I would like to thank Titan for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher - Titan

Published - Out Now

Price - £9.99 paperback £6.39 Kindle eBook

Nellie Gardner is looking for a way out of an abusive marriage when she learns that her long-lost grandfather, August Redfern, has willed her his turpentine estate. She throws everything she can think of in a bag and flees to Georgia with her eleven-year-old son, Max, in tow.

It turns out that the "estate" is a decrepit farmhouse on a thousand acres of old pine forest, but Nellie is thrilled about the chance for a fresh start for her and Max, and a chance for the happy home she never had. So it takes her a while to notice the strange scratching in the walls, the faint whispering at night, how the forest is eerily quiet. But Max sees what his mother can't: They're no safer here than they had been in South Carolina. In fact, things might even be worse. There's something wrong with Redfern Hill. Something lurks beneath the soil, ancient and hungry, with the power to corrupt hearts and destroy souls. It is the true legacy of Redfern Hill: a kingdom of grief and death, to which Nellie’s own blood has granted her the key.

Strange houses and stange families are a staple part of the Gothic. Family secrets finally revealed to bring well lets face it - ratrely anything good. In The Hollow Kind by Andy Davidson we have an attempt to create a new strange family saga which sadly I found lacking in several key areas.

In 1989 Nellie and her young son Max finally find a potential escape oute when Nellie finds she has been left her Grnadfather’s thousand acre estate. But this Georgian farmland has a troubled history connected to the redfern family and secerts past and new are coming to the foreground.

This is a a novel aiming for a multi generational gothic tale and for me misses the target by quite a wrong way after an initial gripping chapter opening up the story. Davidson has adopted a very overly descriptive writing style walking us through character’s steps and conversations by the meter. For a relatively normal length tale it goes nowhere fast. This also makes atmosphere meant to be dark and foreboding to sound more like a hoarder’s house in need of simple renovation.The characters are all fairly boiler plate and it overall feels strangely dated and predictable. Not one I can recommend