Vervain Hollow Review: Maybe Leaving Was the Easy Part

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There’s something unsettling about a cult horror story where escaping the cult doesn’t mean escaping its hold on you. In Vervain Hollow by Catriona Silvey, Laura has been out for two years, ever since the sprawling house of the hollow burned down with Vervain —the cult’s magnetic leader —trapped inside.

Yeah, she went home, but she never truly left him behind. Never quite felt free of the pull of the Hollow.

Despite everything she endured that year, Laura still longs for Vervain, wants him, believes the power he promised her was real, that it could be hers, finally. So when her estranged friend Aliyah calls and tells her that another former member is trapped in the Hollow, Laura doesn’t hear a warning. She hears the possibility that he is alive. That he survived that terrible night.

Laura and Aliyah return to the burned-out house looking for answers, only for Laura to discover that she may not be able to trust her memories of what really happened at the Hollow.

What waits within forces her to confront not only the darkness she thought she escaped, but the uncomfortable question at the heart of this gothic horror novel: what happens when part of you still desperately wants to return to the one thing that hurt you?

Title: Vervain Hollow

Author: Catriona Silvey

Publisher: Union Square & Co.

Format: eARC

Genre: Horror, Gothic, Cults

Release Date: June 16, 2026

Pages: 320

Star Rating: 3 stars

Spice Rating: 0 chili peppers

A Love Letter to Someone Who Isn’t There

And yet, Vervain Hollow doesn’t begin with the horror of returning to the Hollow. It begins almost like a love letter.

In the opening chapter, Laura pours herself onto the page for someone we haven’t met yet. She speaks to this unnamed you with an intimacy that makes them feel both deeply present and strangely nonexistent—less like a character standing somewhere beyond the page and more like someone Laura has conjured through sheer will of longing. We don’t learn who she is speaking to until later, but by then, the shape of the story has already begun to reveal itself.

Because in many ways, Vervain Hollow itself is a love letter to that person.

Not necessarily a healthy one. Not necessarily a safe one. But the kind written when someone has occupied so much space inside you that their absence becomes a presence of its own.

That sense of longing becomes more complicated as Silvey moves between past and present. Then and now. We know what becomes of the Hollow before we truly understand what happened on the grounds. In the past sections, we follow Laura, Aliyah, and their friends as they go down a road that most don’t come back from and encounter the “god” within it. In the present, we’re left with Laura trying to make sense of what her life has become and how she can get back to the man she loves. Because she does love Vervain.

And the more time we spend with the Laura of the past, the harder it becomes to reconcile the temptation she faces.

The Seduction of the Hollow

True, there is something seductive about the life the Hollow offers her—all of them.

Laura compares herself to a priestess, but what struck me was the freedom she finds in surrendering control: the lack of having to map out your day, the need to never wake wondering what you should do, never having to wrestle with what kind of life you’re supposed to build for yourself each day.

The choice has been made for you. All that’s left is to follow.

Beautiful Prose Hiding Something Darker

Silvey’s writing makes that temptation even more effective. The prose is sumptuous. Soft, lilting, almost poetic in its cadence. It’s soothing, as though the story itself is trying to lull you into the same false sense of comfort that Laura finds in the Hollow.

It wants you relaxed.

It wants you to feel safe…secure.

Which I have to say is particularly unsettling when you already know that people who enter the Hollow don’t always leave the way they came.

And maybe that’s why I can understand the temptation of the Hollow and what calls to Laura without fully understanding Laura.

I’m intrigued by her, but I don’t quite understand her almost desperate need for Vervain’s power. At one point, I thought the simplest point was that she loved him, and I think some parts of her do. She isn’t immune to Vervain’s allure. But what Laura feels for Vervain seems somehow both more and less than love.

Because the deeper I got into the story, the more I wondered whether Laura wants Vervain himself or what she believes he can fill inside of her.

Laura, Vervain, and the Hunger for Power

There are empty spaces in Laura that she seems willing to let other people occupy rather than claiming solely for herself. Vervain offers power, purpose, certainty— things she no doubt thinks will fill the hollow places within herself. And there is something almost transactional buried beneath her devotion that I don’t think Laura wants to even acknowledge. She wants what he can do for her. Wants what he is. She wants the possibility of taking some piece of that power and making it her very own.

And this is where Vervain Hollow began to lose me.

The further Laura sinks into what feels like psychosis, the less character development I could find in her. Maybe that’s the point. There is something terrifyingly appropriate about watching someone escape a cult to physically remain completely trapped within its walls mentally. But understanding what Silvey may be doing with Laura didn’t make the experience of reading her any less frustrating.

