Possession

by Katie Lowe

The past haunts her. The present hunts her.

Conviction @ConvictionPod · 1m
The investigating officer: “I’ve seen a lot of homicides in the years since, but...that’s the one that keeps me up at night.”

The husband’s best man: “They had everybody fooled. Or at least, she did. But I always knew something was off.”

Hannah, the wife: “I told you. I don’t remember anything. I don’t know.”

That’s all to come, this season, on Conviction. Get ready for our most twisted season yet.

~~~

Ten years ago, Hannah’s husband was brutally murdered in their home, and she (conveniently) doesn’t remember a thing about that night. But the police charged someone else—a stranger—and put him away for life. And Hannah packed up her six-year-old daughter and left London behind.

But now her hard-won countryside peace is threatened. Conviction, a viral true crime podcast known for getting cases reopened and old verdicts overturned, has turned its attention to Hannah’s husband’s murder for its new season. They say police framed the man who was found guilty, and that Hannah has more suspicious secrets than just her memory loss: a history of volatility; citations at the clinic where she worked as a psychiatrist; dependencies on alcohol and pills; and a familicidal grandmother, locked away in a Gothic insane asylum until her death. As Hannah loses the trust of everyone she loves, the only person she feels she can confide in is a former colleague, Darcy, who’s come back into her life—but who may have motives of her own. But Hannah can’t tell even Darcy her deepest secret: that she’s still tormented by the memory of her husband and the crater he carved through her life.

Genres: Thriller, Mystery, Mystery Thriller, Fiction, Crime, Audiobook, Suspense

338 pages, Hardcover

First published February 9, 2021

About the author

Katie is a writer living in Worcester, UK. Her first novel, THE FURIES - a story of witchcraft and murder at a British private school in the 1990s - was published in 2019 in the UK, US, and 8 other territories, receiving positive reviews in The Times, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus, who described the novel as an "elegant, pitch-perfect coming-of-age story."

Her second novel, POSSESSION (US) or THE MURDER OF GRAHAM CATTON (UK), is forthcoming in 2021 - following a woman whose husband's murder a decade ago becomes the subject of a true crime podcast which threatens to exonerate the killer, and make her the prime suspect. With no memory of the night of her husband's death, Hannah is forced to relive their marriage through the podcast, one episode at a time. Is it possible she killed her husband, ten years ago? And if she did--will she get away with it, this time?

A graduate of the University of Birmingham, Katie has a BA(Hons) in English and an MPhil in Literature & Modernity, and in 2019 began work on her PhD in female rage in literary modernism and contemporary women's writing.

Reviews

[Nilufer Ozmekik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mind games,confusing physiological twists with inaccurate and unreliable heroine and action packed, entertaining, riveting podcast episodes. Yes, count me in! This is exactly my cup of Dirty Martini with extra green olives!

Let’s meet with Hannah Catton, who is a widow, lost her husband at a robbery which went out of control. For starting fresh and healing from her traumatic experience, she moved to small country town.

Now 10 years passed and it seems like she already has her own HEA. She is working with young adults who are suffering from eating disorders and doing a great job. She has lovely daughter, a cougar, entertaining and supporting friend/ colleague and adorable boyfriend/ soon to be fiancée! Till her past starts to threaten her future, her life was like a dream came true.

We have a challenging reading journey, my friends. This book is not any of your easy reads. It’s moving back and forth giving glimpses about the characters’ past, including the parts about Hannah’s childhood and her interactions with grandmother which were my favorite parts of the book. But most importantly going back helps us to understand who really killed her husband Aaron!

Since the beginning we think she might have involved with the crime ( at least that’s what she tells but does she tell us the truth? After repeating some lies over and over, you may start to believe in them. Side effects of incompetency to differentiate between reality and fiction!) And of course a dedicated crime podcast crew insists that she is the killer! ( By the way I’m two weeks, this is my fourth thriller book that chose true crime podcasts as subject. It seems like it’s already the most popular subject for the authors.)

During our reading journey, we’re meeting with different characters and their additional stories may also confuse our minds, so we mumble slowly “ let’s cut to the chase and give us the truth!”

You gotta be patient because all those stories are connected. Just don’t give up and get ready to do some compelling brain exercise.

