3.5/5

falling in love with the ghost that possessed your body? only k. ancrum can take a premise like that and turn it into the purest, most unabashed gay yearning possible. this is definitely a weird and experimental story in a lot of ways but ultimately, i loved seeing hollis and walt's relationship develop and how utterly devoted they become to each other. i do wish the plot could've been a bit stronger and that the friendships could've been more convincing for me - overall though, it's a quick, page-turner of a read with enough sweet moments to make me happy.

(i also wish the ending could've gone in a different direction but that's not the kind of story the author wanted to tell. i'm just happy to see the boys happy).

I LOVE K.Ancrum's work and this one was just as good as her other works that she's done before. While this was not as amazing as Icarus, I still was hooked to see the development between Hollis' relationship with Walt who was such a brat but I loved him anyway and the angst between Anne and the other girl was CRAZYYY

This book was quite breathtaking. The eerie body horror of it all fascinated and enthralled me. The invasion of the bodysnatchers vibe really did it for me where Hollis' friends slowly grow more and more wary of him. Loved Hollis and his friends their connection was beautiful and K. Ancrum always portrays community in such intimate, heart wrenching ways. My heart ached for the complicated love that existed in their little triad. Loved Hollis and Walt. Their connection was so freakish and delectable I wished for more. There something very intriguing about the fact that though Walt has possessed Hollis, Walt is instead the one is is corrupted by Hollis' influence and strangeness. Loved it madly and passionately right up until the end. The whole exorcizing the land plot felt very rushed and unsatisfying. Regardless, the beautiful writing, strange love and horror elements made this an unputdownable read. Very glad to have read it and I eagerly await Ancrum adult fiction debut...whenever that day may be.

4.25 stars

K Ancrum books always leave me lost for words, this book was not different. Another great read,
4.25 stars

I really wanted to love this. The premise is super cool and so K. Ancrum, and the writing had some really sharp, eerie moments. There were lines that hit hard, and the atmosphere was strong from the start. But something about the whole thing just didn’t quite land for me.

I felt weirdly detached from Hollis as a character. I get that he’s not supposed to be easy to connect with, but it left me feeling kind of adrift for most of the story. The vibes were there, dark, tense, kind of haunting, but the actual plot felt scattered, and I never fully settled into it. It’s like it had all the right pieces, but they didn’t come together in the way I hoped.

There were parts I really liked, and I’m still glad I read it. But compared to Ancrum’s other stuff, this just didn’t stick the landing for me. Solid concept, great mood, but I needed more from the characters and the emotional core.

This story was different but in the best way. The premise takes a different perspective on possession, the story was beautiful, heartbreaking, hopeful and chilling. The thought put into characters and their complexities, the relationships between Hollis and Walt and the setting of the town and its curse, it was all brought together to create a town and characters that you cared about. Throughout I was rooting Hollis and Walt even if it’s a non traditional (?) romance. The ending seemed fitting and was satisfying.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC

I’ve loved K. Ancrum’s work ever since The Wicker King, and there are definitely pieces of The Corruption of Hollis Brown that reminded me why. The atmosphere, the layered relationships, the sharp emotional undercurrents—they’re still here, and they still hit. But this one didn’t land the same way for me.

It felt a lot more disjointed, like the story couldn’t quite decide what it wanted to be. There were moments where I was really pulled in, but then it would veer off or slow down, and I’d lose the thread a bit. It almost felt like it was stuck between being a tighter, punchier novella and a more fully fleshed-out novel. If it had picked one direction and gone all in, I think it would have hit a lot harder.

I still love the way Ancrum writes characters and mood, and I’ll always check out anything she puts out, but this one left me a little unsure. Not a bad book, just one that didn’t fully come together for me.

There’s possession—and then there’s The Corruption of Hollis Brown, a haunting, heart-splitting take on what it means to carry someone else's weight inside your body. K. Ancrum isn’t just writing ghost stories; she’s excavating the hollow places inside people and asking what it would take to fill them with something warm, or at least real.

Hollis is a kid you’ve probably met before—bruised knuckles, bad attitude, way too quick to laugh at his own downfall. He’s a product of a dying town that pretends it still has something to offer its teenagers. Then he meets Walt, a boy long-dead and long-possessing, whose ghost is more tired than vengeful. What starts as horror quickly turns into uneasy alliance… then codependence… then love.

