With a powerful opening chapter, this book is an exploration into the psychological unraveling we can endure. Our main character is so well-written and you can really feel/see all that she is going through from beginning to end. There were a lot of "side plots" that popped up that I could not really connect to the story which muddled the overall story. Aside from that, I really enjoyed this one.

This is exactly the kind of “can’t put down; forsake all else” psychological thriller I love to read. Even though it was a tiny bit predictable, I couldn’t put it down and will recommend this to friends. I’m definitely going to read more from this author.

Note:I received a free ARC of Possession by Katie Lowe from Macmillan in exchange for an honest review

2.5 Stars

Ten years ago, Hannah’s husband was brutally murdered in their home, and she (conveniently) doesn’t remember a thing about that night. But the police charged someone else—a stranger—and put him away for life. And Hannah packed up her six-year-old daughter and left London behind.

But now her hard-won countryside peace is threatened. Conviction, a viral true crime podcast known for getting cases reopened and old verdicts overturned, has turned its attention to Hannah’s husband’s murder for its new season. They say police framed the man who was found guilty, and that Hannah has more suspicious secrets than just her memory loss: a history of volatility; citations at the clinic where she worked as a psychiatrist; dependencies on alcohol and pills; and a familicidal grandmother, locked away in a Gothic insane asylum until her death. As Hannah loses the trust of everyone she loves, the only person she feels she can confide in is a former colleague, Darcy, who’s come back into her life—but who may have motives of her own. But Hannah can’t tell even Darcy her deepest secret: that she’s still tormented by the memory of her husband and the crater he carved through her life.

I thought this was an interesting concept for a book, especially with the Serial podcast that came out about a conviction that might have been false in a murder. Even with the high hopes I had for this read, I disliked Hannah. I disliked her personality as much as the people in the book that were suspicious of her. I guess that is a good author inducement but it made me not like the story as much as I felt I would have.

Hannah is haunted by her husband’s murder that happened ten years prior. She doesn’t remember the night he was killed, and is considered a suspect by many. However, someone else was convicted for the murder. After the conviction, Hannah and her young daughter moved away from London. Presently, a podcast has revived interest in the murder. Once again, Hannah’s life is disrupted and she’s thrust into the spotlight.

Possession is a new psychological thriller by Katie Lowe. The story is told using alternating timelines. It is hard to determine if Hannah was involved with her husband’s death. Even she is not sure how innocent she is, making her an interesting unreliable narrator.

A slow burning thriller. Possession is a suspenseful and captivating novel. Recommended to fans of psychological thrillers with unreliable narrators.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC of Possession by Katie Lowe.
I loved the concept of this book. A “Serial” type podcast re-examines a 10 year old murder case, playing out the narrative that the person actually charged with the murder did not actually commit the crime. Turning the attention to Hannah, the wife of the victim, the podcast draws an audience and scrutiny.

The concept of this boom was great and had so much potential, but I found that there was just too much going on. Too many partially developed storylines that seemed to muddle the plot enough to not hook me in the way I hoped.

Ten years ago, Hannah's husband, Graham, was brutally murdered in their bed. Hannah, along with their baby girl, Evie, were both in the London home that evening, but Hannah claims not to remember a thing; a mysterious head injury apparently to blame. The police arrested a man, Mike, for the crime. A stranger to both her husband and herself, this man is now in prison for Graham's murder.

Hannah moved from the city after that, unable to stay in the home where such a traumatic event took place. Her and Evie, along with Hannah's long-time love interest, Dan, now reside in a comfy home in the suburbs. Even though, for the most part her life is going well, Hannah is still troubled by flashbacks to that night and to her troubled marriage with Graham.

Unfortunately, things are about to get stirred up even more, as a popular True Crime podcast sets sights on the decades old murder case and decides to feature it on the next season of their show. Conviction host, Anna Byers, believes Mike, the man currently in prison for Graham's murder, was set-up by the police and she claims to have the proof needed to set him free. The show's suspicions focus on Hannah and thusly, popular opinion begins to sway that way as well, churning up all sorts of issues for Hannah and her family. This negative focus on her, causes Hannah to spiral out of control.

