so glad I read this book!! show less