Overall: I mostly enjoyed my reading and interestingly Hannah’s character was easy to resonate with. Yes, she was flawed, unreliable, mostly a liar but as you read her past, know more about her motives and actions, you start to understand her.

So I’m giving four psychologically complex, whirlwind, exhausting but still intriguing four stars!

Special thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for sharing this smart ARC with me in exchange my honest thoughts.

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[Miranda Reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hannah's husband was murdered…while she was in the house with him.

All of the fingers pointed towards her but she claimed memory loss.

Now (ten years later), she has a wonderful boyfriend, a strong/stable job as a psychiatrist and the real killer is behind bars (or so she thought).

Evie (Hannah's daughter) and herself have settled into their new lives...that is until the latest season of Conviction comes out.

This mini series is responsible for absolving a man of guilt and finding the "real" killer And this year? It's focusing on Hannah,

As each episode comes out, Hannah slowly watches her life crumble.

But did she do it? Or is the real killer still out there?

Overall, this book was okay.

I liked the mystery at the beginning (did she do it? or was it someone else) but it felt like it went on a bit long.

I think that's because Hannah was a bit of a broken record. Every chapter or so, it felt like we were circling around the same topics.

The pacing felt a bit slow but the tension built fairly well. I liked the last 25% of it quite a bit...just took a while to get there!

And while the ending was good and definitely bumped the book up!

With thanks to Netgalley, St Martin's Press and Katie Lowe for sending me a free copy in exchange for an honest review

YouTube | Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat @miranda_reads

[Meredith (Trying to catch up!) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Less is More

Possession is a psychological thriller about a woman who slowly loses her mind when a buried crime from her past resurfaces as the focus of a podcast.

Hannah has no recollection of the night her husband Graham was brutally murdered 10 years ago. With a podcast questioning the events surrounding Graham’s death, Hannah finds herself in the spotlight slowly losing her sanity.

The first chapter is freaking amazing! Sadly, it is downhill from here. I had to fight myself to keep reading this. I wanted to DNF, but I wanted to know what really happened to Graham, so I kept on reading.

There are some good parts to this book: Hannah’s unraveling is well-done, and she is a solid unreliable narrator. I am bumping my rating up because of the way her character gradually devolves.

At the same time, as intriguing as I found Hannah’s character, she makes some stupid choices that make no sense. Delusion and mind games cover up some of her choices, but there are a few moments that had me shaking my head and rolling my eyes.

Unfortunately, there is just too much going on in this book. The timeline is confusing, the storyline is confusing, and some of the events just don’t make sense. In addition to the mystery of Graham's murder, mental illness, domestic violence, eating disorders, a weird insane asylum, a distorted family history, and the podcast all play a role. Eventually, all comes together with an ending that I wasn't expecting.

I am torn when it comes to this book. There are some intriguing aspects, and Hannah's character is well-crafted, but too many side stories and confusion earns this book a mixed bag rating for me!

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest reivew.

[MarilynW · Rating 3 out of 5]

Possession by Katie Lowe

Possession could have a lot going for it but so much is thrown into the mix that it feels like a muddled mess. Still, a muddled mess can work in the book's favor since the main character, Hannah, is a muddled mess. She's a massively unreliable narrator, it seems she doesn't even know how to put one foot in front of the other, at times. Even ten years after her husband is murdered she has his emotionally abusive words running through her head, night and day. She thinks that she feels his physically abusive hands on her, from the grave. And now, after enduring accusations that she murdered her husband ten years ago, after finally having the peace of a loving live-in partner, Dan, and knowing her sixteen year old daughter can't be taken away from her by late husband Graham, a podcast is going to blow the entire case open again. 

Mike, the guy who was finally charged with the murder of Graham, has been released from prison after being wrongly framed and convicted. Now eyes are again turned on Hannah, as the moderator of a weekly podcast has built a strong case against Hannah, full of evidence and witnesses. Hannah, who had always been on shaky mental/emotional ground, is now thinking that she killed Graham. She can't remember what happened that night, she knew she wanted to kill him and had a knife in her hand and now even her fiancé and her daughter are looking at her with suspicion. 

