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My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Many thanks to Net Galley, St.Martin’s Press and the author for a chance to read and review this book. All opinions are expressed voluntarily.

This is gonna be complicated. On one hand, I loved the creepy, mysterious aspects of the book and on the other, I am like ‘no way’, this is just not happening.

10 years, it’s been 10 long years but Hannah is still suffering. Her carefully cultivated life with her partner Dan and her daughter is on the verge of exploding as a crime podcast is back with her worst nightmare, that of her husband’s murder. As facts about the night of the death tumble out of the closet, Hannah whose memory of the night is zero begins to doubt her own culpability.

Unreliable narrators are a sort of the norm for psychological thrillers and that ‘unreliability’ is what raises the tension in the novel to pitch high. But having a practicing psychologist for teenagers to be under such duress and unwilling to seek help was a bitter pill to swallow. That point aside, Katie Lowe has written a very ingenious tale and craftily plotted this house of cards. Each dialogue casually mentioned offers a clue and it keeps the reader on tenterhooks throughout. As the podcast reaches its crescendo, Hannah with Graham’s cruel words ringing in her ears is subjected to bullying and public scrutiny. The investigating police do not seem to see anything beyond what is obvious and to protect her daughter Hannah has to get to the truth herself.

Possession is an exciting and fast-paced read full of red herrings and Hawkood House adds to the gothic frightening feel. There are too many things that go wrong in Hannah’s personal and professional life and honestly, I would have loved that she had a single person to call a friend. I would have, also, loved a more tied in neat bow ending, coz that is my personal preference, else Possession by Katie Lowe is a compelling and engaging read!

The past haunts her. The present hunts her.

Conviction @ConvictionPod · 1m
The investigating officer: “I’ve seen a lot of homicides in the years since, but…that’s the one that keeps me up at night.”

The husband’s best man: “They had everybody fooled. Or at least, she did. But I always knew something was off.”

Hannah, the wife: “I told you. I don’t remember anything. I don’t know.”

That’s all to come, this season, on Conviction. Get ready for our most twisted season yet.

~~~

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.

AMAZON INDIA

GOODREADS

This review is published in my blog https://rainnbooks.wordpress.com/, Goodreads, Amazon India and Twitter.

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