Alternating between past and present timelines, as well as incorporating podcast episodes, the truth behind Hannah's past begins to come to light. Hannah is a hugely unreliable narrator, so that definitely added to the overall suspense, as you had to question even her most basic memories. I did feel like the pace of this was a little slow for my tastes, however, and frankly, I never found myself really invested in the mystery.

Some interesting choices were made in the plot progression and I thought the ultimate conclusion definitely tread into over-the-top eye roll territory, but that could just be me. Overall, it is a good story that I think a lot of people will have a lot of fun with. It will not go down as particularly memorable for me, but I'm still glad I gave it a shot.

Thank you so much to the publisher, St. Martin's Press, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I appreciate the opportunity.

Happy Publication Day to this wild ride of a psychological thriller! This book has a great first line: “It's the sound of my husband's blood on the floorboards that wakes me.” CHILLING. Then it kind of got away a little bit but once the podcast started, it ramped up and basically stayed ramped up till the end. I guessed who and why pretty early but still enjoyed getting there. I didn't really care for the ending though. But as the first book I've read by this author, I really liked it.

Thank you @StMartinsPress and @netgalley for the gifted copy.

Holy moly, what a twisty book! I loved it! Starting out with a woman standing over the dead body of her husband, you're immediately introduced to an unreliable narrator. Turns out someone else was charged with the murder...but what really happened?

There are a few different timelines that offer flashbacks and explain the backstory. As the pieces fell into place, I had a few "OMG" moments, and the last 100 pages were ON FIRE. I couldn't put it down, because I needed to know what was happening.

Definitely recommended to fans twisty thrillers! 4.5 stars

I know this is denial.
I know.
But I can’t face it.
I thought I wanted the truth, once. Now, I realize, I was safer in my lie.

True crime seems to be the flavor of the month of late, in books, on TV, in movies, in blogs. The podcast Serial made a huge splash. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark was a huge best-seller in 2018, and an amazing documentary in 2020. Multiple TV shows have been based on true-crime bloggers, and recently, We Keep the Dead Close (review coming) tracked a fifty-year-old unsolved murder at Harvard and looked at whether Harvard was complicit in covering it up. They can serve a good purpose, find truth, free the innocent, implicate the guilty. But what if the person in charge of the True Crime investigation is on the wrong course? What if they go after an innocent person?

Ten years ago, Hannah McLelland (then Catton’s) creepy husband, Graham Catton, was murdered, leaving her a widow and a single mother. A small-time criminal was convicted of the crime. Hannah has moved on, literally, leaving London to live in rural Hawkwood. She has been in a stable relationship with a good, but sparks-free man for a long time. He wants to marry her. But a popular true crime podcast, Convictions, has turned up some new evidence that makes it look like it was Hannah who had done the crime, and week after week, episode after episode, more and more questions are raised. After having buried (and fled) this event in the past it is rising up and very publicly ruining her life.

You have to be ok with being angry. This book will keep you in a rage for its entirety, as it flips back and forth between the present, in which Hannah is increasingly beset, and the past, leading up to the killing, in which Hannah is increasingly beset. She must have a piece of paper on her back that says TORMENT ME in bold, brightly colored letters, maybe flashing neon. We see her with her awful husband back before his death, having to cope with a lecherous father-in-law, an abuser-enabling mother-in-law, her husband’s unspeakable bff, and a hostile press. We see her today succumbing to the increasing pressure of being publicly called a murderer, and enduring the sort of mindless hatred usually reserved for electoral public servants who have counted all the votes and publicly spoken an unpopular truth.

