Usually a fan of anything even vaguely gothic, Possessed by Jowita Bydlowsak was a struggle for me.

The first part of the book, a somewhat compelling story of obsession, was for me, dulled by what followed. The story lost it's way irrevocably and was ultimately just too much work.

This was a fascinating and engaging look into the mind of someone teetering on the edge, and yet it had so much complexity that it was impossible not to see some of oneself in the characters, and be forced to self reflect. A compelling read.

'Possessed' by Jowita Bydlowska explores the twisted psyche of its main character, Josephine, as she grapples with an all-consuming obsession with a younger man who offers her no commitment. The story delves into Josephine's mental illness, her struggles with her own demons, and the painful cycle of her relationships. When an opportunity to work on a remote island in Croatia arises, Josephine sees it as a chance to escape her torment.

The narrative style of 'Possessed' is characterized by a disjointed, stream-of-consciousness approach that mirrors Josephine's erratic thoughts. While this style may have been intentionally chosen to convey her inner turmoil, it makes the story difficult to engage with, as it lacks punctuation and grammar structure. This aspect may cater to readers who appreciate a unique and unfiltered glimpse into a character's mind, but it can be off-putting for those seeking a more conventional narrative.

Josephine, as the central character, is intentionally written to be unlikable, portraying her as a misanthropic and mentally ill figure. Her obsession with sex and men, coupled with her internalized misogyny and misandry, creates a character who is challenging to sympathize with or root for. This unlikability may align with the story's intentions but can limit its appeal.

The novel introduces supernatural elements with the appearance of a ghostly figure, which disrupts the narrative. The shift in focus from Josephine's obsession to a ghost story feels disjointed, and the attempt to weave the two together lacks coherence. The ghost's story within the narrative is intriguing but never fully integrates with the core plot, leading to a lack of narrative cohesion.

While 'Possessed' starts with a promising exploration of obsession and the complexities of Josephine's character, it takes a sharp turn into the supernatural that disrupts the story's flow. The writing style may appeal to readers who appreciate unfiltered character perspectives, but it can be challenging for those seeking a more traditional narrative structure. Ultimately, the disjointed narrative and lack of cohesion between the main story and the supernatural elements hinder the book's overall impact.

Oh, my. This book. THIS BOOK. Absolutely gripping. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time.

DNF @ 52%

This book was not to my taste. The main character (our narrator) is a completely unlikeable misanthrope who does little to attract our sympathy, nor wants it. This is the kind of book you read if you want to read about an unlikeable main character - and I know for a lot of people that is genuinely what they like. She is obsessed (and I do _not_ use the term lightly) with sex, men, is severely mentally ill and uninterested in help, has a horrible habit of being both misogynistic and misandrist and genuinely commenting things that I found myself legitimately gasping at. I think that is the point, truly, but I was *not* the correct audience and I misidentified myself when requesting it.

I found the stream of consciousness way it is written, with little thought to punctuation and grammar makes sense in the context of the character's thoughts, but I truly struggled to engage as a result. Not for me, but definitely for someone.

<i> I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, which I leave voluntarily</i>

Oh Jowita, did you really write the second part of the book??

My emotions while reading [book:Possessed|58760295]: WOW (the first part) and WTF (the second part).

I really don't know why this book landed on my reading list. It is not something I would like to read: a woman is obsessed/possesses by unrequited love for a younger man. (Was I drunk when I added it??)

To tell the truth, the first part reminded me of Elena Ferrante, I enjoyed it a LOT! And then a ghost appeared and the author decided to turn the whole story into a ghost...something (it didn't match at all), well, she couldn't know how I.HATE.THIS.KIND.OF.PLOT.

Oh Jowita, did you really write the second part of the book??

The first part of the book - 5 stars, the second - 1 star.

This is a slow book with a fascinating premise. I LOOOOVE books about obsession usually, but I didn't feel any of the fun that I usually do here? Maybe if the supernatural element hit a little bit earlier I would have been more engaged? Lol. The big quotes didn't hit as hard as I wanted them to. This is also a book I think I would have enjoyed better as an audiobook, but to my knowledge, one doesn't exist. I shall continue looking for good gothic lit fic...

