Book Review: The Hollow Kind by Andy Davidson
Genre: Horror
Age: Adult
Format: ebook
I’m going to hold my hands up here and say this book just wasn’t for me. It really dragged out, and I found myself struggling at different points feeling like I was waiting for something to happen. There’s a lot of different characters to keep track of from early on. The book flips back and forth between the lives of August Redfern and Nellie Gardner, his granddaughter. August when he’s setting up his turpentine estate, which is initially successful then falls into ruin, and Nellie when she flees her abusive husband in 1989 with her son, Max.
The characters, I found, just weren’t that well written. I think part of me is kind of over seeing (cis) men writing women who have suffered abuse, and this isn’t me saying this author did it badly or no men should write it etc, but like any other ‘trope’ (for lack of a better word), seeing it done in a similar manner too often means I’m just fed up of seeing it. Too many of the vast number of characters just felt a little one dimensional, too, including the POV characters we get. I can see what the author was going for, and there’s clearly a lot of effort and research put into the book, but in some ways it veered too closely to a mimic of Stephen King, likely not helped by the fact I was reading Under the Dome at the same time.
I found myself a bit confused, at points, and wondering what, exactly, the purpose of the family ‘feeding’ the thing on the land was – it actually doesn’t seem to make much of a difference? Or maybe I drifted off and missed something.
All in all, this book was a bit too messy, overly long, and with fairly uninteresting characters for me, and I struggled to connect with it or the horrors the characters were experiencing, which felt less well thought out and more just something thrown in when there needed to be something happening as the book went on. This one just really wasn’t for me. As always, however, this is a totally personal take. It’s the kind of story and writing style I think some people really like, but I just don’t.
Review by Elle Turpitt
Twitter: @elleturpitt
Bluesky: @elleturpitt.bsky.social
www.elleturpittediting.com
I received this ebook from Titan Books via NetGalley for review consideration.
