Seventeen years ago, Kyra Masters fled the Hollow Garden and never looked back.
Haunted by fragmented memories of her friend Eleanor’s death and the events that followed, she has spent years trying to build a life far from the estate that shattered her family and left her questioning her own mind.
Following her aunt’s death, Kyra unexpectedly inherits the Hollow Garden. A sprawling Victorian graveyard of crumbling mausoleums, ruined monuments, and paths tangled with the rare Night Ivy that has grown there for generations.
The place she returns to is not the one she remembers. Time has transformed it into something stranger, its shadows heavy with secrets long hidden behind graves and mausoleum. Family resentments linger, and an old flame is unwilling to let the past remain buried.
As old memories begin to surface, Kyra is forced to confront the tragedy she has spent years trying to forget. What really happened on the night Eleanor died? And why have those around her worked so hard to bury the truth?
The estate was never meant to be hers.
And the Hollow Garden has a will of its own.
Nostalgia is for those who sleep well.
Natalie Grace Lewis is a British author of contemporary gothic fiction. Her work combines haunting settings, family secrets, and supernatural elements to explore memory, loss, and the stories we inherit.
Drawn to historic cemeteries, ruined churches, and forgotten corners of the past, she writes about inheritance, grief, identity, and the uneasy relationship between memory and truth.
Her debut novel, The Hollow Garden, is a contemporary gothic novel set within a decaying Victorian graveyard, where old tragedies refuse to remain at rest.
When Natalie isn’t writing, she can usually be found wandering historic graveyards, visiting old bookshops, or planning her next research trip.
Social Media Links –
Insta – nataliegracelewiscreative
Tiktok – thehollowgardennovel
http://www.nataliegracelewis.co.uk
My thoughts: Kyra is forced to return to her childhood home, a deeply unhappy one, by the contents of her aunt’s will. She has been left everything – the house, land and stake in the family business. Having fled years before after her stepfather had her incarcerated in a psychiatric unit, that she refers to as an asylum, she doesn’t want to go back, and once there, she experiences strange visions, nightmares and headaches.
According to her aunt’s will she must stay there for at least three days before she can sign anything over to her half-sister Dana. Something at first, Kyra is desperate to do. But then she starts to remember things – like the death of their friend Eleanor, that led to her being sectioned. And other things aren’t quite right, her aunt’s death for a start.
As Kyra starts to investigate, the past rushes up to greet her. Her former boyfriend and his sisters live in the gatehouse, her sister is constantly stopping by to cook, or chat, despite saying how busy she is. The estate seems full of ghosts, and they all need Kyra to listen.
A Gothic story full of twists and turns as Kyra searches for the truth behind her aunt’s recent death and the long ago deaths of Eleanor and her own mother, the things she’s been told no longer seem like the truth. She’s never been in more danger than she is just as she learns the answers, but without them she could find herself locked away yet again. Clever and more than a little nasty, the Hollow Garden plays for keeps.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
