Monday 5 December 2011

Possess review

Possess
Gretchen McNeil
August 23rd 2011
Balzer + Bray


Fifteen-year-old Bridget Liu just wants to be left alone: by her mom, by the cute son of a local police sergeant, and by the eerie voices she can suddenly and inexplicably hear. Unfortunately for Bridget, it turns out the voices are demons – and Bridget has the rare ability to banish them back to whatever hell they came from. 

Terrified to tell people about her new power, Bridget confides in a local priest who enlists her help in increasingly dangerous cases of demonic possession. But just as she is starting to come to terms with her new power, Bridget receives a startling message from one of the demons. Now Bridget must unlock the secret to the demons' plan before someone close to her winds up dead – or worse, the human vessel of a demon king.



I have been waiting for this book for a long, long time (since I started watching the Rebels vlogs about a year or so ago) so it's safe to say I had some pretty high expectations. I mean, who wouldn't? It's a book about DEMONS, and EXORCISMS and ANGST and PRETTY POLICE BOYS.  Why wouldn't I be excited about it? Why wasn't EVERYONE excited about it?! And trust me when I say that it fulfilled expectations. It was a fast paced, spooky, twisted ride, and I loved it.

I need to stop reading books with kick ass heroines. Seriously. I don't think I've read a book with a sappy boring heroine in ages, which is a good thing, of course, but it means every new book I  read I have ANOTHER favourite character. Seriously. STOP WRITING AWESOME BOOKS PEOPLE! ;) Just kidding. Please continue. But yes, Bridget was really freaking awesome. She was incredibly independent to the point of being a little but stubborn, but she was vulnerable too, and I liked how it wasn't until a while into the book that she finally let herself be a little but vulnerable, because it didn't stop her from being a bad-ass at all. I loved how strong she was! And when she finally fully accepted her powers? Freaking BAD. ASS. 

Her relationship with Matt was another one of my favourite parts of book. (Okay, so pretty much all of the book was my favourite part of the book... But shush.) He was just a really nice guy, and though he was a little protective, it wasn't anything crazy or oppressive, he just cared for her. But I also liked how it didn't interfere with her awesomeness, which I see a lot of the time. A heroine will be all bad-ass, a guy will come along, they'll fall in love and the girl will be all pathetic, but this was not the case. In fact, for mots of the last 80 pages, he was unconscious... And I also liked how was wasn't just some random mysterious stranger, he was just a normal human boy who had been childhood friends with Bridget (who was the one with crazy awesome supernaturalness)

The family relationships were really good too, and I loved her connection to her little brother, and how close they were. I don't really see a whole lot of good sibling relationships in books, and while her father had died, the pain was still kind of fresh and she was still grieving I guess. I loved seeing her work out the mystery behind her fathers murder, and her relationship with her mother was better than most too. First of all, she was actually present and not some absentee mother, and she actually disciplined her child! Because she loved her! And she wasn't completely antagonised for it!  Though they didn't get on amazingly well, they still loved each other, so... Yeah.

The plot really kept me on my toes too, and while I had my theories about some of it, I was never fully sure about who to trust or what twist the book would take. It was also pretty creepy in places (I don't know if you heard about the doll shop scene, but yeah. POSSESSED DOLLS. *shudders*) which is always a good thing because I LOVE creepy books. I think. Out of all the creepy books I've read, I loved them, so I guess I do...

But anyway! Possess is an awesome, fast paced novel with action, plot twists and bad-assness aplenty. This is not a book you want to miss, unless for some bizarre reason you don't like books about teenage exorcists... ;)

3 comments:

  1. Wow, great review! We were unsure about this one, but you've convinced us to check it out. Sounds like a fun story with a lot of good elements.

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  2. I was really, really looking forward to this, like, ridiculously excited. It fell a little flat for me, dunno if it's b/c I did expect so much or b/c I've read some amazing books recently...but it just wasn't as good as I expected. I'm really glad you enjoyed it though! I love your review

    The Cait Files

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  3. Awesome review, Cicely! I need to get a copy of this soon, because a) kickass heroine and b) EXORCISMS AND POSSESSED DOLLS. *squeals*

    Love the cover too - reminds me of Sweetly by Jackson Pearce :)

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