TandeWrites

Born to a Blue-Collar American dream, Hollis Brown is stuck in a rotting small town where no one can afford to leave. His only bright spots are his cool girl best friends and the thrill of fighting his classmates. As if his circumstances couldn’t get worse, Hollis unknowingly makes a deal at the crossroads with a mysterious stranger named Walt and finds himself losing control of his body and mind, falling victim to possession.  Walt has a deep and violent history rooted in the town Hollis grew up in and he has unfinished business to take care of. As Walt and Hollis begin working together to put Walt’s spirit to rest, an unspeakable bond forms between them, and the boys begin falling for one another in unexpected ways. But, it’s only a matter of time before Hollis’s best friends begin to notice that something about Hollis isn’t quite right.

K. Ancrum is someone who I always describe as a ‘once in a lifetime’ kind of author, and the release of Hollis Brown—one of my most anticipated reads of the year—continues to prove it.

The Corruption of Hollis Brown is a queer romantic thriller featuring Hollis, a boy in search of meaning, and Walt, a spirit with unfinished business. Their lives collide when Walt takes possession of Hollis’s body…and maybe his heart. It’s a story about possession where the end goal is to fall in love with your possessor and protect your love rather than exorcise them, and it’s simultaneously a trauma-infused story about undoing a generational curse that turned their hometown from a place of hope to somewhere where dreams go to die. It’s a love letter to healing from trauma and to the importance of connection and empathy (as most Ancrum works are).

As usual, Ancrum’s sparse prose is the standout of her storytelling, an unconventionally small amount of words creating an immense impact, and I wish I had a physical copy to highlight every moment where a single phrase made me clutch at my hypothetical pearls. It’s beautifully written, and intimate, and poetic, and everything I want from such a vulnerable story. Her vignette-style format—these numerous short chapters that capture various moments in time—gives the story a fast and engrossing pace while being incredibly accessible for newer or neurodivergent readers.

Hollis’ corruption and resulting symbiosis with Walt is obviously the standout part of the book. It’s the mortifying ordeal of being known in the most invasive way possible, having someone else force their way into your body like a parasite and having immediate access to every thought you’ve ever had. But it’s oddly romantic, with a level of yearning and tenderness that I wasn’t expecting (but should’ve based on snippets) and I could sit there and watch Hollis and Walt just talk to each other for hours. There were moments where I felt as if their relationship was too easy at times, purely because I’ve convinced myself that if I was possessed, I would somehow a) have a lot more immediate control of my body than Hollis did, and b) would refuse to become a passenger in my own life. Whatever Walt’s power is that lets him take full control over someone else forces Hollis to become dependent on him, basically fully surrendering until Hollis admits defeat (from my perspective) and I would’ve enjoyed them taking a while longer to come to a compromise. I would also love some kind of spinoff story about how their relationship progresses past the end of the book because I am fascinated by their dynamic and surely that level of codependency or symbiosis can’t be healthy.

What I would give for K. Ancrum to have her dream of multiple books set in the same town community spanning one hundred years full of playlists and recipes. For now, I will settle with the recipes from The Wicker King making a comeback. The author says she included them so her teenage readers would have more exposure to cooking if they lived in no-cook households, and she had to put on metaphorical brass knuckles to ensure they made it into the book, but I am so glad the fight was won once more. Recipes for bread and cheese (and other things) make so much sense in Hollis Brown as the characters’ lives are centred around subsistence farming.

Ultimately, Hollis Brown is a book about falling in love with your demons and breaking generational curses, while still baking loaves of bread for your ‘food as a love language’ best friends along the way.

The Corruption of Hollis Brown is due to be released in May 2025 in the UK.