A review by kota19
Holly Horror by Michelle Jabès Corpora

4.0

Since she was never found, and a body never recovered, Holly seemed to exist in a nebulous place between life and death.

thank you NetGalley for the ARC! this comes out next week!

In the mid-1800s, a young girl known only as the Patchwork Girl because of the dress she wore disappeared; in 1982, Holly Hobbie met the same mysterious fate; in the present day, Evie Archer, her mother (cousin to the late Holly), and younger brother Stan have moved into the infamous Hobbie House, known locally as the Horror House because of the two mysterious disappearances that happened in it. Not long after Evie and her family move in, she starts to fall under the influence of some mysterious presences...

I was drawn to this book because of the beautiful cover and I was intrigued by the concept and I really enjoyed it. It was so much creepier than I expected it to be -- especially for a book that seems to be aimed at the younger end of the YA audience. I think this book would be perfect for someone who's grown out of [a:R.L. Stine|13730|R.L. Stine|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1194380070p2/13730.jpg] but isn't quite ready for [a:Stephen King|3389|Stephen King|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1362814142p2/3389.jpg]. For older YA audiences, it may feel a little bit too immature and like the characters don't have quite the depth they're looking for, but kids that are just leaving middle grade behind will likely enjoy that the writing is pretty simple and the characters are easy to understand the motives of.

It had a really unique concept an the writing was fun and it kept me hooked and kept me wondering what was going to happen next. I enjoyed reading about Evie's search into the history of the house and the way it was impacting her mental state and I could not put this book down as I was reading it to find out what happened to Holly and the Patchwork Girl and what was going on with Evie's eerie experiences.

It ended on a little bit of a cliffhanger with the author setting up for an upcoming sequel which I'm very interested in, but I also felt like the book mostly wrapped things up and for people that aren't interested in reading further into this world, it was a pretty satisfying ending.

There were a couple things I didn't love about this book, but they didn't ruin the experience for me. I felt like the pacing was a little strange at some points with twists being rushed right through after they seemed like they were going to be a huge, suspenseful moment, but they were tidied up and moved on with pretty quickly. I really liked the way that a little touch of Korean culture was tied in with the folklore, but I felt like it was woven into the story and then abandoned and not really used very much, which was disappointing. I would've loved to have gotten more about that and I hope that it comes back up in the sequel.

The main thing I didn't love about this book that I felt like there were a ton of side plots and sub-details that were brought up, then seemed to be abandoned, only to be woven back in later when it was convenient.

A big example of this was Evie's relationship with her brother, Stan, who was barely present in the book except during convenient moments when little glimpses of him misbehaving would pop up, only to have his bad behavior be a large part of the end of the book.

Although a lot of these details that came back were very relevant to the book and moved the plot forward, a lot of them just felt like they were irrelevant for a lot of the book, then came back with an unexpected amount of importance later on.

All in all, this book was a quick and creepy story about a haunted house and the mystery of a missing girl. Readers that are looking for something simple and spooky to read during Halloween and the younger end of the YA audience will enjoy finding out what's going on with Evie and where Holly went.