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    The Mystery of Hollow Places
    The Mystery of Hollow Places
    The Mystery of Hollow Places
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Mystery of Hollow Places

    Written by Rebecca Podos

    Narrated by Emma Galvin

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    The Mystery of Hollow Places is a gorgeously written, stunningly original novel of love, loss, and identity, from debut author Rebecca Podos.

    All Imogene Scott knows of her mother is the bedtime story her father told her as a child. It’s the story of how her parents met: he, a forensic pathologist; she, a mysterious woman who came to identify a body. A woman who left Imogene and her father when she was a baby, a woman who was always possessed of a powerful loneliness, a woman who many referred to as “troubled waters.”

    Now Imogene is seventeen, and her father, a famous author of medical mysteries, has struck out in the middle of the night and hasn’t come back. Neither Imogene’s stepmother nor the police know where he could’ve gone, but Imogene is convinced he’s looking for her mother. And she decides it’s up to her to put to use the skills she’s gleaned from a lifetime of reading her father’s books to track down a woman she’s only known in stories in order to find him and, perhaps, the answer to the question she’s carried with her for her entire life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJan 26, 2016
    ISBN9780062447128
    Author

    Rebecca Podos

    Rebecca Podos is the Lambda Literary Award-winning author of YA novels, including The Mystery of Hollow Places, Like Water, and The Wise and the Wicked, and co-editor of the YA anthology Fools in Love. Find her online at www.rebeccapodos.com.

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    Reviews for The Mystery of Hollow Places

