The Corruption of Hollis BrownReview posted January 28, 2026.
HarperCollins, 2025. 8 hours, 20 minutes.
Review written January 7, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2025 National Book Award Longlist
This book begins with Hollis Brown getting beat up. He starts fights on purpose - knows how to say what will set people off - but this one got him hurt pretty bad. His only friends are two other seniors, Annie and Yulia, but they'll be going off to college at the end of this year. They live in a small town with a defunct factory where everyone's too poor to leave. Hollis's own father is rarely home because he's working in the city.
And then something strange happens when the seniors decide to spend the night in the abandoned part of town that's reportedly haunted. Annie's ex-boyfriend, whom she just broke up with, gets stabbed. And Hollis gets blamed for it because the guy was mad he was there with Annie, and Hollis was the only one with enough presence of mind to take him to the hospital. At that point, I thought the book was going to be about whatever mysterious thing was going on in the abandoned part of town.
And then - after Hollis cries in the woods about the unfairness of it all - he meets a strange boy who appears to be homeless and gives the boy his coat. After Hollis agrees to meet the guy again - a spirit comes out of the stranger's dead body and inhabits Hollis's body.
Hollis can't control his body at all. He can talk to the spirit and tell him to wipe his shoes before he goes into the house and faces Hollis's mother. But nothing else.
The spirit - whose name is Walt and turns out to have grown up in the same town a long time ago - has ideas about how Hollis should dress and act. He even gets Hollis making new friends. But at night, when Walt is asleep, Hollis works on controlling his own hand. If he can just reach his phone without waking up Walt....
But things from there continued to not go as I expected. As Hollis and Walt slowly come to know and understand one another, situations change.
Ultimately, this is a book about love and friendship and hope. But comes at it with an approach like nothing I've ever read before.