PopSugar 2019 Reading Challenge Prompt: Two books that share the same title (2)


TW: Violence, kidnapping/abduction 



I selected The Anomaly last year as a Book of the Month pick and I absolutely loved it. It quickly became one of my favorite books, described accurately as a mix between The X-Files and Indiana Jones. When I discovered it was just the first in a new series of books thanks to Ashley, I knew I had to pre-order book two. So that's what I did - I pre-ordered The Possession, and hoped into it almost as soon as it arrived.


Christy finds herself in a small-town following a lead on cyber-bullying, but it seems there's something a bit more sinister happening because the girl being cyber-bullied has gone missing. Oddly enough, Christy's ex-husband is Nolan Moore, a supernatural investigator with a not-so-hot YouTube series. With the clever ruse of investigating mysterious walls, he convinces his team to travel to the small California town his ex is also investigating. 


I love how Rutger uses real-life mysteries to spark an interest in a fictional story. In this case, it's a series of weird walls that are actually all over the world, but have no true purpose (at least to anyone's knowledge). It gets me down into a rabbit-hole of googling, but that's not the main purpose of this book, or this review. It's more of a starting point.

In this novel, the formatting was quite different from The Anomaly. There were so many different perspectives within this book, instead of just Nolan. But at times, chapters would focus on other characters in an omniscient perspective but would be worded as if it was from Nolan's viewpoint. It was very weird and confusing. The confusing perspective situation was definitely one of the things that turned me away from liking this book as much as the first in the series.

I also felt this book had a bit of a YA feel to it though it wasn't a YA novel. I love YA, but this didn't really work for this book for whatever reason. Don't get me wrong - I really enjoyed this book. It just felt so different than the original book and I felt a little let down after being so hyped about it.

I am not a fan of Christy, and would love more from the rest of Nolan's crew. I felt the effects from the first book's story were kind of thrown to the wind, when realistically I think the characters would have been a lot more traumatized. It seemed a bit nonsensical in the bigger picture of the series' storyline. Granted, the story was terrifying. I was incredibly creeped out and having a hard time falling to sleep while I was reading this one. I had to walk around the house with all the lights on. It got a bit ridiculous.

It's still creepy. It's still supernatural. And it's still such a unique way of storytelling, with such a different type of story. It's worth the read.






If you enjoyed The Anomaly, definitely still pick this one up and read it. But expect it to feel very different. The Anomaly was SO DAMN GOOD, it would really be hard to beat it. This is definitely different from the first book, but still a good read.




Goodreads rating: ★★★★☆