Review: The Hollow by Jessica Verday

The Hollow
By: Jessica Verday
Reading Level: Young Adult
Bookwhisperer Rating:

Book Description:
When Abbey's best friend, Kristen, vanishes at the bridge near Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, everyone else is all too quick to accept that Kristen is dead and rumors fly that her death was no accident. Abbey goes through the motions of mourning her best friend, but privately, she refuses to believe that Kristen is really gone. Then she meets Caspian, the gorgeous and mysterious boy who shows up out of nowhere at Kristen's funeral, and keeps reappearing in Abbey's life. Caspian clearly has secrets of his own, but he's the only person who makes Abbey feel normal again...but also special.



Just when Abbey starts to feel that she might survive all this, she learns a secret that makes her question everything she thought she knew about her best friend. How could Kristen have kept silent about so much? And could this secret have led to her death? As Abbey struggles to understand Kristen's betrayal, she uncovers a frightening truth that nearly unravels her -- one that will challenge her emerging love for Caspian, as well as her own sanity.

My Review: After much deliberation I settled on 4 stars for The Hollow. Jessica Verday is a very talented author that we will see much more of in the future. Abbey is a lovable character that I look forward to following through a few more books. The abrupt changes in characters at the end of this book is leading the second book in a whole different direction; which leads to my reasoning for the 4 star rating. The overall feeling I had about this book is that there was too much effort put into building the picture, and not enough on moving the story along. I may come to regret this in the second book if there was underlying meaning behind all of the extra details; but that will have to present itself in later books. At this point I felt all of the information bogged down this book, and gave me the impression of having useless information. I enjoyed this story, but the pace was very slow and left me distracted several times during the duration of this book. This is a book that is overflowing with potential, and I look for the second book to sore, but this first book was slightly difficult to complete. This having been said all in all I enjoyed the book, and will follow this series.