The Hollower

The story of a creature that slowly torments, and destroys people in small town New Jersey. This supernatural being, a creepy monster with a human-like appearance, stalks its victims, gets inside their heads, and uses their own fears, doubts, and inner weaknesses against them. A seemingly random group of victims of this unearthly horror, are brought to the edge of despair. Yet through what at first seems like failure of one of the victims of this monster, the Hollower, it is perhaps a sacrifice that instead provides some other victims with knowledge of what it is they face. The characters converge into a group that decides to take back their lives, or die trying. The book read like a movie, that is to say, I could see it almost as if on show more a screen as I went through the novel. The heroes are a diverse group of souls, people who each have their own crises they have had to deal with. The implication is this is why each were chosen, what made them vulnerable to the Hollower. But when you consider it, haven't we all had those moments? Maybe not drugs, or alcohol, or death of a parent at a young age, as some of the characters in the novel. But even those of us, with generally normal lives, can't even we find something that might torment our souls if someone could get within our minds and bend our memories against us? Things we might be glad to have put behind us? Things that we think we've forgotten but perhaps lay just beyond the edge of conscious memory. I think that's what links the reader to the heroes of the novel, what makes us root for their success, because if they can manage to overcome this horror, perhaps then we wouldn't have to be its next victims. show less

It's a good book, but definitely feels like a debut, in a good way. It didn't scare me, but then again, it takes a helluva lot to scare me, and while I wish there was more backstory, I like the concept of the Hollower. I definitely want to seek out SanGiovanni's collection of short stories, Under Cover of Night, and I look forward to seeing what she does next.

For a full review, which DOES INCLUDE SPOILERS, please click here: http://calico-reaction.livejournal.com/42937.html

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