Possession

Possession by Elana Johnson

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Realease date: June 7th 2011
Pages: 416
Source: Won from Ally Condie
Summary (from Goodreads): Vi knows the Rule: Girls don't walk with boys, and they never even think about kissing them. But no one makes Vi want to break the Rules more than Zenn...and since the Thinkers have chosen him as Vi's future match, how much trouble can one kiss cause? The Thinkers may have brainwashed the rest of the population, but Vi is determined to think for herself.

But the Thinkers are unusually persuasive, and they're set on convincing Vi to become one of them...starting by brainwashing Zenn. Vi can't leave Zenn in the Thinkers' hands, but she's wary of joining the rebellion, especially since that means teaming up with Jag. Jag is egotistical, charismatic, and dangerous--everything Zenn's not. Vi can't quite trust Jag and can't quite resist him, but she also can't give up on Zenn.

This is a game of control or be controlled. And Vi has no choice but to play.

My review:

I'll tell you before starting, this review is either going to be really long or really short.  I'm not sure which yet. Why? Because I have really mixed feelings about Possession. Don't get me wrong, I did like it. But. . . Well, at the same time it was repetitive and confusing.

Vi started out as a great character. She was confident, bold, and strong. She did what she wanted with no fear of the consequences. When you first see her, she's walking in the park after dark with a boy. Completely against the Rule; A hovercopter comes and picks her up because it's the eighth illegal thing she's done. She is then taken to the Thinkers, the bad guys. I found that the world she was in was very well developed. However, lots of things were left unexplained and I spent the whole book wondering what some of the tech-type stuff was.

As I said earlier, Vi was a great character in the beginning, for her good actions. Later on, though, she started to get a slight bit whiny, but I still rather admired her for her courage and strength. She is a very in depth character that I do love to read about. Jag, on the other hand, was just plain annoying. I mean that in the best way possible because he was actually a realistic character, but he left her so much that it started to get repetitive. He'd leave, she'd strike out on her own for a bit and then realize just how much she needed him and eventually found Jag again.  I honestly don't have any thoughts about the love triangle in Possession, because I don't know how to describe it. It was definitely a different sort of love triangle, at least, which is good compared to all the ones that are the same.

I liked the writing. It rather reminds me of Matched, but not quite as poetic (hard to beat Matched on that level!). The description was perfect and crisp. Once again, I really got a sense of the world  in Possession. I, of course, loved the setting. Actually, I almost always like dystopian settings.  This one reminded me of Matched, along with the writing. It also seemed a little like Delirium.  This didn't really help in the originality, because I felt like there was nothing new, like I'd read it before.  That made it slightly less enjoyable because, well, it feels like everyone is trying to get the same big buzz as The Hunger Games.

There were two things that I didn't like.  The first was the plot.  It was very repetitive; they got caught, they escaped, the got caught, they escaped. . .  The climax wasn't very exciting as nothing even remotely interesting happened, and I didn't understand part of it, so it left me confused and unsatisfied.  That's the other thing that I didn't like, the confusion.  For the whole book, I was trying to figure out what exactly they were doing, but I couldn't quite figure it out. It seemed to just sort of trail off, especially towards the end.

 Well, it turned out that that was pretty long, but that's how I feel about the book.  The review did seem more negative than I really felt about the book, and if you like dystopian novels, you may want to pick this one up.

My rating:
Characters: 4/5
Orginality: 3/5
Plot: 2.5/5
Writing: 4.5/5

In total,