There’s something visceral about how Ancrum writes loneliness: not just the emotional kind, but the physical weight of it. The emptiness of small towns, of echoing train tracks, of family dinners that taste like regret. She paints it in short, staccato chapters that feel like punches and prayers. Walt and Hollis’s relationship is beautifully messy—neither pure nor innocent, but honest in ways teenage boys rarely get to be on the page.

The possession plot could have veered campy or sensational, but here it feels grounded in grief, memory, and intimacy. There’s horror, yes—but more so, there’s yearning. The story dances between genres: gothic romance, psychological thriller, small-town tragedy. And somehow, it works.

Bonus? The recipes tucked into the text. They’re more than a gimmick—they’re legacy, survival, softness. Bread as both body and metaphor. It’s a small gesture that deepens the world Ancrum builds.

This book isn’t tidy. It doesn’t want to be. The Corruption of Hollis Brown is thorny and tender, eerie and affirming. If you like your queer stories raw, your prose poetic, and your love stories just a little cursed, this one will stay with you long after the last page.

This book is everything I wanted it to be and so much more! It goes beyond benevolent possession into soulmate territory, but so gradually and persuasively that it's like you're being seduced right along with Hollis and Walt. While Walt initially sees Hollis as a project - a rough loner who seeks out beatings to feel better, who can't quite accept the dead end that his life is headed towards - he soon finds out that Hollis is a wonderful gift, the one person who not only accepts Walt for who he is, but also desparately wants him to stay. They definitely have a fraught and charged relationship arc, but I liked that even at the beginning, Walt is gentle with Hollis and takes care of him. And by the end of the book, it's Hollis fighting with Walt to stay, to recognize how good he is, and that they belong together. It's a thorny romance that's sweet like honey and sharp as rose thorns. I flew through this book and have been thinking about it ever since.

That was a story like no other, the way K. Ancrum does it. It was so compelling and I didn't see any of the twists coming. Sadly, I didn't really feel the love between the two characters, it didn't compel me like the other aspects of the book. I really liked the friends and the main characters, they were really layered and so interesting. It was great seeing them and their relationships evolve throughout the book. I still really liked this book. It felt utterly new and enthralling to me. I cannot wait to see what K. Ancrum comes up with next.

Hollis and his closest -- his only -- friends, Yulia Abimbola and Annie Watanabe, live with their families in a Michigan mill town: a former mill town, that is, because the mill closed decades ago and most people are barely scraping by. Hollis's mother is a teacher; his father spends the week in "the city" doing construction and comes home only on weekends. The family grows and preserves much of its own food, which also contributes to the town's thriving barter economy.

(Aside: This aspect of Ancrum's worldbuilding didn't quite ring true for me: it seemed as if Hollis's family would need to have quite a lot of land to produce such plentiful and varied crops, to say nothing of the olives Mrs. Brown has supposedly canned -- possible, but just barely, DuckDuckGo informs me.)

The only people who have any money are Yulia's family, who moved to the town because Mr. Abimbola had an interest in building there. But somehow that project hasn't worked out ...

... which has something to do with the district called Rose Town, which centers on the old mill and which is haunted. Even the police don't go there after sundown; even Hollis's daylight forays to pick the abundant fruit that grows there present serious risk.

Oh, and one night Hollis meets a frail young man named Walt. Who, it turns out, is a wandering spirit, and who possesses him -- though why the book's title seems to imply that this, or anything else that happens to Hollis, is corruption, never became clear to me.

As suggested above, my experience of reading K. Ancrum is that if I examine her plots and worldbuilding too carefully they start looking a little shaky. The barter economy of Hollis's town is thriving, but the materials with which to produce items for barter cost money, so where is enough dosh coming from? (Notably, Hollis does an awful lot of baking, and I'm here to tell you that the ingredients for six kinds of holiday cookies do not come cheap.) Nobody seems to resent Yulia for having so much more money than they do. Yulia and Annie twice do something to Hollis that in his shoes I would forgive much, much less readily. Et cetera.

