Review--Possession by M. Verano

All her life, Laetitia has wanted to be a star. It’s more than an ambition - somewhere deep inside, she feels certain that she was born for greatness.

But her path to stardom now seems to be halted by a mysterious undiagnosed illness that’s taken over her body. Doctors don’t have a clue what could be causing it. She stays home from school most days, documenting her strange symptoms. Symptoms that start with fevers and chills, but soon escalate to strange items her body seems to be producing - bones, nails, and even glass.All the while, Laetitia is fixated on what's happening in the news: race riots that are moving ever closer to her neighborhood. But when visions of horrific scenes begin to invade her mind, even the media can’t distract her.

As Laetitia's illness worsens, she soon begins to wonder - is her sickness biological, or is it something more? Are the voices she hears signs of insanity - or signs of something much more sinister and demonic? Or, perhaps, signs of something more benevolent... something holy?

Laetitia always knew she'd be a star... she just never knew how quickly it would all manifest.

 

 

Another creepy novel down and this time it was M. Verano’s Possession, the second book of the Diary of a Haunting trilogy and this one definitely had a different feel to it. This time there was no haunted house, but a haunted person, you could say. Laetitia has vibrant dreams of being a famous singer, but everything begins to slowly crumble for her as time goes on and strange things continue to happen to her.

Laetitia thought it was just a sore throat, one that she intended to remedy as soon as she could, for there were very important auditions coming up in a few months that could start her career as a famous singer. But then the dreams start, terrifying ones where she wakes up feeling the aftermath of the pain that occurred in her nightmare. They are unexplainable and they don’t go away.

She starts out writing blog posts, fun ones that involve her different hairstyles with wigs or singing tips, but when mysterious and disturbing photos that are straight out of her nightmares appear on her blog without her doing, she shuts it down and turns into private diary entries instead. And let me tell you guys, this book was pretty scary and disturbing…which made it a perfect Halloween read!

There are a few pictures in here that may also be considering disturbing, but none that I would call horrifying. In fact, they sometimes get a little distorted so you can’t really make out what you’re seeing, but from Laetitia’s descriptions, you know.

Laetitia and her family start to believe that she may very well be possessed by something sinister. Things continue to escalate as time goes by and though he was not directly involved, we do catch an appearance of the mysterious Dr. Montague Verano. The author’s own character in this series is puzzling, he played more of a role in the first book but here, he’s merely mentioned in some documents that appear evidence style and of course in the forward and author’s note.

It’s weird, even though when you read the forward or preface in the beginning, you know the outcome…of sorts, but not what it pertains or how we got there. You almost wonder in the good doctor might have been misleading us. You’ll find out if he was or not by reading of course and it was definitely a powerful and chilling ending!

I was amazed by how current event related this book was too. Though it didn’t mention any real/true events it creates its own (that I am aware of) that feels real enough. Protests of racial injustice is brought to fore, yet the author does this in a way that just brings it in as an event. It didn’t really feel like it was sharing his points or whatnot. And let’s remember that this book is already four years old. The events are more or less background details though. Laetitia mentions it on occasion though, so you know it’s going to be significant.

While Possession didn’t necessarily provide the ghosts we saw in the first book of the trilogy it did still provide other elements of a good ghost story. It’s definitely not one to read late into the night…unless you like that sort of thing! Lol! I’m still sort of curious about one thing that was mentioned regarding Laetitia’s family house that never really got discussed again, but I guess it’s just supposed to be one of those unsolved mysteries…no pun intended! Possession is a perfect read for this time of year and you honestly don’t have to read the first book in the series in order to grasp the contents of this one, but I still recommend it for that too was a pretty creepy read!

 

Overall Rating 5/5 stars