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Hollow
Taylor Grothe
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Don’t Let the Forest In meets The Whispering Dark in a queer YA cult horror following a recently diagnosed autistic teen who becomes enmeshed in a community of outcasts harboring sinister secrets.
After a meltdown in her school cafeteria prompts an unwanted autism diagnosis, Cassie Davis moves back to her hometown in upstate New York, where her mom hopes the familiarity will allow Cassie to feel normal again. Cassie’s never truly felt normal anywhere, but she does crave the ease she used to have with her old friends.
Problem is that her friends aren’t so eager to welcome her back into the fold. They extend an olive branch by inviting her on their backpacking trip to Hollow Ridge, in the upper reaches of the Adirondacks. But when a fight breaks out their first night, Cassie wakes to a barren campsite—her friends all gone. With severe weather approaching and nearing sensory overload, Cassie is saved by a boy named Kaleb, who whisks her away to a compound of artists and outcasts he calls the Roost.
As Kaleb tends to her injuries, Cassie begins to feel—for the first time in her life—that she can truly be herself. But as the days pass, strange happenings around the Roost make Cassie question her instincts. Noises in the trees grow louder, begging the question: Are the dangers in the forest, on the trail, or in the Roost itself?
In a world where autistic characters rarely get to be the hero of their own stories, Cassie Davis’s one-step-back, two-steps-forward journey to unmasking makes Hollow as much a love letter to neurodiversity as it is a haunting tale you’ll want to read with the lights on.
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Posts about this title from Boozhoo Books
Boozhoo Books\ \ Naomi\ \ • Oct 2 2025
BookCon Giveaway, Book Club, Author Chats , Soup-A-Thon?
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Boozhoo Books\ \ Naomi\ \ • Sep 19 2025
Ultimate Spooky Season Shopping List
Spooky season is truly all year in this house but I’ll be dropping recs extra extra for the next couple of month!
Let me know which ones you've read and loved? Let me know which ones are on your TBR.
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Boozhoo Books\ \ Naomi\ \ • Mar 19 2025
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Posts about this book from across Bindery
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • Jul 8
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[Alright, y'all, we have another interview on our hands and this time with the inimitable Taylor Grothe! Taylor is a nonbinary author of both YA and adult horror, so I thought it would be great to chat with them about their upcoming release Lethal Kiss, which you should DEFINITELY BE READING when it releases October 20! Grab a Snickers and strap in! \ \
- What was the biggest inspiration for writing Lethal Kiss, which features perhaps the hottest revenant to ever exist in the history of literature? I might be biased, though.\ \ \ Hahaha thank you so much! I am very partial to Marcella myself!\ \ The seed of Lethal Kiss came from my experience at university and in academia generally. I am who I am (i.e. a glutton for punishment and an overachiever) I decided to design my own major and focus on fairytales and folklore—and ended up focusing on the intersection between Nordic saga tradition and continental Arthurian romance. I went to Duke University, a school with a very fine Medieval Renaissance department, and spent a lot of time in the Rare Book Room researching old texts and holding medieval manuscripts in my hands.\ \ And yet, even though I really loved the work I was doing, I often felt roundly dismissed by the white cis male academic establishment. There was a sense that what I was doing was “girly” or unserious in scope. I had a particularly bad experience with a professor who ended up as the MedRen department dean. So you could say that this book comes from both a place of passion in medieval studies as well as absolute spite. I wanted to critique academic culture through a queer, hyper-femme lens.\ \
- Cassie from Hollow was working through her autism diagnosis and how to be a person with it. Lacie seems to have a far better management system as an assistant professor. I know you've mentioned your own ASD before. When it comes to writing your characters, how do you determine how much of yourself you want to share in them?\ \ \ It’s so important to me to have my characters be neurodivergent in general and autistic in particular. I don’t know, really, if I could write my characters as neurotypical. But, to your question: characters often come to me fully realized, so it’s not really a conscious choice. Their ASD is absolutely nonnegotiable in edits—all my editors are on notice from the outset! And while I like to think my characters all have parts of me in them, they really are just themselves. We’re all in a Venn diagram with ASD at the center.\ \
- Did you model Marcella on any specific inspiration? I saw her as a perfect mashup of several of my favorite "mentor" characters, so I’m curious!\ \ \ Let me be so real with you: I was like, what is the hottest I can make a character and get away with it, without making her feel like a pastiche? Lethal Kiss is satirical and campy, but I wanted Marcella to feel like she was the strongest, most aggressive, zero bullshit character I could—at least on the surface. I was really keeping my eye on Jennifer’s Body though; I love Megan Fox’s unhinged portrayal of Jennifer.\ \
- So your official debut was Hollow, a YA horror novel featuring autistic rep as well as LGBTQIA+ rep! Which did you actually write first, Lethal Kiss or Hollow? If Hollow came first, did you know you wanted to break into the adult genre with horror as well?\ \ \ I wrote Hollow first! But it had long been my goal to have a career both in YA and adult books, and the markets are very different, especially in horror.\ \
