 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today we are talking about the second book in the Charlie Parker series Dark Hollow by John Connolly. Y'all, I have actually fallen in love with this author. I've fallen in love with the characters. So let's talk a little bit about that. But this second book, it's not as good as the first book for me personally. And the reasoning for that is it's pretty, it's not cookie cutter, but it's more on the lines of your average thriller. There's not as much going on as with the first book. And that kind of turned me off. I'm still giving it four stars for those of you who don't want to hang around for the entire video. I am giving it four stars. I'm just not giving it the full glowing five like I did the first book. The first book jumps around a lot. There are four distinct parts to the book. There's like four, it's basically like four novellas is how I read it. Not really four short stories, because each part is significantly longer than a novella. Or maybe, maybe not, maybe, sorry, significantly longer than a short story is what I meant. So it's like four connected novellas. But with this one, this is a more straightforward story. He goes to one place, he stays in that one place, and he takes care of business. The story is roughly, roughly, I'm going to say roughly, with no spoilers in this review, roughly about a killer named Caleb Kyle. I always want to call him Caleb Carr, and I don't know why. But Caleb Kyle is kind of like this, what I gathered right off the bat was this ageless killer kind of thing. By the end of it, you find out that there is much more to the story than that. And I respect the fact that he stayed on the the realistic side for this one. That helped quite a bit. There is some supernatural stuff toward the end. And from what I understand, you get much more supernatural stuff by the fifth book in the series. Like he goes whole hog by the fifth book in the series. Another standout in this book, but this is why I liked it, is Angel and Louis, or Louis. I'm not sure which one. If somebody wants to tell me, if you guys have listened to the audiobooks, or if you know how this particular Louis, Louis is pronounced, it's L-O-U-I-S. If you know, let me know down there in the doobly-doo. With this one, they were a highlight of the book for me. Oddly enough, I mentioned how I didn't, I didn't really fall in love with Rachel in the first book. And in this one, Rachel is barely in it whatsoever. I took that as a hint that maybe she wouldn't be a bigger part of the series. I am now on book three. I'm halfway through that one. And she is. But I highly suspect that she's going to die. So there's a prediction for the series for me anyways. That I highly suspect that she's going to die. I don't think Angel and Louis will. Unfortunately, I've been spoiled as far as that's concerned. That's fine though, because I didn't want to read a 17 book series and have, you know, favorite characters die off. So I die off early. So I asked a friend if they're around for a while. He said, oh yeah, don't worry about that. But Angel and Louis, they're, I'm going to call them Louis for now because it just, it rolls off the tongue better for me than Louis. They're a highlight of the book that there's so, so many quotes that I want to give you. I'm not going to give you any, but there's so many lines of dialogue with them and I absolutely loved. And it's funny now because I'm binging these. I'm going from book one. As soon as I finish one, I'm starting another. Going through these, I want to talk about the third book in the series because I'm halfway through that one. But I try and stay in this one. My favorite scene in this book is there's a shootout at a house and in the woods and that whole segment. It was amazing. I really, really enjoyed that. There's a little bit of a chase sequence that I enjoyed. The front half of the book is a bit of a blur. I'm not, I don't remember exactly all this stuff that ties together or how Parker, you know, pieced the puzzle together. I'm not entirely sure how that happened. So that's kind of lost on me. I was here for the characters though. It was fun seeing them progress. I got very little development, but it was fun seeing them progress. By the end, Parker is, is a changed man. I don't see that much from Rachel or, well, she's not, she's barely in the book at all, but I don't see that much from Angel and Lewis. But I also understand that there is a book that focuses just on them in the series, which I'm excited for. Because right now, if I'm honest, they are my favorite part of this series. And if it wasn't for them, this would be like any other generic thriller. This book, not the first one and not the third one, but this book right here. Would I call it your typical sophomore effort? No. I think it's much better than most second novels, especially in series. Most of them suck. There's very few that I've come across. Stephen King's The Drawing of the Three is, of course, an example of a terrific sequel. And there are others. In movies, everybody brings up Godfather. Everybody brings up the Empire Strikes Back, those kind of things. With this one, it didn't feel as original. It didn't feel as well put together, oddly enough, as the first one. The first one seemed to connect very cohesively without feeling forced. And this one had elements where I felt Connolly reaching that I didn't necessarily care for. There wasn't any point in this book when I wanted to stop reading. This book is fantastic all the way through. And the only that isn't like a mar on this book is that the first book is so much better. But I'm not going to bump this down all the way to three stars for something like that. I'm going to give it four because I did enjoy the experience. I'm excited to keep on going because I'm loving book three. We'll get into that, of course, in the review for that one. But have you read Dark Hollow by John Connolly? If you have, let me know down there in the doobly-doo. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U. This has been another book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!