I wanted to love this story and instead, I had a hard time with it, almost the entire way. The cops seem to be extremely inept, when they weren't being crooked, in both timelines. A certain someone has the most awesome ability to do incredible things with blood, clothes, weapons and personal banking info that doesn't belong to them. Hannah seems flat out mentally ill while working as a psychiatrist, she has a grandmother that may have killed her family, two dead or missing patients on her resume, a zillion enemies and and just a few friends who might as well be enemies. I finished the story because I wanted to know what happened that night, ten years ago, but it was a long and arduous journey before I could find out the answer. 

Publication: Feb 9, 2021

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for this ARC.

[Will Byrnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know this is denial.
I know.
But I can’t face it.
I thought I wanted the truth, once. Now, I realize, I was safer in my lie.

True crime seems to be the flavor of the month of late, in books, on TV, in movies, in blogs. The podcast Serial made a huge splash. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark was a huge best-seller in 2018, and an amazing documentary in 2020. Multiple TV shows have been based on true-crime bloggers, and recently, We Keep the Dead Close (review coming) tracked a fifty-year-old unsolved murder at Harvard and looked at whether Harvard was complicit in covering it up. They can serve a good purpose, find truth, free the innocent, implicate the guilty. But what if the person in charge of the True Crime investigation is on the wrong course? What if they go after an innocent person?


Katie Lowe - image from her site

Ten years ago, Hannah McLelland (then Catton’s) creepy husband, Graham Catton, was murdered, leaving her a widow and a single mother. A small-time criminal was convicted of the crime. Hannah has moved on, literally, leaving London to live in rural Hawkwood. She has been in a stable relationship with a good, but sparks-free man for a long time. He wants to marry her. But a popular true crime podcast, Convictions, has turned up some new evidence that makes it look like it was Hannah who had done the crime, and week after week, episode after episode, more and more questions are raised. After having buried (and fled) this event in the past it is rising up and very publicly ruining her life.

You have to be ok with being angry. This book will keep you in a rage for its entirety, as it flips back and forth between the present, in which Hannah is increasingly beset, and the past, leading up to the killing, in which Hannah is increasingly beset. She must have a piece of paper on her back that says TORMENT ME in bold, brightly colored letters, maybe flashing neon. We see her with her awful husband back before his death, having to cope with a lecherous father-in-law, an abuser-enabling mother-in-law, her husband’s unspeakable bff, and a hostile press. We see her today succumbing to the increasing pressure of being publicly called a murderer, and enduring the sort of mindless hatred usually reserved for electoral public servants who have counted all the votes and publicly spoken an unpopular truth.

It does not help Hannah, herself a psychiatrist, that there are mental health issues in her family, that her grandmother lived most of her life in an asylum, and that Hannah is unable to remember details of the night of the murder. Can we believe anything she describes? Is she an honest reporter, or an unreliable narrator? Is she mentally ill? Can she tell the difference between reality and unreality? Is she doomed to eternal victimhood? Or…did she whack her husband? We implicate report. You decide.

Hannah hears things.

Possessive, Graham says. I can hear the smile on his lips.
He’s not here, I say in my mind. He’s dead…I can feel a storm on the air, the bright, sharp glimmer in everything. And as I pull the car door open, I think I feel him on the icy breeze.
Goodbye, Hannah, he says. Good night, sweetheart.

Hannah remembers some things, like Graham delivering a lecture.

I can see him, in my mind. His hands gripping the lectern, glancing down at his notes. Dressed the part—clean-cut, pushing his hair back from his face each time he made a point he wasn’t quite sure of.
The only person who saw that tic for what it was, of course, was me. To everyone else, he was all confidence. All knowledge. All smiles.
“‘She had left the last blood of her husband/Staining a pillow. Their whole story/Hung—a miasma—round that stain.’ We can hear the detachment in Hughes’ narrative voice throughout the poem, in which he and his wife take ‘possession’ of a house which is contaminated by the ghosts of its previous inhabitants.” He draws breath. A draft flutters the curtains. “There’s an inevitability to it, as though, by finding the omens, their ‘sour odor,’ he might have sensed even then that only one of them would make it out alive, though they would be haunted by their memories; their guilt, their complicity, their shame.”

But which is which? If she is hearing voices now, can her memories be seen as reliable?

Hannah’s life is complicated further when a woman she had worked with in a mental health setting before everything got crazy, Darcy, turns up. She is interested in restoring the very derelict building, Hawkwood House, where Hannah’s grandmother had spent most of her life after the murder of her husband. The woman wants Hannah to partner with her in this project, which offers Hannah a chance to leave a job she no longer loves and maybe do some digging into her grandmother’s case. The building seems to amplify voices that may or may not actually be there. Uh oh.

