Hannah Catton woke up one morning and discovered her husband in their bed, a knife in his neck. The detectives looked at her as the killer, of course. They always look at the spouse. But eventually the investigation went another way, and DNA evidence linked Mike Philips to the crime, and he was convicted under the theory that it was a burglary gone wrong.
That was ten years ago. Hannah has rebuilt her life, to make things better for her daughter Evie, who was just a kid when her father was killed. Now Hannah works as a therapist for troubled teenagers and is in a stable relationship with Dan, a journalist. The past ten years were not easy on Hannah. Beside all the media coverage of Graham’s death, she also had to contend with a big loss at work when one of her teenaged patients died.
She moved away from London and found a new job, but when she goes on her runs, she secretly finds being drawn back to Hawkwood House. A former mental hospital, Hannah dreams of turning the crumbling institution into a place where her patients could heal in safe, comfortable circumstances. But that’s not the only reason she comes. Her grandmother had been a patient there back when it was open.
Meanwhile, successful podcaster Anna Byers is riding high on the latest season of her true crime podcast Convicted. She has just helped to release a man wrongfully convicted of a crime, and now she’s got her eyes set on Graham’s case. Mike Philips has always said he was innocent, and Anna wants to prove that’s true. But in looking back at the case, the only other suspect had been Hannah.
As the episodes of Convicted get released week after week. Hannah listens along with everyone else. And she becomes increasingly frightened that Philips will get released. She has no memory of that night, but she keeps heading back to Hawkwood House, where her grandmother had been locked up. The newspapers said that her grandmother had killed her husband and her kids, and then just walked away. Is it possible that it somehow got handed down, and Hannah is a killer too?
Katie Lowe’s Possession is a powerhouse of a thriller where nothing it quite what it seems. Part domestic thriller told slowly, part crime revisited through podcast, and completely entertaining, Possession is a convoluted story that weaves together in the end as the secrets come to light and the lies get exposed by the truth.
I loved Possession. I thought it was complicated in the best possible way, and it truly left me guessing until the end. But the way Lowe finally reveals all, showing off the deft hand that kept all the right plot points hidden until it was time to reveal them, like a magician showing the card they had up their sleeve the whole time, shows the genius of her plotting. Deft and dark, chilling and thrilling, Possession is a story that has it all.
Egalleys for Possession were provided St. Martin’s Press through NetGalley, with many thanks.