It does not help Hannah, herself a psychiatrist, that there are mental health issues in her family, that her grandmother lived most of her life in an asylum, and that Hannah is unable to remember details of the night of the murder. Can we believe anything she describes? Is she an honest reporter, or an unreliable narrator? Is she mentally ill? Can she tell the difference between reality and unreality? Is she doomed to eternal victimhood? Or…did she whack her husband? We implicate report. You decide.

Hannah hears things.

Possessive, Graham says. I can hear the smile on his lips.
He’s not here, I say in my mind. He’s dead…I can feel a storm on the air, the bright, sharp glimmer in everything. And as I pull the car door open, I think I feel him on the icy breeze.
Goodbye, Hannah, he says. Good night, sweetheart.

Hannah remembers some things, like Graham delivering a lecture.

I can see him, in my mind. His hands gripping the lectern, glancing down at his notes. Dressed the part—clean-cut, pushing his hair back from his face each time he made a point he wasn’t quite sure of.
The only person who saw that tic for what it was, of course, was me. To everyone else, he was all confidence. All knowledge. All smiles.
“‘She had left the last blood of her husband/Staining a pillow. Their whole story/Hung—a miasma—round that stain.’ We can hear the detachment in Hughes’ narrative voice throughout the poem, in which he and his wife take ‘possession’ of a house which is contaminated by the ghosts of its previous inhabitants.” He draws breath. A draft flutters the curtains. “There’s an inevitability to it, as though, by finding the omens, their ‘sour odor,’ he might have sensed even then that only one of them would make it out alive, though they would be haunted by their memories; their guilt, their complicity, their shame.”

But which is which? If she is hearing voices now, can her memories be seen as reliable?

Hannah’s life is complicated further when a woman she had worked with in a mental health setting before everything got crazy, Darcy, turns up. She is interested in restoring the very derelict building, Hawkwood House, where Hannah’s grandmother had spent most of her life after the murder of her husband. The woman wants Hannah to partner with her in this project, which offers Hannah a chance to leave a job she no longer loves and maybe do some digging into her grandmother’s case. The building seems to amplify voices that may or may not actually be there. Uh oh.

Many good novels incorporate into their sinews passages about writing. Possession offers the following:

“A good story,” Graham says, all echoes and reverberations, the ancient tape wavering. “A good story has a life of its own. It’s a thing that lives and breathes. A thing that comes to life in a kind of agreement between the teller and the listener—a shared fantasy, that makes even the wildest illusions real. They make us complicit, when we believe in them. They make us say, ‘Yes, I agree—I accept it. It exists for me.’”

And the viability of story is at the core of Possession. Hannah has a story about the night of the killing. The podcast has a different story. Which story is true? Are either of them true? Maybe partially? Is there maybe a third story? Which one would you believe? We are usually invited to sympathize with the narrator in a novel, to believe her story, but her story is incomplete, jumbled. She hears voices and might be nuts. The tension of not knowing is what keeps us flipping the pages.

Secrets permeate. Hannah has plenty. Her late husband had oodles. In fact, it seems that everyone in this book is hiding something.

This is, at heart, a Gothic novel. There are many elements of that form that pertain here. Usually a gothic story is set in a castle or an old mansion. A derelict asylum fits that bill nicely here. An atmosphere of mystery or suspense? Check. The question of whether Hannah is a murderer permeates, and she certainly seems to be in personal danger. Ancient prophecy or legend? – well, not so much directly. But if family history is portent, Granny’s being sent to an asylum for murder could very much be seen as a prophecy. A good gothic has omens, portents, or visions. Hearing dead hubs counts for sure. Supernatural or other inexplicable events. If hearing Graham is not enough she also sees the ghost of a dead client. High, overwrought emotion – yep, start to finish. Women in distress - Well, one in particular. Women threatened by a powerful, tyrannical male - Hannah was certainly dominated by Graham. So, in ticking off the shelves where Possession mighty fit in, be sure to add Gothic novel to the list.