I love a book about a troubled woman, but even though this book started out very promising, with themes of obsession and psychotic mothers - the ending didn’t wrap it up as neatly as I would’ve hoped. It’s still a good book, especially for those that want an unhinged woman read.

Honestly I love anything this author puts out! I had such a good time reading this. It’s perfectly paced and I would highly
Recommend it to anyone :)

Thank you to NetGalley and Dundurn Press for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review~

Possessed by Jowita Bydlowska follows our main character Josephine, a woman who is absolutely obsessed with a younger man. He promises her no commitments, but the intimacy he gives her leaves her feeling possessed. Unfortunately, Josephine is feeling trapped. She's flipping back and forth between this elusive man and her former lover, all while having to take care of her mother whom has dementia. She takes an offer to work on a former quarantine island in Europe to escape from it all.

I went into this book expecting a lot of smut, and it delivered. I will say that the paranormal aspect of this was a bit jarring after the first half of the book. I absolutely despise her mother, which is unfortunate as you would expect us to feel bad for her. She cares so much for the woman and she could dislike her daughter more. I would definitely read something by Jowita again, but maybe not in this same genre. If you're looking for a book that will make you feel like a voeyeur into someone else's wild life style, this book is for you.

I did enjoy this gothic story - it was a slow burn but had the vivid characterisation and psychological suspense of a master. One to think about and take carefully, page by page, but possibly not one to keep you up all night.

Not for me, even though the elements were there. It was much bad sex for nothing. A pointless rummaging without depth unfortunately. Tried too much to be Otessa Moshfegh without the skill to pull it off yet.

While Josephine was “obsessed. Or possessed - by unrequited love for a younger man who doesn't promise anything, but who gives her a taste of intimacy that puts her on the brink of losing her mind”, I was possessed by this book. I couldn’t put it down. I had to know how her story would play out.

Possessed is the story of Josephine, a 30-something-year-old Canadian woman coming to terms with a life which does not make her happy and her search for inner joy.

Crushed by her abusive mother’s inability to love and nurture her as a child and now wallowing in self-loathing, Josephine finds distraction from this pain in the torture of another kind of unrequited love – that of a selfish younger man who promises nothing and has her on speed dial for aggressive sex on his terms only – while trying to shake her lingering need for her older ex-lover with whom she remains intimate.

For Josephine, her demons are figurative and literal, so when a work assignment promises to deliver a distraction, Josephine decides to visit a former quarantine island in Europe, where she meets an enigmatic, beautiful man with a haunting story.

This book is a heavyweight, while it takes a slowly meandering, messy exploration of one rather staid life. Bydlowska certainly doesn’t shy again from subjects typically sugar-coated: feeling stuck, caring for ageing parents, not being able to get out of the vicious cycle of compulsive behaviour, and an insurmountable feeling of self-doubt all with a liberal dose of the supernatural thrown in. All on the background of some rather spicy, explicit erotica. This book is not for the faint hearted.

Inspired by a real-life breakup, Bydlowska envisions her character in a very dark place, with dry humour and crisp dialogue throughout this story of a self-loathing woman who feels stuck in life.

This book certainly won’t be for everyone, but if you like quirky, if you like weird, and if you want rather sad and unstable female protagonists, this is a book for you. 3.5/5⭐️

There was so much of this book that I loved, I genuinely loved the themes this was drawing together but I had two main problems with the book:
1) It felt too long, this sort of concept works best in novella format 300+ pages just felt way too long. When you are being this shocking it needs to be punchy not drawn out.
2) The depictions of old age. Whilst we are looking through the eyes of a disturbed young woman and I fully understand that those thoughts would likely go through someones mind. It felt unnecessarily nasty towards older bodies.

I will certainly be looking out for more work by this author but I have to say that overall this dragged for me.

I generally enjoyed the plot and the supernatural elements in this text, but I was quite disappointed by the writing style and slow pacing. I was struggling to finish reading because I lost interest almost entirely half-way through - partly because a lot of the chapters seemed repetitive, partly because the characters simply did not draw me in.