I can relate to this book, or at least one element of it, in maybe too personal a way. Feel free to skip past this paragraph if it is of no interest. I will not feel offended. It is not really a My wife and had been married for 18 years when we went looking for a house. And after several months we found one we both loved, Park Slope, park block, a beautiful brownstone with minimal need for repair, considerably modernized. A find. Relatively reasonable. One sad element was that the people selling the place were an older couple who were in the process of getting a divorce. Within 27 months of buying the house my wife and I had separated. I cannot say that there was a spectral presence in the house of any sort that I ever detected, no dark vibe from the building itself, but it did occur to me to wonder on occasion whether it might have been more than mere coincidence that two couples in long marriages split up after being in that house for a relatively brief period, in sequence. I never looked into the history of the place, to see if our two crash sequence was an anomaly or part of a larger pattern, but this book makes me wonder if my shaky marriage had maybe been given a bit of a push. (No one was killed)

Many good novels incorporate into their sinews passages about writing. Possession offers the following:

“A good story,” Graham says, all echoes and reverberations, the ancient tape wavering. “A good story has a life of its own. It’s a thing that lives and breathes. A thing that comes to life in a kind of agreement between the teller and the listener—a shared fantasy, that makes even the wildest illusions real. They make us complicit, when we believe in them. They make us say, ‘Yes, I agree—I accept it. It exists for me.’”

And the viability of story is at the core of Possession. Hannah has a story about the night of the killing. The podcast has a different story. Which story is true? Are either of them true? Maybe partially? Is there maybe a third story? Which one would you believe? We are usually invited to sympathize with the narrator in a novel, to believe her story, but her story is incomplete, jumbled. She hears voices and might be nuts. The tension of not knowing is what keeps us flipping the pages.

Secrets permeate. Hannah has plenty. Her late husband had oodles. In fact, it seems that everyone in this book is hiding something.

This is, at heart, a Gothic novel. There are many elements of that form that pertain here. Usually a gothic story is set in a castle or an old mansion. A derelict asylum fits that bill nicely here. An atmosphere of mystery or suspense? Check. The question of whether Hannah is a murderer permeates, and she certainly seems to be in personal danger. Ancient prophecy or legend? – well, not so much directly. But if family history is portent, Granny’s being sent to an asylum for murder could very much be seen as a prophecy. A good gothic has omens, portents, or visions. Hearing dead hubs counts for sure. Supernatural or other inexplicable events. If hearing Graham is not enough she also sees the ghost of a dead client. High, overwrought emotion – yep, start to finish. Women in distress - Well, one in particular. Women threatened by a powerful, tyrannical male - Hannah was certainly dominated by Graham. So, in ticking off the shelves where Possession mighty fit in, be sure to add Gothic novel to the list.

I found myself eager to return to reading Possession when I had been away. We do not have to love Hannah to see that she has been dealt some bad cards. We can also see that she is not the most straightforward, innocent person in the world. Can you be a victim, but also secretive and dishonest, yet still earn our sympathy? Apparently. Lowe keeps us guessing about whether the things Hannah experiences are manifestations of spectral presence or projections of her own guilt. So, bottom line is that I enjoyed the book, even while having some reservations. Murder, suspense, some back-stabbing, a bit of madness and ghostly presences? What’s not to like?

People say motherhood brings it out in you: a need to protect your child that verges on madness.
Only now do I realize it’s true.

Review first posted – December 11, 2020

Publication dates
----------January 26, 2021 (USA) - hardcover
----------April 15, 2021 (UK) hardcover under the title The Murder of Graham Catton


I am supposed to put here

“I received a free ARC of Possession by Katie Lowe from Macmillan in an exchange for an honest review.”

But doesn’t that feel off, (wait, stop telling me what to write, ok) somehow? I mean thanks, and all. I am grateful, but (and no, you may not take control of my fingers, for any amount of time. Go, shoo, bugger off, get out of my head!) I am quite capable of producing a fair (sometimes even a poor) review without being inhabited by someone, or something else, ok. Now beat it!