Maddening! It is maddening!

When Obsession Becomes Stagnation

The more determined Laura becomes to obtain Vervain’s power, the more desperate she becomes. Eventually, it feels less about Vervain himself and almost entirely about the power contained within him. Everything comes back to this power she has yet to wield. Vervain could practically lean against a wall and look in Laura’s direction, and her thoughts would somehow circle back to whether this might finally mean he is considering giving her his power.

And after a while, it becomes repetitive.

Everyone surrounding Laura seems capable of growing, changing, questioning, and becoming something different from who they were when they first entered the Hollow. Laura remains frustratingly stagnant, largely because she is unwilling to question the one thing keeping her there: Vervain.

Remember how I said Laura is looking for someone to fill the holes within? Well, Vervain has seeped into the empty spaces of her mind, filling up what could be with the promise of what isn’t.

The Horror of Watching Someone Refuse to Wake Up

The more I read, the less I believed that what Laura felt for Vervain was actually love. It felt more like projection with a splash of limerence (ye behold the powers of a cult!).

She doesn’t seem to love Vervain as a person— if we can even call him a person. She loves the archetype of the man.

The promise.

The magic.

The version of herself she has constructed around what possessing his power might finally allow her to become. So much of what makes Vervain irresistible to her seems to only exist within Laura’s own image of him rather than being something inherently his.

And well, therein lies the problem.

Because by 61%, I was seriously considering DNFing Vervain Hollow solely because I felt like I was moving in circles. Even the past and present began to blur together for me. Not because I couldn’t follow the timeline, but because Laura herself felt almost unchanged between them.

Time had passed. The Hollow had burned. Her life had in some sense moved forward. Yet she still believed Vervain. Still trusted him. Still wanted his power. Returned to the same desperate hunger we’d already watched her consume time, and time again.

No doubt there is horror in that.

Watching someone slowly descend into madness (or perhaps realizing they never really escaped it in the first place) is frightening precisely because you are powerless to stop them. I wanted to reach through the pages, grab Laura by the shoulder, and scream, GIRL, WAKE UP. Look what is happening to you.

But there is also a very thin line between making a reader experience the maddening repetition of obsession and simply making the reading experience feel repetitive.

For me, Vervain Hollow crossed that line.

An Ending That Needed One More Step

And then…the ending comes.

Without spoiling what happens, I almost feel as though I missed a step. One moment Laura is still embracing Vervain and everything he represents, and the next she does what needs to be done. I understood the action. What I didn’t fully understand was how they defeated him. After spending so much of the novel trapped inside Laura’s unwavering obsession, I needed to feel the moment something inside her finally shifted.

Instead, I was left wondering when it was done.

So, Was Vervain Hollow Worth It?

For me, Vervain Hollow sits in this complicated space between a book I can appreciate and one I didn’t always enjoy reading. Catriona Silvey’s writing is beautiful, and there is something genuinely unsettling about the way the softness of the prose contrasts with the darkness of the Hollow. I also think there is an element psychologically tethered to everything it promised them.

But Laura’s obsession with Vervain’s power eventually became more frustrating than compelling for me. I understood the repetition thematically: the circular thinking, the inability to let go, the way Vervain continues to occupy spaces inside her long after she should have been free of him. But understanding its purpose didn’t make me enjoy experiencing it. By 61%, I was considering putting the book down, and Laura’s shift happened too quickly for me to feel the character journey had earned it.

So was it worth it? Yes, but with reservations. There are ideas inside Vervain Hollow that I found much more compelling than the experience of getting to them.

Who Should Read Vervain Hollow?

I think Vervain Hollow will work best for readers who enjoy gothic cult horror that prioritizes atmosphere and psychological unraveling over fast-moving plot or traditional character growth.

Pick this one up if you like unreliable narrators, past and present timelines, beautiful, almost poetic prose, charismatic cult leaders, obsession mistaken for devotion, and stories about the lingering psychological effects of indoctrination. It may especially work for readers who don’t need their protagonist to recognize what’s happening to her (or make the choices you desperately want her to make) for most of the story.

If repetitive internal obsession frustrates you, though, or you need visible character development to keep you invested, Laura may test your patience. Vervain Hollow asks you to spend a long time trapped inside the mind of someone who cannot (sheesh will not!) see what you can see from the outside.

And perhaps that’s exactly where its horror lives.

Thank you to The NerdFam and Union Square & Co. for sending me an eARC of Vervain Hollow to read and review.

You should pick up a copy of Vervain Hollow from your local indie bookstore via Bookshop.org and support your local shop at no extra charge (or through Amazon if you so choose).