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I finished Hollowstone:
I want to say first off that I genuinely like it. I wanted to say it first because I'm going to address the book's main weakness first, since it's likely the thing that's going to cause some people who might otherwise like it, to quit early on. The first chapter has a really strong opening scene, but the prose and the dialog in particular in the first chapter is rather awkward. It gets better, and by the start of the third chapter it had smoothed out into a quirky and interesting narrative voice, the small bits of remaining awkwardness seem in character and of a piece with the narrator's personality instead of a problem. I suspect some of the readers giving strongly negative reviews, based them on the problems with the first chapter, and failed to read on to the rest.

I do recommend sticking with it. Once the author gets his legs under him, it moves at a pretty fast pace, with a complex plot, and a whole lot to say about classism, racism, school culture, individual responsibility, and bullying. I went to a northern equivalent of Hollowstone, and I could actually name real human beings that were the real world equivalent of the main characters, people you don't generally see in any fiction, let alone YA fiction. It seems to me a glorious and admirable thing for kids like the ones I knew in school to have characters to speak to their struggles and experience. There were so many true things in there, it hurt a little. Again, after the first couple chapters the plot tics along quickly, with plenty of action. It's a bit of a genre crosser, containing a long realistic fiction section, mystery, and the supernatural.

Is it the best YA book I read this year? No, but it's significantly better written, has a more interesting plot, and has a lot more to say than say established and well liked YA author Chris Crutcher, for example. (I have nothing against Chris Crutcher. He did gay jocks when gay jocks weren't cool, addresses some important topics, but he's a little after school preachy.) I use him for comparison because he's got a lot of published books under his belt, but juggles way fewer balls per novel, generally only addressing one big idea per book. The scope of Hollowstone is so much more ambitious, is doing significantly more complicated things. If it falls a little short of it's goals here and there, it still achieves way more than most people would even attempt, especially in a first novel.