Review of Amanda Hocking's Hollowmen

By: Ginny

Before reading Amanda Hocking's Hollowland last year, I was hesitant to read a book about a zombie apocalypse. I enjoy the movies, although some more than others, but I thought, "Is this going to be the same hum-drum story that has been done soooo many times in cinema?" Since I absolutely loved Hocking's My Blood Approves and Trylle series, I gave Hollowland a shot and actually got to beta-read for her.  I found myself totally blown away with her creativity in creating a zombie story that was unique, terrifying, and totally freaking awesome!  In Hollowmen, I again, was not disappointed...

DESCRIPTION FROM GOODREADS.COM:

Hollowmen (The Hollows #2)by Amanda Hocking (Goodreads Author)
the sequel to Hollowland.... 
After six months in the quarantine, Remy finds out things are much worse than she feared. Her plans to escape come with a heavy cost, and she realizes that zombies aren't the worst of her problems.

{VAGUE SPOILERS!!!!}

Remy, the main character, is thrown right back into her epic quest to be with her brother Max again, after escaping/being evacuated from the quarantine. She discovers that the zombies that have overrun the world have changed a bit since she arrived at the "safe-haven," to the zombies' advantage. The action and gore are pretty instant and continuous throughout the book. She sees old friends, meets new ones, and both new and old characters are overtaken by zombies and killed by other humans very suddenly and, at times, one right after the other, so you are left with not having much time to mourn each character (just like Remy). The non-stop action makes the book seem longer, only a 3,687 length on Kindle, than expected because so much happens so quickly. The rapid loss of these characters left me shocked, but then another event happened and I didn't have time to reflect on the earlier event that happened a few pages before. This, I feel, adds credibility to the story and to Hocking's character development of Remy (as well as the remaining human race, in general) and to the broken world in which the book takes place. In other reviews, I have read criticism on what happens with Remy’s old and new love interests, but I felt that Hocking brought realism to the story with the twist and captured the basic human condition with Remy and her struggle to survive in a world that is far from what it once was. The ending was very satisfying and the story definitely felt complete, although there is enough left open for if Hocking would like to continue writing about some of the characters in her graphic novel/comic that she announced on her blog.  

Overall, I give Hollowmen 5 Stars for its intense action, touching moments between the characters and in Remy’s self-reflections/discovery, and for being totally zombilicious!

Hollowmen = Amazeballs.

Check out Amanda Hocking's Blog HERE

To Blog or Not to Blog...

So.  Let us introduce ourselves...I'm Amy...and I'm Ginny.  And we are YAddicts, Muahahaha!  Okay, so as we said in the description (just below the title), we decided to start this blog for other peeps who enjoy reading YA books as much as we do.  Our significant others, two men who are just not that into YA material, have been going a little bonkers because we dedicate a lot of our free time to reading and trying to discuss stories that we enjoy with them.  We also incessantly discuss what we are reading with each other, and we decided we need more perspective from outside of our bubble.  So in order to keep them sane and us excited, we decided to join the gazillion other book bloggers and give blogging a whirl.

Let's start by looking at the title of this post...Isn't it the ultimate question?  We have been discussing starting a blog for a very long time now on the genre.  We are very busy ladies who work with kiddos in two different fields, and frankly, they exhaust us (although, we would never let them know that because then they would use it against us) so when we were talking about all of the ideas we had for one, it was tiresome just thinking about how much time, work, energy, and stamina it would take to achieve what we would like to.  Also, as stated before, there are a gazillion other YA book blogs (we counted, and that is the actual number (: ) already out there with a similar premise.  So, to sum it up, we are totally winging it and hope that we get a few followers that can understand/tolerate if we can't treat this like a full time job. (By the way, if anyone would like pay us so we can make it our full time job we are totally up for it, but with our combined 100 and something thousand dollar education debt...we're not talking peanuts...).

Here, we will be posting reviews of books that we have read in the past and read recently in the hopes that you guys (gals, zombies, animals, etc.) will pick up a book, or download an e-book, that you might otherwise not have and will discuss your likes, dislikes, and other books that you recommend.  We will be happy to accept guest blogs, collaborate on other's blogs, and read YA books to review for writers trying to get their names out (although, we may not be able to give said writers a definitive date that the review will be posted, at this point anyway). We will also attempt to hold contests and polls and other fun things once we really get going.

So, until we meet again, have a wonderful day, happy week, exciting month, and sassy new year.

~Amy and Ginny~