    4/5

    42 ratings10 reviews

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    • 3/5
      We've all been there.Lonely and depressed.Pushing our loved ones away. Running from this or that.Depression doesn't care that you have a family. It doesn't care that you have a job.It takes over everything.And some of us come to reason that these things are not okay and seek help.Others wallow in it for years.The Mystery of Hollow Places tackles depression in a way that I was not prepared for.It's raw and honest.It's not the main focus of this book, but it's hard to read it and not feel it there.The writing is beautiful and enthralling and made the book fly by.I never felt bogged down or bored. I was caught up in the mystery of where Imogene's father was and what the deal with her mother was. I was constantly surprised and never really figured things out ahead of time.There was only one problem, and it was the main character.Imogene treats her friend, Jessa, horribly. She's incredibly judgy and somewhat self centered. She's rude to her stepmother who only wants to help her. I don't care if your mother left you when you were young, that does not give you the right to act like you're above everyone else. Like your problems come first. Like you can just give up and tell the world go to hell when things don't work out your way. (and the same goes for Imogene's mother).However entitled she was, I have to give the girl props. She is an excellent detective!I enjoyed the story in The Mystery of Hollow Places just as much as the gorgeous writing.REVIEW AT YABOOKSCENTRAL.COM
    • 4/5
      This was a fascinating story about a young woman's search for her father, her mother, and answers to questions that have been unanswered all her life. Imogene Scott is a high school senior. All she knows about her mother is the stories that her father has told her which give a picture of a troubled young woman perhaps cursed to be lonely. Imogene's father is a former forensic pathologist turned mystery author. He also suffers from bi-polar disorder. He has recently married his former therapist Lindy. Lindy and Imogene are tentatively building a family but Imogene is used to being her father's only support system so it isn't going very well.One morning around Valentine's Day, her father disappears leaving a geode that he has always told Immy was her grandmother's heart for her to find. Immy decides to use the the knowledge she has gained from her lifelong reading of mysteries, including her father's, to find her father by tracking down her mother. She feels sure that he went off to find her mother. Lindy calls the police and post signs; Immy wants to find her father herself.She does enlist the help of her best friend Jessa and the boy she has had a crush on since she was in fifth grade - Jessa's older brother Chad. One of the most interesting parts of this story to me were the relationships Immy has with other people. She isn't sure why Jessa is her friend because they don't have a lot in common. Immy isn't close to many people as she feels the need to hold everyone at a distance. She says at one point that she never wants to have anything that she can't survive without which includes relationships with other people. As the story goes on, Immy follows faint clues as she tries to track down her mother. Along the way she learns a lot about her mother, her father and herself. Nothing is quite like Immy is imagining and nothing wraps up neatly like the mystery stories Immy loves.This was an engaging story with a very determined heroine. Fans of mysteries and coming-of-age stories will enjoy it.
    • 4/5
      The Mystery of Hollow Places was one of the best "young adult" books I've read in recent years. It didn't pander or water down seventeen-year-old Imogene's struggles, dealing with the mystery of her mother's disappearance 15 years earlier and the subsequent damage to both herself and her father, her father's recent disappearance on Valentine's Day, her relationship with her stepmother, friendships and crushes. It's more a psychological mystery than a thriller, the resolution of which wasn't shocking or twisty or anything like that, but compelling nonetheless.3.5 stars (and I look forward to another book by Podos)
    • 5/5
      At this story's opening, seventeen-year-old Imogene recounts the bedtime stories her father (a former pathologist and now popular medical mystery writer) had often told her about an autopsy he'd performed years before on a woman, who was Imogene's grandmother. He had found within the body a heart of stone, and upon opening a dark seam in the heart he found crystals within. The woman who afterwards arrived to identify the body later became Imogen's mother. But years later Imogene's mother went missing. Imogene's successful mystery-writer father eventually recovered from this loss and remarried, so Imogene now has a stepmother. Once Imogene's dad suddenly disappears, the stone-heart artifact he kept for so long comes into Imogene's possession. But she has read all her father's books and believes she's capable of finding him, and hopes to locate her long-lost mother too. Imogene enlists the aid of her best friend, Jessa, and also Chad, Jessa's handsome college-boy brother. And so the search begins. This tale with the audiobook's narration by Emma Galvin are extremely compelling. Its quick pacing effortlessly moves along as it skillfully weaves in backstory. The heart of stone, for me, was an immediate hook. The well-rounded characters and especially in Imogene's first-person account -- where the narrator's (Emma Galvin) voice and spot-on interpretation adroitly heightens the tension -- had interested me so that I just couldn't pull myself away until the satisfying conclusion. Along with lessons about friendship, the story presents issues about living with mental illness that's handled subtly and not too overdone in this excellent coming of age book.
    • 4/5
      I don't think I would've liked this book so much if I hadn't really liked the main character so much.Imogene Scott has been told the same story about her mother since she was a little girl. Her father was a forensic pathologist called in to examine a body, an elderly woman with a peculiar heart. When the woman's daughter comes in to identify her he is left awestruck thus beginning their love story. At least that's what her dad always told her. But that woman, her mother, ended up leaving them behind though they never spoke about it as something negative. The only thing they have left from her is the stone found in the body that brought the two of them together.Some years later and Imogen's father is gone, straight up left with no note telling anyone where he was and she takes up the task to find him. He left her a clue about where he was headed or at least she is certain that he meant for her to follow him on the search for her mother.I don't know what I was expecting when I picked up this book. I'll be honest I didn't even read the summary or look for some type of blurb. The cover had me hooked and I thought it could be a mystery of some sort. In many ways it was. Within the book, we discover many things (other than the obvious where TF is her father??): the type of woman Imogene's mother was, the type of man Imogene's father became after being left behind, and who Imogene will choose to be. As I've stated in the very beginning I enjoyed reading about Imogene and the growth she experiences in this book. She goes from the bookish loner type to opening up to her best friend Jessa and allowing her to help out in the search. Her eyes are opened up to the world around her once her father's books are no longer her entire reality which helps her get the guy she's pined for since forever. I'll admit I didn't like her very much in the beginning but there was a moment when she spoke with her stepmother where she realized that this woman who has cared for her for so long was not the bad guy that made me think back and appreciate the character's arc. After that, I couldn't think of anything that really turned me off to her.
    • 4/5
      Imogene's parents met when her father, a forensic pathologist, brought her mother in to identify a body. Her father became a famous mystery writer, and her mother left them behind. Now Imogene's father is the one who has left, and she decides she must use all she has learned from his books to find him and solve the mystery of her mother.Podos has a beautiful writing style that really flows, and lends an almost surreal quality at times to what is definitely a strong mystery. I wanted to know what happened to Imogene's parents, why they left, where they were, and what Imogene would find.Imogene is a very strong character, that you can't help but root for. Podos made me feel invested in the choices Imogene made, and what would happen to her.There really wasn't anything I didn't like. This was a strong entry in the young adult mystery genre.I would definitely recommend this book. It's a well-written, compelling young adult mystery that will have you invested.
    • 4/5
      I found myself very caught up in this story, recommended to me by a friend. It was the right book for the right time, and an different kind of story for me to recommend to my YA reader friends. I did love the (early in the book) explanation of the mystery of hollow places, and how it played out throughout the book, in different ways. I'll try to come back and do a review of it later; not possible right now.
    • 4/5
      Imogene searches for her missing father, an author of medical mysteries, using techniques she's gleaned from her dad's books.
    • 5/5
      The Mystery of Hollow Places by Rebecca Podos really took over my mind for several days. The day I read it I was caught up in what was happening, then the next few days I kept thinking about the elements of the story, the writing and the way Podos deftly gave insight to the full spectrum of human thought and emotion. The first chapter is one of the best first chapters I have read in a long time. It established the atmosphere as well as an open-ended introduction to the primary metaphor of the book. It was on the strength of that chapter alone that I decided I was going to just finish the book instead of switch between the books I was reading. The prose is poetic to a point but never becomes more important than the plot, which seems like something that many wonderful writers tend to do. There were laughable moments, cringe-worthy moments and always a reason to read the next chapter.I found the protagonist to be enjoyable as a character in a novel. No doubt some of her actions and tendencies would have annoyed me in real life but as a character they fit with who she was and what she was going through. I do not need to love a character to fully appreciate a character. Readers of both Young Adult and Literary genres will enjoy this book. In addition, those who like to read beautifully rendered prose regardless of genre should also consider adding this to their TBR pile.Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads First Reads.
    • 4/5
      This is the story of Imogene Scott, a typical teenager who lives with her father who was a forensic pathologist but once he met her mother, became a successful mystery writer. However, that did not result in a happy relationship and Imogene’s mother left them when Imogene was a small child. Dad now has a new wife and life continues until one day he disappears. Imogene sets out to find her real mother because she is convinced that is what her father is doing. Imogene finds much more, including the truth about her parents and their respective issues. It was a wonderful story.