Possession

This post first published July 5, 2011.

Author: Elana Johnson
Published: June 2011
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing
Series: Possession #1
416 pages (eBook)
 
I’m on a YA streak. Expect more YA book blog posts in the near future.
I read this book on PulseIt, which is kind of like an S&S YA book club. I was lured in by the gorgeous cover — a simple white background with a butterfly trapped in an ice cube and the words ‘Control or Be Controlled’ at the top. Very mysterious, in a good way. Unfortunately, this is an example of that old saying Don’t judge a book by its cover, because the book didn’t live up to its gorgeous cover at all.

The story is about Violet, called Vi by everyone. She lives in a place called the Goodgrounds, where all the people are called Goodies. They are ruled by the Thinkers, who make everyone’s decisions for them so that they don’t have to, to keep everyone in check. Vi is the rebellious sort though, and resists their brainwashing. After many a rule-breaking, the last being seeing her boyfriend Zenn (boys and girls can’t be left alone together), Vi is sent to jail while they decide what to do with her. The Thinkers think about sending her to the Badlands where the Baddies live, something that scares Vi at first. That is, until she meets her jail cellmate, Jag Barque.

(And here is where I started raising my eyebrow — girls and boys can’t be alone together but they stick her in a jail cell with a guy? When there were plenty of empty cells available? I know because Vi pondered this as well, but could not come up with an explanation and it is never answered in the book).

Jag intrigues and even scares Vi a bit at first because he is a Baddie, and she has been taught all her life that Baddies are, well, bad. However, she quickly falls in love with him and they bust out of jail together, where they try to go to the Badlands. Vi discovers that Jag is a part of a rebel faction that is trying to break free of the Thinkers’ control. The Thinkers are desperate to have Vi and Jag on their side because it turns out they have mind controlling abilities, abilities that would make the Thinkers even more powerful than they already are.

I thought the plot sounded fantastic on paper. Sounds exciting, kind of Big Brother-ish, and probably action-packed as well. While it does have these elements, the book felt more like one confusing mess more than anything else. The actual result was like all these fantastic ideas got thrown together haphazardly, making the storyline feel kind of disjointed. A lot of the time I wasn’t even sure what place the characters were in because not only do they move around a LOT, but it their surroundings are not described. Sometimes, I don’t even know where they are at all, which was the case with the last scene. I had to make a lot of assumptions.

The characters were problematic as well. I didn’t like or dislike any of them. They were kind of just … there. That’s a problem in a story such as this. There’s a lot of shocks and twists in this book, but they didn’t have their desired effect because I simply didn’t care about the characters. I didn’t feel anxious when they were being chased, I didn’t feel shocked when Vi discovers the truth behind her father, I didn’t feel giddy when Jag and Vi kissed, I didn’t feel sad when Zenn turned out to be a not-so-good guy.

Vi, the protagonist, annoyed me more than anything. She’s whiny and makes a big deal about nothing a lot of the time. She also talks about how in love she is with Zenn at the beginning, but in the blink of an eye, falls in love with Jag. Then she pretends she still has feelings about Zenn, but who is she kidding? It’s so obvious that her feelings for Zenn were dropped the moment she met Jag. I don’t get the relationship between Vi and Jag either. It felt very forced. There is no rhyme or reason why they would fall in love. It seems to me they are just physically attracted to each other. Yet about halfway through the book, they are already convinced they cannot live without one another, despite only knowing one another for a week.

I didn’t like this book at all. I contemplated giving up on it around the halfway point because, while I understood what was happening, I didn’t understand why it was happening.  The story world was so sloppily built, and the plot just careened along without a care for logic, rhyme or reason. The only reason I finished this book was because I’m one of those people who can’t stand leaving half-finished books laying around, it would drive me nuts.

My Rating: 1/5