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Twitter, GR, Instagram, and FB pages

Items of Interest
-----An excerpt
-----You might check out my review of While You Sleep for a list of gothic novel characteristics, or even the site where I found them, Virtual Salt
-----55 Eltisley by Ted Hughes. This is the poem Graham is giving a lecture on in a quote cited in the review.

The full text of the poem, not really a
55 Eltisley
Our first home has forgotten us.
I saw when I drove past it
How slight our lives had been
To have left not a trace. When we first moved in there
I looked for omens.
Vacated by a widow gathered to her family
All it told me was: ‘Her life is over.’
She had left the last blood of her husband
Staining a pillow. Their whole story
Hung- a miasma – round that stain.
Senility’s odour. It had condensed
Like a grease on the cutlery. It confirmed
Your idea of England: part
Nursing home, part morgue
For something partly dying, partly dead.
Just so the grease-grimed shelves, the tacky, dark walls
Of the hutch of a kitchen revolted you
Into a fury of scouring. I studied the blood.
Was it mouth-blood, or ear-blood.
Of the blood of a heal-wound, after some fall?
I took possession before
Anything of ours had reconditioned
That crypt of old griefs and its stale gas
Of a dead husband. I claimed our first home
Alone and slept in it alone,
Only trying not to inhale the ghost
That clung on in the breath of the bed.
His death and her bereavement
Were the sole guests at our house-warming.
We splurged ten pounds on a sumptuous Chesterfield
Of Prussian blue velvet. Our emergency
Kit of kitchen gadgets adapted
That rented, abandoned, used-up grubbiness
To the shipyard and ritual launching
Of our expedition. One mirage
Of the world as it is and has to be
Seemed no worse than another. Already
We were beyond the Albatross.
You yourself were a whole Antarctic sea
Between me and your girl-friends. You were pack-ice
Between me and any possible mention
Of my might-have-beens. I had accepted
The meteorological phenomena
That kept your compass steady.
Like polar apparitions only Wendy
And Dorothea, by being visionary
Fairy godmothers, were forgiven their faces.
I pitied your delirium of suspicion.
Through the rainbow darkness I plodded,
Following a clue of Patanjali
Hand in hand we plodded. For me, that home
Was our first camp, our first winter,
Where I was happy to stare at a candle.
For you, it was igloo comfort.
Your Bell Jar centrally heated
By a stupefying paraffin heater.
But you were happy too, warming your hands
At the crystal ball
Of your heirloom paperweight. Inside it,
There, in miniature, was your New England Christmas,
A Mummy and a Daddy, still together
Under the whirling snow, and our future.
by Ted Hughes

[megs_bookrack · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decade ago, Hannah's husband, Graham, was brutally murdered in their London home.

Even though Hannah, along with their baby girl, Evie, were also in the home that evening, she claims not to remember anything due to a head injury.



The police arrested a man, an apparent home intruder, Mike, for the crime. A stranger to both her husband and herself, this man is now in prison for Graham's murder.

Hannah moved from the city after that, unable to stay in the home where such a traumatic event occurred. Her and Evie, along with Hannah's new partner, Dan, now reside in a comfy home in the suburbs.



Even though, for the most part her life is going well, Hannah is still troubled by flashbacks to that fateful night, as well as to her troubled marriage with Graham.

Unfortunately, things are about to get stirred up even more, as a popular True Crime podcast sets sights on the decades old murder case and decides to feature it on the next season of their show.



Conviction host, Anna Byers, believes Mike, the man currently in prison for Graham's murder, was set-up by the police and she claims to have the proof needed to set him free.

The show's suspicions focus on Hannah and thusly, popular opinion begins to sway that way as well, churning up all sorts of issues for Hannah and her family. This negative focus causes Hannah to spiral out of control.



Alternating between past and present timelines, as well as incorporating podcast episodes, the truth behind Hannah's past slowly unravels for the Reader.

Hannah is a hugely unreliable narrator, so that definitely added to the overall suspense, as you had to question even her most basic memories.



I did feel like the pace of this was a little too slow for my tastes, however, and frankly, I never found myself truly invested in the mystery.

Some interesting choices were made in the plot progression and I thought the ultimate conclusion definitely tread into over-the-top, eye roll territory, but that could just be me.



Overall, it is a good story that a lot of people could have fun with. It will not go down as particularly memorable for me, but I'm still glad I gave it a shot.

Thank you so much to the publisher, St. Martin's Press, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I appreciate the opportunity.

