12 must-read YA book releases to spring into this April
By Lacy Baugher
April 2021 release: House of Hollow – Krystal Sutherland
A dark and atmospheric fantasy with difficult themes, occasionally disturbing imagery, and difficult characters, House of Hollow will almost certainly not be for every YA reader out there. But it’s certainly something deeply original and author Krystal Sutherland should be applauded for that.
Seventeen-year-old Iris Hollow is the youngest of three sisters, the quieter alternative to supermodel Grey and talented musician Vivi. But they all share a disturbing secret – they all disappeared without a trace for a month ten years ago, but have no memory of what happened to them.
When Grey goes missing under mysterious circumstances, Iris will have to confront the strange weirdness that’s followed her and her sisters all their lives in order to unravel what’s happened to her. But you should never ask questions you don’t really want to know the answers to, and Iris may regret learning some of the family secrets she discovers along the way.
The official synopsis describes the story in greater detail.
"Seventeen-year-old Iris Hollow has always been strange. Something happened to her and her two older sisters when they were children, something they can’t quite remember but that left each of them with an identical half-moon scar at the base of their throats. Iris has spent most of her teenage years trying to avoid the weirdness that sticks to her like tar. But when her eldest sister, Grey, goes missing under suspicious circumstances, Iris learns just how weird her life can get: horned men start shadowing her, a corpse falls out of her sister’s ceiling, and ugly, impossible memories start to twist their way to the forefront of her mind. As Iris retraces Grey’s last known footsteps and follows the increasingly bizarre trail of breadcrumbs she left behind, it becomes apparent that the only way to save her sister is to decipher the mystery of what happened to them as children. The closer Iris gets to the truth, the closer she comes to understanding that the answer is dark and dangerous – and that Grey has been keeping a terrible secret from her for years."
House of Hollow is available on April 6.