The perfect dark and gritty exploration of sexuality and mental health. The writing style isn't for everyone but once you get beside it I just love how the story unfolds.

this book got my attention since chapter one even though i had no idea what i was reading.
josephine is our main character. she´s obsessive in general but it is more notorious when she talks about/spends time with her lovers. living with her demential mother, she founds herself becoming insane too. her work at a peculiar travel agency allows her to explore an island where she meets a ghost called Luka, he helped her realize some things out and when she´s back in the city, she´s no longer the same obsessive josephine.

This book seemed right up my alley, and I was really into it in the beginning. The writing was really good and I liked where the story was headed but after a while, I started to lose interest in the story and I kinda just stopped caring(?). Still very glad I read it and will check out future books by the author.

Thank you to Netgalley and Dundurn Press for sending me an advanced copy

I understand the first half of this book and the writing is good. Many people have lost themselves looking for love and acceptance. I wanted to see more of the supernatural and horror aspect. That part was odd and just didn't work for me.

Thank you to NetGalley for this arc.

Odd, perplexing, disorienting, disheveling, menacing, all words that could be used to describe this novel. When a book begins as one thing and does a hard 360 before the end, we know it can only go two ways: right or left, and we all know it's almost always the latter. Jowita Bydlowska's Possessed takes a drastic turn when what begins as a love story turns into a ghost story.

Set in Toronto, Possessed follows Josephine, a woman in her thirties, who becomes obsessed with a younger lover, Sebastian, who wants her sometimes and ghosts her other times. Whenever Josephine is ghosted by Sebastian, she finds herself unable to be and exist as an individual entity, with memories of their time together intruding and invading her every thought, her obsession taking up more space than her existence. 

Possessed is yet another novel to come out recently that leans into the current contemporary novel trend of the troubled woman, but this time it's a more personal story to the author because it's partly inspired by personal events from her life. We know that the appeal of this genre is the intrigue of the main character; how exciting their story is and how the author keeps us reading about the mundane, the everyday —and Josephine is as good as it gets. Bydlowska pulls out every ingredient to tell this story—a psychotic mother, an all-consuming obsession, very vulgar and uncomfortable descriptive sex scenes—and it works. Until it doesn't.

"My romantic obsession was groundless because I didn’t have a lot to go on, just a few dates, some texts. Scraps. It fit perfectly within the definition of obsession: an obsession is a thing that is not based on reason. It is similar to addiction, which is an inability to quit doing something despite wanting to. It is similar to sickness."

Josephine's obsession is at its peak when Sebastian does not contact her for a while. She is left empty. Haunted. Her mind is filled with nothing but thoughts of him. Bydlowska's description of how invasive Josephine's want is immediately draws you in. She likens it to an addiction, and Josephine is even more relatable. One does not even need to relate to her exact situation to know what she feels. It's a universal feeling. Once, you have felt there was something you could not live without. Someone you could not live without. Bydlowska perfectly captures what it's like to be a slave to want. To desire. From Josephine's thoughts to her actions to her coping mechanisms, we see someone we've been before.

"I thought again about feeling like a metaphorical balloon going from a man to man, how little I had going on for myself, living my life according to whichever man held me."

Knowing the story is partly inspired by the author's life is probably one of the reasons Josephine is a very thorough character study, but it's still extremely impressive how Bydlowska delivers on many fronts. She gives a raw and unfiltered look at want, the negative shapes and forms it often takes, and just how bad it can get. Through Josephine, we see how rejection from one person often leads to the use of another. How people become vices and coping mechanisms; waiting tools. Silence from Sebastian usually causes Josephine to seek solace in Victor, stated as her "maybe-boyfriend," who she no longer feels much for. 

Through the similarities between Victor and Sebastian we see the type of men Josephine is particularly interested in, but there are also major contrasts between both of them, the biggest being the difference in her age to both men. Sebastian is ten years younger than Josephine, and Victor is twenty years older than her. Through the contrast in her relationship with both men, we get to see different facets of Josephine and what drives her relationships.

"On our first date Sebastian and I went to a popular Italian joint. It wasn’t really Italian, wasn’t run by Italians. So many things in Toronto were pretend."

A common theme that runs through the novel is the need for pretense. Bydlowska looks at this through the city; on multiple occasions, Josephine calls out Toronto for trying too hard to be like New York. At a point in the novel, she goes to a party being hosted at a warehouse about to be turned into a condo, and she says of it, "This was very New York — throwing parties in places that were not meant for parties. I never lived in New York but I travelled there for work. Our Toronto efforts to be it were painful and embarrassing to witness." 

