Not as spooky as I had hoped.

filled star filled star filled star star unfilled star unfilled
bookworm89 Avatar

By

I felt 'The Possession' started off quite slowly, the prologue set up the perfect missing person mystery but the following section didn't really follow through with this, focusing on other story aspects instead. There were times when the mystery, suspense and pacing picked up but only to be book-ended with another meandering section where nothing really seemed to happen.

There were a number of mysteries presented in the book, perhaps too many, so that I found I wasn't particularly invested in finding out the solutions.

I was disappointed that the story line didn't feel as scary and sinister as I'd hoped. It would have been spookier had the supernatural element been more clearly defined e.g. Ghosts, or not described at all, however the vague descriptions left me unsure what the 'demons' were and if they had had any malicious intent at all, even after I'd finished the book I wasn't sure. This lack of context surrounding the figures rather than seeming intimidating and suspenseful made it seem that they didn't pose any threat of danger, after all the only injury caused by the 'demons' was a bang on the head to one character.

Having said this the text was well written and worded and I enjoyed the character arcs throughout the novel, feeling that the characters did progress and mostly acted in a believable way. The emotional journeys that they traveled were, to me, more interesting than the supernatural plot.