- If you could distill Lethal Kiss down to one song, what would it be?\ \ \ An impossible question! I would say I Am Not a Woman, I’m a God by Halsey.\ \
- Monstrous Beautiful Things is coming up next for you from Peachtree Teen and I know The Mage and the Liar Knight is coming out next summer. Are there any other novels in the works that you'd like to mention?\ \ \ There are but I can only hint at one: my next Nightfire book! Think a grief horror in a haunted house plus mushrooms. It’s also a horror romance, but more literary.\ \ LITERARY HAUNTED HOUSE HORROR PLUS MUSHROOMS???? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP. Anyway, I sincerely hope you'll pick up all of Taylor book's because they are all amazing. I devoured Hollow in one sitting! Plus the rep in their books is incredible, and ahem that scene in Lethal Kiss...so good! I'm reading their next book Monstrous Beautiful Things on my Kindle now and y'all aren't ready! \ \ Till next time!\ \ Ryn](https://twostoriesbookshop.binderybooks.com/item/Sc34bUKn4LKMoitPvEQ2/)
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Chanterelle Solace\ \ Sabie\ \ • Dec 19 2025
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Get a Rec from me & What my Taste in books look like
What are some books that represent your taste overall and do we have any in common? 👀
Before we dive into this, Bindery now has an option to request recs and you can go to the 🔗 in my bio and click “Get a Rec” and ask for details of what you’d like from the books I’ve read! I’m also making lists of 2026 releases in fantasy, romance and horror so far so happy to share some of these early on with you guys (these will be recs of what I’m looking forward to rather than what I’ve read) so GO GO GO 🤎
As for my taste in books, I’m never going to be the type that picks only 5 top books for the year guys and I’ve learned to accept it because honestly, what do you mean my top 5 books in one year? I would have to host a meeting with myself for a whole month to decide that 😭 So instead, you guys get my taste in books throughout various sub-genres that I yap about all the time!
Here is a list of the books (if you prefer to read through it or for accessibility needs)🤎: Cottagecore: 🍄 Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries 🍄 After the Forest by Kell Woods 🍄 A Witch’s Guide to Love and Poison by Aamna Qureshi 🍄 The Geographer’s Map to Romance by India Holton 🍄 The River has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar 🍄 An Arrow to the Heart by K.R. Bacher
Cozy Fantasy: 🍄 The Baby Dragon Cafe by Aamna Qureshi 🍄 Legend & Lattes by Travis 🍄 The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong 🍄 The Nameless Restaurant by Tao Wong 🍄 Watermoon by Samantha Sotto Yambao 🍄 The Spellshop by Sangu Mandanna
Witchycore: 🍄 The Hedgewitch of Foxhall by Anna Bright 🍄 House of Frank by Kay Synclaire 🍄 The Lone Wolf Cafe by Sydney Wilder 🍄 The Witch and the Tsar by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore 🍄 A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna 🍄 Best Hex Ever by Nadia El-Fassi
Retellings, Fairy Tale & Historical Fantasy: 🍄A Sorceress comes to Call by T.Kingfisher 🍄 What the River Knows by Isabel Ibanez 🍄 Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross 🍄 We Shall be Monsters by Tara Sim 🍄 The Briar Book of the Dead by A.G Slatter
The rest is in my pinned comment!
#fantasybooks #topbooksof2025 #favoritebooks
74 books
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Boozhoo Books\ \ Naomi\ \ • Oct 2 2025
BookCon Giveaway, Book Club, Author Chats , Soup-A-Thon?
5 books
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chronicallybookish\ \ Kaley\ \ • Oct 1 2025
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September Disability Release Round Up
36 books
Boozhoo Books\ \ Naomi\ \ • Sep 19 2025
\ \ Join for free or login](https://boozhoo.binderybooks.com/item/AKNY4takZBrImNdu2ivY/)
Ultimate Spooky Season Shopping List
Spooky season is truly all year in this house but I’ll be dropping recs extra extra for the next couple of month!
Let me know which ones you've read and loved? Let me know which ones are on your TBR.
18 books
7
Chanterelle Solace\ \ Sabie\ \ • May 22 2025
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All the Books I Joined a Community For
This Cottagecore Librarian is back from an extended break and what better way to start the beginning of a new journey then with the street teams I’m part of and share some of my anticipated releases? 🥰🥹
First, we have Tenderly I am Devoured by Lyndall Clipstone and this is a beautiful Gothic Romantasy with Folk Horror and this beautiful book comes out in July 1, 2025. This book as a beautiful cover in the UK and Australian/US edition that I just love both of them so much! Do you read any folk horror? 🤭
Secondly, we have House of Hearts by Skyla Arndt and this is a combination of Horror, Dark Academia, Gothic and Fantasy book with Alice in Wonderland vibes that is being published by Penguin Teens! This is coming out in September 2, 2025 and will be perfect for the autumn/fall season where everything is spooky and just right! 🤎
Thirdly, we have Hollow by Taylor Grothe, which comes out September 30, 2025 (also in the perfect season of autumn/fall). This is a beautiful, horror with smidges of Fantasy in it and is Don’t Let the Forest in x The Whispering Dark (you guys know I loved Don’t Let the Forest In). This is a beautiful story where the MC is a ND and I cannot wait to follow along in the journey of the characters. Also the cover is beautiful? What a vibe! 😍
Are you looking forward to any new releases soon? Will you be picking any of these books up?
#tenderlyiamdevoured #houseofhearts #hollowtaylorgrothe #hollow
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Boozhoo Books\ \ Naomi\ \ • Mar 19 2025
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