The Hollow - Jessica Verday

A LOVE LIKE NO OTHER...

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 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.

Title: The Hollow
Author: Jessica Verday
Genre: Young Adult, Lore, Ghosts
Publisher: Simon Pulse
My Rating: 3/5

I really wanted to love this book as I love the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, however this book was just "meh". I found it frustrating that the heroine of this story would delve into the mystery surrounding Kristen's death for a chapter or two and then just as quickly, give up. We wouldn't hear of anything for chapters on end, if at all. I thought it would focus more on the Legend than it did as well, but sadly it didn't get really good until the last 20 pages or so. There are various references, but nothing concrete. We are left with a lot of unanswered questions which I hope are answered in the next book "The Haunted" (which comes out in September 2010). I had high hopes for this book, but found that the book spent more time on the day to day stuff (school, hair, projects) than it did on the actual meat of the story. I want to like Abbey, I really do, and I did for a bit, but I think she needs to grow a backbone. Her love interest, Caspian, leaves more questions than answers as well. I will continue to read this series because there was a glimmering of hope that this story isn't done yet, that it could move from the realm of 'meh' to excellent. There are a lot of twists and ideas that make it seem that the story is not over yet, and hopefully Jessica will follow through and explore those twists. In reading this book, and finding out that it is part of a trilogy, I think that it was mainly setting up the story for the next two books, so I hope the next book blows the story into the realm of excellent. All in all, I'll say stick with it, because hopefully the next books will make up for this one! (Though as a disclaimer, I did enjoy this one somewhat, but not nearly as much as I had hoped I would!)

This book counts toward the 2010 100+ Reading Challenge hosted over at J. Kaye's book blog.