#BlogTour ‘Dark Hollows’ by Steve Frech

About the book…

Your past is catching up with you.

Jacob Reese enjoys the quiet life, running a coffee shop and renting out his cottage in The Hollows, Vermont.

But the calm is shattered when a woman who looks eerily similar to his ex-girlfriend Laura turns up to stay in the cottage, and leaves a mysterious note in the guest book.

Now Jacob’s seeing Laura everywhere—a glimpse of her face across the street, her music box left outside his house, a gift he gave her years before hanging from the trees.

But it can’t be Laura. Because Laura’s dead.

A gripping, twisted and haunting thriller. Fans of Gillian Flynn, Gregg Olsen and Mark Edwards will love Steve Frech.

Many thanks to the awesome folk at HQ Stories for the chance to be involved in the blogtour for ‘Dark Hollows’ by Steve Frech  which I enjoyed and read overnight-it is a very quick read in that it doesn’t involve a great deal of focussing on plot points, you just go along with the ride and enjoy it for what it is, a really good use of your time.

As for breathtaking twist…regular readers of this blog will know by now the massive groans with which I greet a book which promises something that I will never see coming well a) it wasn;t really a plot twist and b)it didn’t take my breath away(sorry but the setup was quite obvious from the start, it didn’t detract from the story but those of you who love plot twists might find yourself disappointed).

What you have is a man eeking out an living in the middle of nowhere, running an Air BnB by another name ( the great title of ‘Be Our Guest’ was, in this humble reader’s opinion, so overused within the space of a few chapters, that it produced a knee jerk groan that nullified it’s effect).

He runs a coffee shop, The Groundhouse, and supplies local hotels with his own brand of coffee, doesn;t have a girlfriend, and has recently turned a cottage he was using as storage into a home away from home.

The town he lives in, The Hollows, is famous for both its Halloween traditions and its mental asylum-both of these storylines I was genuinely interested in  but felt they were underplayed which was disappointing. One was used for what I think was supposed to be the setting of a major scene but fell flat, and the other was underused as a plot device.

Jacob is haunted by the ghost of a girl who he dated in college, and disappeared , was never found and now for that reason he cannot form a meaningful relationship with anyone other than his dog,Murphy. So when despite really tight security and background checks on bookings for his cottage, a rather familiar woman turns up, leaves a meaningful message in the guest book and then vanishes, Jacob flies into a panic as to who has discovered his secret and how long it will be before it is revealed.

Any thriller reader will guess where this is going as the story flips back and forth between Jacob of then and the Jacob of now. That’s not the problem so much as the way that the female characters are written. I felt personally that they were too thinly created and didn’t inspire much of a reaction from me-I struggled to see why existed as more than props to Jacob’s self induced exile. It was as though so much thought went into creating the protagonist, that the rest of the characters in the book, were, excuse the wordplay but they were hollow.

Jacob’s angst was centered on him being found out for something he did back in college, his entire persona was about being hidden so why was he so easy to be found and so publically traceable? His remorse and regret seemed tied up in his feelings, even the ending left this reader with the sense that there was a lack of consequence to what he had done.

There are some lovely scenes in the book, for example there is one when Jacob has a nasty surprise awaiting him in the woods which is chillingly gothic, and also when a pastor is giving a sermon about the link between classic monsters and the seven deadly sins which stuck out for me. And Jacob and Murphy were such a lovely pair, but when you are more concerned about the dog making it to the end of the novel than the humans, that spells trouble. People in Jacob’s life were introduced and then just disregarded,as soon as they had their scenes, they left which really minimised their emotional impact on the story.

I did enjoy it in that I read to the very last page, and it kept me engaged to find out how it ended, but I cannot say it was amazing.Having a male protagonist being stalked and tormented made a neat change from always being the woman who was at threat!It was a quick and pleasing time filler, an aperitif for something deeper, a between books book if you will. I would definitely read other books by this author and would recommend this as good read, just sadly, not a great one.

About the author…

Steve grew up in… You know what? I hate writing stuff in the third person, so here it is:

I was born in East Chicago, Indiana. I grew up in the small town of Troy, OH.

I attended Miami University of Ohio and received a BFA in Theater. I moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting and writing but quickly discovered that I don’t like actors… Just kidding. I have a ton of actor friends and I love you all.

In addition to writing, I’m the producer and host of the award nominated ‘What Do You Know?’, an improv-comedy quiz show that gives more points for being funny than for being right. The show has been hosted at Upright Citizens Brigade, Nerdist, iO West, and the Improv. You can see more at www.whatdoyouknowshow.com

My debut novel, ‘‘Requiem’, is available in paperback and digital download from Amazon and is on Twitter @stevefrech