And yet! And yet! The course of Hollis and Walt's relationship is so imaginatively told and so startlingly credible, that it carries everything along with it. Who can make you believe that a person would fall in love with the spirit possessing him, and that the love would be requited? K. Ancrum, that's who. Who can write a set piece in which a young man and a spirit strive to end the curse on their town, and make you believe it? K. Ancrum, that's who.

Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins Children's Books (!) for the ARC.

This was a really unique book which K Ancrum is no stranger to producing. I don’t read a ton of paranormal fiction but I enjoyed this one a lot. I’m going to predict that prudish people will freak out about this book being “smutty YA” but what is missing from that (quite frankly annoying) discourse is that teenagers have sex.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

The Corruption of Hollis Brown follows teen Hollis Brown, who accidentally becomes host to a spirit named Walt who has unfinished business in Hollis's hometown.

K. Ancrum's books have landed in my TBR pile many a time, but The Corruption of Hollis Brown is the first one to graduate to Read, and it was such a spectacular read that the rest of them have been moved directly to the top of my TBR. This book had everything I could ever want out of a queer, paranormal, YA thriller-romance: rich characters, elaborate possession by a ghost, heaps of yearning, and a recipe for gingerbread brownies that I will absolutely be making as soon as I can get to the store for a jar of molasses. I don't even care that it's deeply unbelievable that two spirits living in one body could have a meaningful long-term relationship. If it means Walt and Hollis get to stay together, I'll believe anything!

Honestly, I don't have anything bad to say about this book. It hit every mark for me, and has me very excited to get caught up on Ancrum's backlist.

Absolutely beautifully written, like poetry. I always start off a K. Ancrum book struggling to be immersed--I think it's the short chapters--but once I start to get into the rhythm of the story, I just fly through it.

*SPOILERS*

I really loved Hollis as a character. He's flawed but ultimately sweet, selfless, kind, trying to figure himself out. Living in a poverty-stricken town haunted by the ghosts of its past, Hollis is still optimistic in a lot of ways. I loved that his hobbies were all about self-sufficiency, like baking, growing food, canning. It was a setting you rarely see in novels. I also liked Walt. It was interesting to see him go from essentially the villain to the love interest (trope: only one body) and to see how much he relates to Hollis and genuinely wants to make things better for him. I didn't feel like the relationship was maybe as developed as it could be; the shift from enemies at opposition to friends made a lot of sense, but from friends to being in love was a little more abrupt. In a lot of ways, I would have liked this just as much if they had decided to platonically be together and share the same purpose, which is not typically what I want out of a romance plotline. I think the biggest issue with me feeling buy-in for the relationship was how physical interaction was handled with the one body. It just didn't have that emotional impact with me. HOWEVER, I do think the two of them together is fine and makes sense, and even though the ending felt very abrupt, I was pleased with where things ended up.

*END SPOILERS*

Overall, this is a novel I would highly recommend, especially to readers who put a lot of value on the prose and editing of books.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC!

I am obsessed with the relationship between Hollis and Walt. I went into this wondering how the romance would be pulled off; I mean, how does a relationship develop between you and the guy possessing you? But I should never have doubted for a second, because WOW!

Of course Hollis and Walt have their initial animosity, but having to live with each other forces them to be beyond vulnerable in a way that was SO GOOD. I love when characters are forced to expose their deepest, darkest selves to each other, like get unconditionally loved bitch!!! The physical aspects of their relationship differ from the norm, given, y'know. Not to give too much away, but the tension and dynamic that stems from this is so intense I was losing my mind.

I also love how Hollis' friendship with Annie and Yulia are portrayed. I was worried that the friendships would get sidelined in favour of the romance, and while the romance is the focal point, Hollis' friendships integral to his character.

I have to note, however, that at times it was a little confusing to differentiate when it is Hollis or Walt talking. Italics are used to indicate when one of them is speaking mentally in Hollis' head. When they have conversations together, they transition in and out of speaking verbally and mentally, and there are only paragraph breaks to indicate when the speaker switches, if that makes sense? There were also instances where some of the dialogue was not italicised at all, but my copy is an eARC, so maybe that's just a formatting error that will (hopefully!) be fixed in the published version. Otherwise, it's pretty easy to tell which one of them is speaking, when speaking verbally.

