Book Review: Hollow Heathens (Book of Blackwell)

Hello everyone, it has been a while, and I have missed writing. Originally, I was trying to streamline this to be a segment type thing, this blog, and I still will but it will also involve rants that may or may not be relatable. Thank you to everyone who read the posts while I was gone. This brings me to today, I have a book review for you guys, and I was so invested in the story, I finished the book in 11 and a half hours. The book is called "Hollow Heathens: Book of Blackwell." 

So, a little background on the story it is a gothic romance about a town called Weeping Hollow hidden from the outside world and protected by two witch covens, The Norse Woods Coven and the Sacred Seas Coven. This town has been hidden away in the state of Maine for centuries because the ancestors of the covens were running away from the witch trials so that the covens could survive. Little did they know that there were other witches already living there who were worshippers of the moon and called moonchildren who did not belong to any coven but to themselves. 

When the Norse Woods coven arrived, they were alone for a short while before the Sacred Seas coven did. When the covens originally arrived in this land, they created the Order that consisted of leaders from both covens to maintain the balance and the first Order erected the barrier over the town blocking it from the outside world.

This brings us to the modern era where the story takes place. The story mainly revolves around Fallon Morgan and Julian Blackwell as the main leads. Fallon was born in Weeping Hollow but after she was born her mother died and there is a plot twist to this that I will describe later on. When Fallon was really little, still a baby, her father and nanny took her away from the town and the reasons behind this start to reveal themselves as the story goes on. 

Julian Blackwell is the first son of the Blackwell family of the Norse Woods coven and one of the 4 Heathens who are the protectors of the coven (there were originally 5 but the Danvers family died out before the most recent Hollows were born, or so they thought). They are called Heathens because, besides having a strong relationship, for centuries, they have had to hide their faces behind masks to avoid killing anyone. Why do the masks keep them from killing people? Because if you look into any of the Heathens faces the person succumbs to their darkest fears and dies of a heart attack. This curse only applies to the first-born son of each family in the coven. Their coven has been dying for centuries because of this curse but have not been taken out by the opposing coven because of the need to maintain the balance that is such strong tenant in the town of Weeping Hollow. 

This book takes places in a split point of view narrative where it switches between the POV of Fallon and Julian. I personally like this type of storytelling because you get to see what each person experiences in "real time" without it having to be explained every time the leads meet each other, and it makes for more dynamic storytelling. The first point of view we're introduced to is Fallon and it explains how she came to the town after being gone for 24 years and how her grandfather Benny was sick, and she went there to take care of him. As the story goes on you learn about how her mother and father were from opposing covens and fell in love and that her father was once also a part of the Sacred Seas coven and, if Fallon ever came back to town, he had wanted her to be under the protection of his coven. 

Fallon arrived a month before Samhain (Halloween) to a string of murders.

Julian was the murderer for all but 1 of the victims. The Hollow Heathens have always been feared because everyone knew that their curse kills any of those who get close to them, which it does if you see their face under the mask, if you don't you don't die. As the story went on it is revealed that there has always been someone in the shadows who was controlling him and his family's shadow blood through black magic and by the end of the story you find out who it is and how they did it for their son who was frozen in time (also due to black magic and is Stone Danvers, the family of the earth element of the coven that had supposedly died out who is frozen in time on Bone Island) because she had wanted to break the curse and she had found out 1 way to do it and had begun acting on it. 

This book is the story of a tragic love that started with the Blackwell ancestor Bellamy and moon child Sirius. Bellamy and Sirius fell in love but were torn apart, violently, by Bellamy's coven to which Sirius then cursed the entire coven to never know love and that anyone they loved would fear them because when they looked into the first sons' faces their lovers would die because she thought Bellamy had abandoned her. By the end of the story, you find out this wasn't true. 

The coven was curse because they tore Bellamy and Sirius apart and to break the curse they had to kill Fallon because she was Sirius' ancestor to which her mother told her as much when she came to her on Samhain (fun fact, Fallon could see and talk to ghosts) which sent Fallon spiraling because Julian was about to die because of her, because he knew and he was trying to protect her at the expense of his life. 

Towards the end of the book, as Julian is waiting to be burned because the curse would not be broken before his seven days were up, he found another way to break the curse just as Fallon's keeper ran to him to tell him that Fallon had disappeared, he remembered what he had read from Bellamy's entries into his family's book (the curse can be broken by choosing to love the moon child and never giving up on each other or dying together with the moon child) and used his element of spirit to escape the imprisonment to save him and Fallon. After they break the curse, at least Julian's (the book ended before it mentioned any of the other Heathens' curses being broken. The other Heathens are Beck (water element), Phoenix (fire element) and Zephyr (wind element)), there is a scene, right before the final scene, where it describes that it is possible that Julian killed Fallon's mother as a baby (Julian and Fallon were born around the same time) because of his curse because the way she died did not seem to be related to the birth of Fallon as it  mentioned her mother looking at Julian before dying and there was no blood or other reasons that her mother (that we know of) should have died from childbirth but this is just a theory of mine and it was definitely not an intentional thing of that actually happened. In the same scene, the only time baby Julian stops crying is when he looks into baby Fallon's eyes. The book ends with them holding each other close and being excited that they broke the curse. 

I gave some details, enough to make you consider reading the book, but not enough to spoil the whole story. There is a second book that I need to find a way to get so that i can read called "Bone Island: Book of Danvers" that continues the story. I really liked this book. I can see how people might find it difficult to read because of the switching between Fallon and Julian's point of view but this isn't the first time I read a book like that, so it was very easy for me to follow. There is some spice in the book, but it isn't the main focus of the story, and I felt like it was a descriptive as it needed to be. I will note that, because this is a book about witch covens, there are some sexual rituals that take place because of the power that is alleged in the book to be released from sex, this does not affect the main couples romance in any way though and it really doesn't happen a lot so it shouldn't be a deterrent from reading the book. I would definitely recommend this book, and I personally give it a 5-star rating because, aside from everything that I previously mentioned, the book kept me interested and I had to force myself to stop reading a couple of times so that I could actually get some sleep.

Thank you to all of the readers who will read this review. I hope you enjoyed it. See you in the next one