Peps' Reading List: A Hollow Dream of Summer's End by Andrew Van Wey


I wasn't planning on actually reading a horror title... at least not until I mustered the courage to finally start The Shining by Stephen King. I had just finished Me Before You by Jojo Moyes and was browsing through my Kindle library to decide on the next book to read. Then, my whirlwind of a daughter arrives and randomly presses one of the titles on the library carousel, and I was left staring at the title page of A Hollow Dream of Summer's End by Andrew Van Wey while the culprit ran away. The app indicated that it would take about two hours to read the book, so I shrugged and read it in one sitting while the little one was down for her nap later in the day.

Aiden, Brian and Freddie are enjoying their summer together, their last before they enter middle school. The three are best friends, despite coming from different backgrounds, such as the fact that Aiden's parents just recently had a divorce and his father now lives with a much younger girlfriend in a mansion. Aiden reluctantly agrees to his father's suggestion to invite his friends for a sleepover at the house. Despite himself, he starts having fun there and even starts to warm up to his father's girlfriend. He even finds the treehouse at the backyard cool and the boys quickly decide they would camp out there for the night. But something is lurking in the shadows around the house... something that is definitely hungry.

A Hollow Dream of Summer's End is innocuous in its beginnings, describing the boys, their circumstances and the idyllic run of their final summer as elementary school students. It highlights how things will probably change once September rolls in, but, for the first part of the book, all that matters is how they would make the most out of the months that they are free to do what they want. There's a subtle warning at the beginning of the book that the story wouldn't always be that way, however, and, once author Andrew Van Wey is done with the preamble of describing the boys and their activities, the horror rears its head... at first with dread and unease, then crashes in on you with the realization that this might not be a story with a happy ending at all.

What ensues is a harrowing experience for the children (and for this particular reader) with relentless assaults from a nameless thing that is in parts feral and in parts sentient. This isn't a particularly original tale, especially if you were raised on 80s and 90s horror films, but it doesn't deter the author from serving up the scares the right way. The story, however short and probably because of it, doesn't give you much room to relax once the monster reveals itself, and that feeling doesn't stop even as you reach the final pages of the story.

But beyond the realness of the monster that terrorizes the boys as they cower in a tree house, there are truths to be realized about how individuals respond to a situation that is far and beyond from anything you would imagine that would happen to yourself. It brings out ugly thoughts and even uglier actions from the boys. If any of them survives the experience, you know that they will come out of it a lot less innocent and probably with emotional burdens that they would carry for the rest of their lives.

A Hollow Dream of Summer's End is short, but makes the most of its pages, alternating between scenes of terrified waiting and even more terrifying physical confrontations. It's great for a quick read, especially when you're looking for a good horror fix. It's going to make you want to find something happier to read afterwards... and in horror fiction, that's a good thing.

Happy (scared) reading!

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