[Melissa ~ Bantering Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

Be sure to visit Bantering Books to read all my latest reviews.

3.5 stars

What is it with endings lately?

Katie Lowe’s psychological thriller, Possession, is the second book I’ve recently read with a terribly disappointing ending. And once again, it’s truly disheartening because up until the novel’s final pages, I was totally on board with the direction in which the story was headed.

I’m frustrated. Can you tell?

Hannah’s husband was viciously murdered in their home ten years ago. She and their six-year-old daughter, Evie, were present at the time of the crime, but neither was of any help to the police. Evie was nothing more than a small child, and oddly enough, Hannah had, and still has, no memory of the night’s events. But with the help of a random eyewitness, the police arrested a young man for the murder, subsequently imprisoning him.

Now, life is good again for Hannah and Evie – until the popular true crime podcast, Conviction, focuses its new season on the decade-old murder of Hannah’s husband. Over the course of a few episodes, the imprisoned young man’s guilt is challenged, and accusatory fingers are swung at Hannah. Questions regarding her memory loss arise, and a history of mental and emotional instability, work citations, and alcohol dependency are brought to light.

Slowly, Hannah’s sanity begins to unravel. And as she feels both her mind and the trust of her loved ones slipping away, Hannah realizes the time has finally come to face the dark secrets she has long buried within herself.

Okay – back to my frustration.

The reason why I am so irritated with Possession’s abysmal ending is because the shocking, appalling weakness of it overshadows all that makes this thriller great. Disappointing ending aside, the story is entertaining, twisty, quickly paced – and in Hannah, it has an intriguing and complex unreliable narrator. The narrative also has fun gothic and paranormal elements, and Lowe does a fantastic job of building tension and depicting Hannah’s mental deterioration.

The novel gets off to a bumpy start, though. The beginning of the narrative is disjointed and choppy, and there are confusing timeline jumps that are tricky for the reader to navigate. But after a short while, Lowe’s writing smooths out nicely, and the novel settles down and becomes easily readable and addictive.

Really, I enjoyed Possession so much. And leading up to the finale, I feverishly turned the pages as fast as I could, I was that desperate to see how Lowe would conclude Hannah’s story.

But the ending that Lowe gives us is not satisfying. Not even a little. For starters, it’s extremely unbelievable and a bit out of left field. And there are huge, gaping plot holes that cannot be ignored, along with one or two unanswered questions that should have been at least somewhat resolved, even if it was done in an ambiguous manner.

Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. (That’s me scratching my head over it.)

And that’s that. I don’t really know what else there is to say about Possession, other than I liked it very much, up until the point I no longer did.

Oh! Wait! One more thing –

I do look forward to seeing what the future holds for Lowe. You can bet I will be one of the first to read her next novel. She is a writer I will most definitely be watching.

I just hope she figures out how to stick an ending.


My sincerest appreciation to Katie Lowe, St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy. All opinions included herein are my own.

Bantering Books
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[Paromjit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Katie Lowe writes a complex chilling gothic psychological thriller that uses the true crime podcast to bring back the nightmare of the brutal murder of Graham Catton in his London home in 2008 back into the public spotlight. Catton's wife, Hannah was there but has no memories of what happened, and whilst the taint of suspicion hung over her, a young man, a repeat offender, Mike Phillips, was convicted of the crime. In a fashion, the widow Hannah, a clinical psychologist, moved on, locating to a more rural place with her 6 year old daughter, and has a partner, Dan now, but has remained haunted by past events. Phillips has always maintained his innocence and now the popular Conviction podcast takes up his cause, saying the police framed him as the case is re-examined, with new evidence and witnesses, pointing the finger instead at Hannah instead.

Hannah's life's begin to spiral out of control under the pressure and stresses she finds herself under, losing her grip on reality, she herself is not certain whether she committed the murder of her ghastly abusive husband, she can still hear his voice, and her personal family history includes her grandmother that resided at a now dilapidated asylum, the eerie and creepy Hawkswood House, with its ghosts. Facing the unforgiving court of public opinion and a judgemental and threatening media and online community, Hannah finds herself targeted, facing hate campaigns and more. There is no-one she can rely on, not even the teenage Evie or Dan, as she sets out to discover what really happened back then.