I found myself eager to return to reading Possession when I had been away. We do not have to love Hannah to see that she has been dealt some bad cards. We can also see that she is not the most straightforward, innocent person in the world. Can you be a victim, but also secretive and dishonest, yet still earn our sympathy? Apparently. Lowe keeps us guessing about whether the things Hannah experiences are manifestations of spectral presence or projections of her own guilt. So, bottom line is that I enjoyed the book, even while having some reservations. Murder, suspense, some back-stabbing, a bit of madness and ghostly presences? What’s not to like?

People say motherhood brings it out in you: a need to protect your child that verges on madness.
Only now do I realize it’s true.


Review posted – December 11, 2020

Publication date – January 26, 2021 (USA)


I am supposed to put here

“I received a free ARC of Possession by Katie Lowe from Macmillan in an exchange for an honest review.”

But doesn’t that feel off, (wait, stop telling me what to write, ok) somehow? I mean thanks, and all. I am grateful, but (and no, you may not take control of my fingers, for any amount of time. Go, shoo, bugger off, get out of my head!) I am quite capable of producing a fair (sometimes even a poor) review without being inhabited by someone, or something else, ok. Now beat it!

A twisted and convoluted psychological thriller, I really enjoyed most of this book. It was fast paced, with several plot lines to keep track of.

The story is told from several different point in time. We move backwards and forwards often, so you need to pay attention to what is happening when.

Hannah's husband was brutally murdered in their own house after Hannah was knocked out. Her 6-year old daughter was unharmed. While Hannah was questioned by police, ultimately another suspect was found, and he was sentenced to time in prison.

Years later, a true crime podcast, Conviction, focuses on the murder, convinced that the man in jail is innocent, and Hannah herself is the one who committed the crime. Hannah, now working at a facility that helps teenagers with eating disorders, and engaged to a kind and gentle man, is suddenly the focus of huge media attention.

While the book kept me interested, ultimately there were a few things about the book that I struggled with. There was so much going on, from family drama, ghost stories, the crime itself, lots of secrets, and several convoluted subplots, that there was almost too much to keep track of, and with the constantly shifting timelines, I feel the author was trying a little too hard. The book lost a star because of this.

However, I would recommend this for anyone who enjoys psychological thrillers.

It’s been ten years since Hannah’s husband was killed. A young man sits in jail, but on this season of the popular crime podcast, they plan to prove he wasn’t the murderer. Suddenly Hannah’s life is slipped upside down and people are convinced she was the true murderer. It doesn’t help that she feels like she is going crazy. Did she kill him? If not, who did?

Wow. This book took me a bit to get into but once I was hooked, I was hooked! I definitely did not see some of the twists coming! I don’t want to say too much, but if you, like me, love true crime podcasts and thrillers, you should read this book!

“Tap. Tap. Tap. Soft little splashes on the bedroom floor.”

Where to start! Possession by Katie Lowe is a complex story, convoluted and intricate right to the very last page! It has every single element I look for in a page turning thriller. Unreliable narrator with a dodgy history – Check! Abandoned Gothic Insane Asylum – Check! Sketchy secondary characters that are trustworthy yet still make me doubt – Check! Murder & Mayhem – Check! Check!

When a true crime podcast decides to reopen the murder of Hannah’s husband, it opens up a can of worms for this fragile and unreliable narrator. She has moved on from the brutal murder of her husband, Graham. Hannah believes the perpetrator has been caught and jailed but there’s always been this niggling doubt in her mind. Her own grandmother, she found out later in life, was a murderer – locked away in an insane asylum, could she be a murderer, too? Hannah has a history, too, poor coping and trouble in the clinic where she worked and she’s seeing her dead husband in the strangest of places! It isn’t long before the pressure of the podcast starts to wear on Hannah but could there be other forces at work here?

Possession has a haunting vibe that drew me in and a multifaceted storyline that I found compelling. Well placed twists that keep the story moving forward and the clever use of the true crime podcast makes for an interesting backstory on Hannah and Grahams past along with some other characters. Overall, Possession is dark, disturbing and a true treat for fans of psychological thrillers.