The Hollow

In April 2009, Ellie Frites, the forlorn 24-year-old narrator of Barrell’s suspenseful thriller, makes one of her rare trips from Boston, where she has an unsatisfying customer service job for a tech company and drinks too much, to her hometown of Marshside on Cape Cod. There she has a vision of her former middle school classmate Maxine Lang covered in blood and standing in the “creepy woods in the center of town” known as the Hollow. Following that vision comes a “boatload of other weird stuff” as Ellie begins to remember more about what happened when she was 11 years old in 1996, shortly after her father’s death from cancer. Back in Boston, with the aid of a therapist and hypnosis, Ellie struggles to separate out what, if anything, from her dreams is based on reality. These dreams, which include images of Ellie herself chasing someone through the Hollow, focus on something bad happening to Maxine. Barrell delays the truth about the events of 1996 effectively. Readers will look forward to seeing more of the plausibly flawed Ellie. [em](BookLife) [/em]