What to read next
10 books like The Hollow Places
The bunkers, islands, and willows make every doorway feel like exposure, while Kara and Simon's practical bond prevents cosmic horror from becoming emotionally empty. If that is what you want more of after The Hollow Places, these recommendations preserve that appeal in different ways, without pretending every similar book offers the same experience.
Start with our The Hollow Places review by T. Kingfisher.
Choose by reading mood
Where to start
For the fastest read
Wolf Worm
BalancedFor the darkest read
The Curse of Hester Gardens
Very darkFor the strongest romance
Someone You Can Build a Nest In
CentralFor the easiest entry
The Twisted Ones
AccessibleThe full shortlist
Why each book belongs here
Each match is judged against The Hollow Places, not merely placed beside it because the books share a broad genre label.
1
The Twisted Ones
- Shared ground
- Both books build unease from a threat the characters cannot safely understand at first.
- What changes
- The Twisted Ones uses rural folk horror and a discovered journal; The Hollow Places is more spatial and cosmic.
- Best for
- Readers wanting approachable folk horror, a likable dog, rural isolation, and disturbing creatures without relentless despair.
- Pace Balanced
- Darkness Dark
- Romance Minimal
- Difficulty Accessible
2
What Moves the Dead
- Shared ground
- Both books use distance, alien environments, or interstellar travel to change the scale of the conflict.
- What changes
- What Moves the Dead is tighter, more Gothic, and more biologically explanatory, with less banter.
- Best for
- Readers looking for a short Gothic retelling, fungal horror, and body unease with a practical narrator and flashes of dry humor.
- Pace Balanced
- Darkness Dark
- Romance Minimal
- Difficulty Accessible
3
The Shining
- Shared ground
- Both books build unease from a threat the characters cannot safely understand at first.
- What changes
- The Shining offers a slower, psychologically denser haunting centered on family and addiction rather than friendship.
- Best for
- Readers who want a long haunted-house novel grounded in addiction, family fear, and a child's vulnerable perception.
- Pace Balanced
- Darkness Dark
- Romance Minimal
- Difficulty Moderate
4
A Sorceress Comes to Call
- Shared ground
- Both books build unease from a threat the characters cannot safely understand at first.
- What changes
- A Sorceress Comes to Call has a similar overall reading load, but changes the emphasis. Cordelia's bodily loss of control is frightening without spectacle, while Hester's practical intelligence gives resistance a social and emotional method.
- Best for
- Readers wanting dark fairy-tale revision, coercive-control horror, older heroines, and humane humor.
- Pace Balanced
- Darkness Dark
- Romance Minimal
- Difficulty Accessible
5
Someone You Can Build a Nest In
- Shared ground
- Both books use distance, alien environments, or interstellar travel to change the scale of the conflict.
- What changes
- Someone You Can Build a Nest In is more romance-led than The Hollow Places. Shesheshen's improvised bodies and reproductive instincts remain genuinely alien, while Homily's family reveals how ordinary cruelty can be harder to identify than monstrosity.
- Best for
- Readers wanting queer monster romance, body horror, disability themes, abusive-family recovery, dark comedy, and a protagonist whose nonhuman nature remains meaningful.
- Pace Balanced
- Darkness Dark
- Romance Central
- Difficulty Accessible
6
Wolf Worm
- Shared ground
- Both books build unease from a threat the characters cannot safely understand at first.
- What changes
- Wolf Worm is darker than The Hollow Places. The novel keeps bodily vulnerability and unreliable perception close together, so even quiet observations can alter the apparent shape of the danger.
- Best for
- Horror readers who prefer paranoia, isolation, and body unease to constant action or elaborate lore.
- Pace Balanced
- Darkness Very dark
- Romance Minimal
- Difficulty Accessible
7
The Curse of Hester Gardens
- Shared ground
- Both books build unease from a threat the characters cannot safely understand at first.
- What changes
- The Curse of Hester Gardens is more measured and darker than The Hollow Places. The house's unstable geography, inherited records, and buried violence create sustained unease, while the family history gives the supernatural threat emotional roots.
- Best for
- Gothic-horror readers who prefer inherited secrets, oppressive houses, family trauma, slow dread, and supernatural violence to constant jump scares.
- Pace Balanced
- Darkness Very dark
- Romance Minimal
- Difficulty Accessible
8
Between Two Fires
- Shared ground
- Both books build unease from a threat the characters cannot safely understand at first.
- What changes
- Between Two Fires is darker than The Hollow Places. Thomas, Delphine, and the priest form an unstable moral company, while each monstrous episode grows from a historical or theological fear.
- Best for
- Readers wanting medieval horror, plague, faith, demons, violence, and a damaged knight's redemptive journey.
- Pace Balanced
- Darkness Very dark
- Romance Minimal
- Difficulty Accessible
9
Frankenstein
- Shared ground
- Both books build unease from a threat the characters cannot safely understand at first.
- What changes
- Frankenstein is more measured than The Hollow Places. The creature's education transforms the moral balance of the novel.
- Best for
- Readers interested in responsibility, isolation, unreliable self-justification, and Gothic philosophy more than conventional horror.
- Pace Balanced
- Darkness Dark
- Romance Minimal
- Difficulty Moderate
10
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
- Shared ground
- Both books build unease from a threat the characters cannot safely understand at first.
- What changes
- Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil has a similar overall reading load, but changes the emphasis. María, Charlotte, and Alice make immortality mean something different in each century, allowing desire, reinvention, predation, and loneliness to echo without collapsing into one moral.
- Best for
- Adult readers wanting sapphic vampires, historical settings, nonlinear structure, sensual prose, violence, hunger, toxic intimacy, and meditations on freedom.
- Pace Balanced
- Darkness Dark
- Romance Minimal
- Difficulty Accessible
Side-by-side
Pace, darkness, romance, and difficulty
Use these labels as directional guidance. The individual notes above explain the tradeoffs.
| Book | Pace | Darkness | Romance | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Hollow Places | Balanced | Dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| The Twisted Ones | Balanced | Dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| What Moves the Dead | Balanced | Dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| The Shining | Balanced | Dark | Minimal | Moderate |
| A Sorceress Comes to Call | Balanced | Dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| Someone You Can Build a Nest In | Balanced | Dark | Central | Accessible |
| Wolf Worm | Balanced | Very dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| The Curse of Hester Gardens | Balanced | Very dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| Between Two Fires | Balanced | Very dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| Frankenstein | Balanced | Dark | Minimal | Moderate |
| Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil | Balanced | Dark | Minimal | Accessible |
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