Book Review: Hollows Grove

I finished my 3rd of 4 books on my Halloween-y tbr the other day – Hollows Grove by Lee Jacquot. Hollows Grove is a novella in the Holinight series – her series of spicy novellas that revolve around holidays and obviously this one is for Halloween.

This novella follows Evelyn and Dorian. Evelyn has been best friend’s with Dorian’s sister, Ciara, since they were kids. And since they were kids Dorian has loved to scare and torment his younger sister’s best friend. Evelyn hates being scared, hates scary movies, etc. so of course her best friend’s older brother loved to jump out at her from around corners, pull pranks on her and so on. Now they are grown up, both single, and have been roped in to helping Ciara with a work team building event. The event? A murder mystery dinner at a mansion that when decorated for Halloween looks very creepy. And of course, Ciara has paired Evelyn and Dorian up as the butler and maid.

Now they have to be in close proximity with each other all night while helping out and playing the game, sometimes with the power cut as part of the game in the creepy mansion. There’s definite sexual tension between the two and Evelyn starts to wonder if her hatred towards Dorian isn’t actually hate at all. For Dorian’s part, he’s always had a thing for Evelyn but when they were younger it was easier to tease and rile her up than tell her his feelings and then when they were older she had a long-term boyfriend. Will they both reveal their true feelings tonight? And how will Evelyn handle finding out that Dorian is a pleasure dom?

This was a fun, quick read. As with all the Holinight novellas, it is fun, spicy, and full of tension. I really liked both Evelyn and Dorian and seeing how they long they’ve actually been attracted to each other. I wish there was some more about them talking about how they feel about each other, but I know there’s limited story time in a novella so for the length of the story being what it is the story was pretty good.

Read this if you want a spicy Halloween-themed enemies to lovers novella.