I'm honestly very disappointed with this book. I recently finished Nettle & Bone, my first book by Kingfisher, which I absolutely loved. My first kindle came in yesterday and when I saw that The Hollow Places was on Kindle Unlimited I immediately picked it up and was super excited to read it. 

I did like the first 70 pages or so, but once I actually got to the plot I found myself incredibly bored. I fell in love with the eccentric museum Carrot lives in, it had a certain charm that the rest of the book (at least the rest of what I read) lacked . The "willow world" they get stuck in felt not only completely disconnected from the museum, but also weirdly sterile and like a liminal space. I'm sure this was intended to be part of what made it so horrifying but it took the soul out of the book for me. While I don't know if it's the nature of the setting, or the fact that I struggled to imagine it that made it seem so empty while reading, I do know that it did not work for me.

Furthermore, the humour that I felt was so seamlessly integrated into Nettle & Bone felt very out of place here. Carrot's constant jokes and pop-culture references—like her mentions of (smutty) fanfic—consistently threw me off and nullified any kind of fear and atmosphere some of the admittedly scary scenes could have evoked. Her characterisation in general felt a little odd for a 34 year old woman going through a divorce, the explanation of which was also very brief, in part causing Carrot as a protagonist to feel very shallow. 

The entire book wasn't very thematically consistent, the worldbuilding and characters were hollow (ha, ironically) and the plot bored me. While it did have some endearing qualities, those quickly got lost in a storyline that failed to hook me.

I'm holding out hope that her more recent works will be more up my alley, since I adored Nettle & Bone, but this one was unfortunately a miss.