Hollow by Karina Halle

TL;DR: This was a book I read but I have no real strong feelings about.
Source: NetGalley – Thank you to the publisher!!

Plot: There are some witches, some characters ‘inspired’ by sleepy hollow, and sex.
Characters: Flat as paper for me sadly.
Setting: It was dark and had all the right words for atmospheric.
Romance: Not strong at all.

Summary:

Ever since she was a child, Kat Van Tassel knew that her parents had arranged for her to marry her best friend, Brom Bones, when she became of age. That was until Brom mysteriously vanished from the secretive village of Sleepy Hollow when he was just a teenager.

Now, at nineteen, Kat is fulfilling the tradition of attending Sleepy Hollow Institute, a shadowy and prestigious school that is run by her powerful family. There she starts to fall for her new teacher, the enigmatic, smart, and much older Ichabod Crane, whose fascination with dark magic and the occult brings out a new side of Kat—in more ways than one.

Until Brom Bones suddenly appears in her class. Her childhood friend doesn’t remember what happened to him in the four years that he’s been gone, all he knows is that he’s back in Sleepy Hollow for good. The only problem is, he’s not the same man that Kat knew. Cocky and brash as a youth, this Brom is violent and prone to bouts of madness. It doesn’t help that his reappearance coincides with gruesome decapitations that are plaguing the town, with rumors swirling about a vengeful ghost called The Headless Horseman.

Determined to get to the bottom of the murders and Brom’s volatility, Crane takes Brom under his wing to study him, and they begin to grow close, just as they do with Kat. But the more that the threesome submits to their sexual desires on the path to the truth, the more dangerous Sleepy Hollow becomes. The Headless Horseman might claim them as his next victims…if something even more terrifying doesn’t get to them first.

Thoughts:

So… this was a book I read. I promise I wish I could tell you more and tell you I felt more about this but that would be a lie and I’m not about to do that. To give you an example, I was almost done with this book and put it down for the night. The next day I couldn’t remember what I was reading and genuinely thought ‘Oh I guess I’ll start my next arc’. That’s how little I felt about this that I forgot I was reading it.

This seems to be loosely inspired by Sleepy Hollow. I say loosely because while the characters all seem to be named the same and we have a few similar things in there, it’s really a very loose inspiration. The book mainly focuses on… well the sex. There is a plot with some ghosts and some creepy elements that had promise but we got distracted often and frequently with the horizontal hoky-poky.

I will say I found the opening spicy scene very uncomfortable as our main character was young. The chemistry fell flat for me entirely, which I think was just a book problem in general. Also, getting fingered on a horse sounds awful. Has this author ridden a horse before?? So unfortunately not a horrible book but not a great one either, I’m left feeling rather… ‘eh’ about the whole thing.