This book is full of such tenderness and I'm so glad that teens will have it, especially the recipes woven throughout the story. I thought that the recipes as a resource for kids in situations similar to those in Hollis's town was such a nice touch in a story about community, and how survival depends on having a community around you. Hollis and Walt are both deeply sad in ways that terrify each other, but it's also why they work. They understand each other in ways no one else does because they also mirror each other.

I unfortunately discovered that possession horror and the particular flavor of romance within this book isn't my cup of tea. That doesn't change the fact that Ancrum is one of my favorite authors, and I'm so excited to read whatever she writes next, though I doubt anything will be able to top the way Icarus made me feel seen as someone with EDS. Her books are filled with so much love for the teenage experience and the particular challenges it brings, that even though I'm out of my teens, I find myself coming back to her characters and books, and the messy, real, tender ways her characters interact with the world. I'm not sure that I'd reread Hollis's story, but I'm glad his story gets to be told.

The Corruption of Hollis Brown was endlessly fascinating. This book was so unique and the format felt a lot like reading poetry. K. Ancrum has such a way of storytelling, I'm always hooked by the first page. I will be thinking about this book for a long time to come.

I love K. Ancrum's works so much. I didn't think anything could top The Wicker King but this is trying to give it a run for my favorite. I loved Hollis. He was an imperfect character but that made it so easy to relate to him. His friends were also relatable in their own ways. I didn't want to out this down to sleep because the short chapters just made it so easy to fly through this book. I'm going to be recommending everyone to read it.

Content warning: bodily possession, physical violence

So I'm not entirely sure how to rate this one. If this was in Adult fiction, it would be a solid 5 star read. But given some of the very mature and intimate content within the pages I don't know how I feel about this being published as a YA (and I say that as a Teen Services Librarian). I'm glad I've read it personally (because I really enjoyed it), but also professionally because now that I know some of the content... which the synopsis does not allude to, I'll be better prepared when talking to teen patrons about this. It's definitely not for younger teen readers.

Ancrum's prose is stunning at times and everything involved with Walt possessing Hollis is powerful and fascinating. Overall, this was a very interesting concept and engaging reading experience. I loved the fierce friendship between Hollis, Annie, and Yulia.

Advanced Reader’s Copy provided by NetGalley, HarperCollins Children's Books, and HarperCollins in exchange for an honest review.

“The wind kicked up dust, the windows were dark, and it was cold and dreary as it always was. But the buildings at Rose Town weren’t hollow anymore.”

Hollis Brown, after bouts with bullies in an inescapable town, finds himself in a chance meeting with an enigmatic stranger named Walt. Hollis succumbs to a deal with Walt, only to find that he is a ghost and Hollis has just given him possession over his body. While Hollis is terrified at first, he comes to understand and care for Walt as they share a host body and discover the pleasures of one another’s company. Soon Hollis’ only friends, Yulia and Annie, uncover the truth, posing a threat to the bond that has grown between the boys. Despite the growing love between them and the dread of a possible exorcism, there are still mysteries to unravel in the cursed town in which they reside. Intimate and odd, K. Ancrum writes a queer love story that will leave you wishing that you too were possessed.

The Corruption of Hollis Brown was a fun read, though I do think it is more of a romance than a horror story. The romance between Walt and Hollis is really endearing, and I loved the growth between the two as they peeled back more layers of each other. While I initially had some issues with how consent was portrayed, especially since Hollis is basically falling in love with his possessor, I found that Ancrum was able to find a solution to this issue by the end of the novel. In addition to emotionally complex characters and relationships, the writing and style of this novel is something entirely different from what I have come to expect from YA romance. The novel is told through succinct chapters, often broken up with baked goods recipes, courtesy of both Hollis and Walt. The one-to-five-page chapters really helped with the pacing of this novel, and the pages with only a few lines felt like poetry rather than prose. The atmosphere of this novel is dark, but I never felt like I was reading paranormal fiction. The romance and topics in this book certainly aren’t lighthearted, but the book does read more like a contemporary romance, which left me a little disappointed due to the unsettling nature of the plot. Ultimately, it was Walt and Hollis’s connection and their unwavering yearning that kept me invested. Despite its lack of spookiness, this is an excellent queer romance that I think a lot of people will be able to relate to, especially with the characterization of the small town.