Hollow (Book 1 in the Crown of Hearts & Chaos series) Deluxe Edition

📚 Why We Recommend It


Karina Halle’s Hollow reimagines the Sleepy Hollow legend into a gothic romance masterpiece that’s as seductive as it is sinister. Set in a shadow-drenched institute run by the enigmatic Van Tassel family, the story follows Kat Van Tassel—a young woman bound by blood ties to protect ancient secrets. When her childhood fiancé, Brom Bones, reappears after a four-year disappearance as a volatile, amnesiac stranger, and her brooding professor, Ichabod Crane, ignites forbidden desires with his obsession for dark magic, Kat finds herself entangled in a web of murder, possession, and otherworldly threats.

Halle’s prose weaves a tapestry of gothic atmospherics—cobwebbed corridors, moonlit rituals, and a town cursed by the Headless Horseman’s vengeance—while delving into the raw, tangled emotions of a love triangle that defies morality. The book doesn’t shy away from its triggers: graphic violence, explicit intimacy, and psychological turmoil are artfully interwoven to mirror the characters’ descent into chaos. But beneath the horror lies a haunting exploration of identity, loyalty, and the thin line between salvation and damnation.

Perfect for fans of The Secret History’s intellectual decadence and Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s erotic tension, Hollow is a page-turning plunge into a world where every shadow hides a secret, and every kiss could be your last. As one reviewer notes, “It’s a love letter to the macabre, where passion and peril dance to the rhythm of a cursed lullaby.