Hollow
Taylor Grothe
Peachtree Teen
Published September 30, 2025
About Hollow
Don’t Let the Forest In meets The Whispering Dark in a queer YA cult horror following a recently diagnosed autistic teen who becomes enmeshed in a community of outcasts harboring sinister secrets.
“One of the best horror novels of the year, full stop. Haunting, heartfelt, and downright creepy.” —Kamilah Cole, bestselling author of So Let Them Burn
After a meltdown in her school cafeteria prompts an unwanted autism diagnosis, Cassie Davis moves back to her hometown in upstate New York, where her mom hopes the familiarity will allow Cassie to feel normal again. Cassie’s never truly felt normal anywhere, but she does crave the ease she used to have with her old friends.
Problem is that her friends aren’t so eager to welcome her back into the fold. They extend an olive branch by inviting her on their backpacking trip to Hollow Ridge, in the upper reaches of the Adirondacks. But when a fight breaks out their first night, Cassie wakes to a barren campsite—her friends all gone.
With severe weather approaching and nearing sensory overload, Cassie is saved by a boy named Kaleb, who whisks her away to a compound of artists and outcasts he calls the Roost. As Kaleb tends to her injuries, Cassie begins to feel—for the first time in her life—that she can truly be herself. But as the days pass, strange happenings around the Roost make Cassie question her instincts. Noises in the trees grow louder, begging the question: Are the dangers in the forest, on the trail, or in the Roost itself?
In a world where autistic characters rarely get to be the hero of their own stories, Cassie Davis’s one-step-back, two-steps-forward journey to unmasking makes Hollow as much a love letter to neurodiversity as it is a haunting tale you’ll want to read with the lights on.
My Review
This book is such an intense read! I really appreciated how Cassie’s autism impacted how she navigated the story. She’s still reeling from some pretty intense bullying. She’s really nervous about reconnecting to old friends, yet really longs for those connections. She has questions about whether the friendships were real and whether she’ll have to mask her autism in order to have those people in her life. Her pain and her questions felt so real.
Sometimes when I read a story like this, about an old friend group someone is trying to reconnect with, I feel frustrated because I don’t think the friend group deserves them. In Hollow, I could see that Cassie’s friends weren’t perfect, but they also weren’t necessarily bad people. They’d been through their own hardships and really didn’t have a grid for why Cassie behaved the way she did. I didn’t blame them for not understanding, but I also didn’t blame Cassie for not trusting them. Threading that needle couldn’t have been easy, so kudos to Grothe (a debut author) for bringing that nuance.
The book also just oozes intensity. When Cassie finds the community in the mountains, it just feels… off. I kept waiting for the story’s monsters to reveal themselves. (They do! Just wait.)
The only thing that tripped me up at all is that one character basically has two lives, and I couldn’t work out how that would be sustainable for them. Was Cassie actually targeted? Was that just a wrong place, wrong time situation? It seemed like there was some targeting, but I guess I still had some questions at the end of the book.
None of that lessened my enjoyment, though. The emotional journey reading this book felt to me very much like the experience of watching an old Hitchcock film. Lots of eeriness. Lots of tension. It definitely has a moment where suddenly, you see the whole landscape of the story and you want to shout, “OMG, run!” to the main characters.
If you like suspense/horror/eerie stories in the woods, make sure you don’t miss this one.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 16 up.
Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used infrequently.
Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing.
Spiritual Content
There is a paranormal element. Highlight the text below for spoilers.
One character makes puppets as replacements for people. This person has some control of the puppets, and there’s some connection from the puppet to their body, which is kept elsewhere.
Violent Content
References to bullying incidents that lead to a breakdown. Situations of peril. A ritual involves a cut across one’s palm. A storm creates dangerous conditions on a hiking trail. Two people are injured while hiking.
Drug Content
Someone gives injured people tea to help with pain relief. Highlight the text below for spoilers.
The tea also induces a kind of stupor and changes the person’s perception of things. The only thing available to drink is the tea.
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