Review: Hollowland

Title: Hollowland
Author: Amanda Hocking
Genre: YA Dystopian, Horror

See it at Goodreads



"This is the way the world ends - not with a bang or a whimper, but with zombies breaking down the back door."

Nineteen-year-old Remy King is on a mission to get across the wasteland left of America, and nothing will stand in her way - not violent marauders, a spoiled rock star, or an army of flesh-eating zombies.




Hollowland is hard for me to review. It’s hard for me to really describe my feelings for this one. This may end up being one of my shorter reviews just because I’m having a hard time coming up with anything to say.

I’d never read anything by Amanda Hocking before this book. I hadn’t read the Trylle series, and after reading this one, I can’t say if I’m looking forward to trying anything else by her or not. I may or may not attempt something else at a later time, but I’m not in any rush.

It was forgettable. The characters didn’t feel as if they had enough depth to them for me to bother remember anything about them. In fact, until I read the blurb of the book again, I couldn’t remember the MC’s name. It starts off with enough action to be had--love the hooking, memorable first sentence--but I felt lost on where the story was supposed to be going and what was going on with the events a lot of the time. I wanted to know more, and certain details/events had me rolling my eyes. Sometimes, I felt like it was trying too hard to be an edgy action-packed zombie dystopia. It lost some emotion along the way maybe, I don’t know. I just didn’t feel it the way I’d hoped.

What I did like were the descriptions. At least I got some good visuals from certain scenes, and sometimes gruesome ones--which felt realistic. These were the parts that were at the cusp of a breakthrough for me, when I could have really enjoyed this book, and what pushed me enough to finish it. I wanted to enjoy it. I love zombies, and I love dystopian. Maybe it was me and the reading funk I was going through at the time, I don’t know. Either way, I would still recommend trying it out for yourself if you’re the slightest bit interested. It wasn’t a bad read in the least. I just had some nitpicks.

P.S. Lions don’t purr. They make a different kind of sound that can almost be interpreted as “purring” but it’s scientifically proven that they don’t purr like a normal cat. The only cat in the big cat family that purrs are cheetahs. Just saying.