Bydlowska brilliantly parallels Josephine with the city in reference to its constant need to pretend. Josephine is constantly trying to please whichever lover she's with, which more often than not leads to her having to do something she does not usually do or something she's not comfortable with. A memorable instance of the many like this throughout the story is a point where she says, "I normally wouldn’t have agreed to that because it did nothing for me, and it was kind of dumb, but I wanted Sebastian to think I was just like girls his age or even wilder."

We see how she constantly loses a piece of herself in these relationships, as she constantly gives in hopes of keeping these men who refuse to stay. But we have a very self-aware main character in Josephine, who knows and who admittedly derives pleasure from the pain. At a point in the novel, she says, "I didn’t have to have a degree in psychology to know that I was a masochist, that I was excited by being on tenterhooks." We see the pain she is willing to tolerate to keep Sebastian—who is always rough during sex and leaves her with bruises—and how she seeks pain in pleasure from Victor as a coping mechanism after being ghosted by Sebastian. This side of her horrifies, but leaves us feeling even more sorry for her. The sex scenes in here are very grotesque and uncomfortable; the aim: to unsettle and get under the skin, and Bydlowska achieves this without making it feel like it's just for shock value.

"I was pining for someone I loved despite not having any evidence that the love was reciprocal. It was not a two-way street — it was a car crash. It was a ghost that lived in your skin."

The mention of ghosts comes up a lot at the beginning of the story, whether it's Josephine likening her obsession to them or her psychotic mother talking about seeing them. I was dismissive at first when Josephine's mother, who has a mental illness, was introduced into the story because she is an all-too-familiar trope used in this genre for extra effect. The troubled woman, with a mentally unstable mother, who also had a mentally unstable mother. 

Josephine's mother is introduced with a flashback to a time when Josephine is very young and terrified of her—a scenario that felt too blown up for the sake of using the troubled lineage trope. It is only more on the nose when Josephine says, "I come from a line of troubled women," and it's attempted to be used as an implication for some of her personality traits. Her mother never fully settles into the story, even though Josephine lives with her and has to care for her every day, but she becomes tolerable.

Her mother occasionally brings up the ghosts she sees, and while Josephine does not see them, she admits to feeling them. The insert about ghosts worked more as a comparison to Josephine's obsession than as an entity within the story. It tended to disorganize the reading experience, and so I hoped mentions of them would show up less. But it only gets worse because a ghost gets a co-lead role in the story.

When Josephine gets offered a work trip at her travel agency job to an island in Croatia, one that is rumored to be haunted, she accepts to go, in need of a distraction. In her words, "my life at home was stressful, my love life was making me anxious." The work trip does not show up till after a little over a hundred pages, and when it finally does, the story begins to plummet.

You wonder where the story is going to go from the beginning and how a story about an obsession is supposed to last for three hundred plus pages, and for the first hundred it's really solid. But what comes after is unexpected. Josephine meets a male ghost-type entity when she goes to Croatia, and it immediately disorganizes the story because, even up until the end, you do not know how to feel about it. It's impossible to wrap the mind around how he fits into everything, and even the explanation Bydlowska gives is not enough to make it make sense because its addition never fully works with the story. 

We get to learn about the ghost, and he gets a story within Josephine's story, which further takes the book away from itself. It soon turns into a ghost story, and although Bydlowska tries to maintain her hold over it, she is unable to. A total narrative shift occurs, and Josephine is completely lost in her own book. It's acknowledged that the ghost is telling a story, but it never fails to feel like there are two entirely different stories struggling for room to breathe in a single book. The ghost's story actually intrigues, but the book loses focus so many times that it makes it hard to get fully invested in him. The intent behind the ghost being integrated into the story does not fully land, and by the time Bydlowska tries to pull Josephine back to us, the attention is long lost, causing the ending to fall flat. 

Possessed starts out really strong, and Bydlowska shoots really far, but she misses, which ultimately makes it seem like she could not carry out what she initially set out to do. It's still worth a read because its portrayal of that all-consuming want is one I've not seen done like this in fiction. Nevertheless, the ghosts should have been left on the chopping block.