The narrative goes back and forth in time, in what can feel like a chaotic manner on occasions, in this chilling and suspenseful storytelling. This is a darkly intense read with paranormal elements, and the isolated Hannah surrounded by barely anyone she can trust, could not be more of the classic unreliable narrator at the heart of the psychological thriller genre . Whilst this was an engaging and entertaining novel, of secrets, family, and a web of intrigue, there was an unevenness too, and the conclusion does stretch credulity, but overall I found this a great immersive read. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

[Jayme · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 rounded down

London, 2008

Tap Tap Tap
The sound of her husband Graham’s blood , dripping on the floor.
But, Hannah cannot remember what happened the night he was killed.
Or, if she was the one wielding the knife.

Derbyshire, 2018

“CONVICTION” a popular podcast has decided to make Graham’s Murder- their next case.
Host Anna Byers, thinks the young man in jail has been wrongly convicted.
She doesn’t believe in Hannah’s dissociative amnesia.
She also doesn’t believe that Hannah is innocent of the crime.

Each section of the book goes back and forth in time, exposing the lies, secrets and omissions that will be revealed in the next episode of the Podcast, though it was a bit tricky figuring the format out.

PAY VERY CLOSE ATTENTION to each conversation because many share revelations, casually, which have not been previously exposed.

This story will keep you guessing the entire time!
There is plenty of misdirection and several suspects to choose from....that is, if YOU think Hannah is innocent.
Even Hannah isn’t sure if she is.

I was intrigued but when the story wrapped up, there was a HUGE plot hole which I just couldn’t get past.
It made no sense to me.
For that reason, I rounded down.

This was another fun buddy read with Michael David!
Be sure to read his review, as well! They are always fantastic!

Available NOW!

Thank You to St. Martin’s Press for my gifted copy. It was my pleasure to provide an honest review!

[Lit with Leigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book outlet read #4 (see other reviews at bottom! I know ya wanna)

Writing: 4/5 | Plot: 4/5 | Ending: 2/5

THE PLOT

Hannah doesn't remember anything from the night her husband Graham died, but when Conviction, a popular true crime podcast, takes a deep dive into the case, Hannah's life is turned upside down.

MY (UNPOPULAR) OPINION

I recently made an Instagram reel (shameless plug) on books I loved that others didn't... and this book def joins that group.

I can totally see why others didn't enjoy it. I think this book was slotted into the wrong genre. This isn't really a thriller—it's a contemporary fiction with a contrived thriller-esque ending. If you're expects thrillz with a Z, this isn't the book for you. I enjoyed this because I didn't read it with my "thriller goggles" (aka expecting certain markers of the genre) but with my "contemporary goggles" instead. If I was wearing thriller goggles, my rating would've been lower for shizzle.

Possession explores abusive relationships (btw appreciate the "resources" at the end of the book), gaslighting, PTSD, and eating disorders. The writing is strong enough to tackle these subjects by taking you inside the mind of an intelligent women riddled with self-doubt and all-around confusion due to a traumatic upbringing and abusive relationship.

I also enjoyed seeing "the other side" of true crime podcasts. I don't listen to podcasts, although I've seen my fair share of true crime docs, but I (selfishly/naively) have never considered how it impacts those involved. I think there's a fine line between exposing innocence and then pointing a finger at another suspect for clicks. You can overturn a conviction without a new suspect, so drawing negative attention toward someone else is unnecessary, and in a world where anyone can say anything (as Katie Lowe deftly shows) this is dangerous.

ANYWAYZZZ BEING TOO SERIOUS GUYS so let's talk about that double pack of ass ending. I felt like this was an attempt to fit the book into the thriller genre. Out of nowhere we've got twists coming out the wazoo that make no sense. Contrasted against a serious and introspective novel, it felt cheap and random. The ending was some The Golden Couple shit. Sad face :(

All in all, I (controversially) enjoyed this book and the insights it provided... until that boo boo ending.

PROS AND CONS

Pros: great writing, well-paced with bite-sized chapters, introspective look at difficult topics and being on the receiving end of negative national attention

Cons: TERRIBLE, forced, cliche thriller ending that clashed with the vibez of the book, I wanna fight Sarah and Graham and Darren and... well EVERYONE but Hannah and Evie.

Book outlet reads
#1 - The Reunion
#2 - One Step Behind
#3 - The Scholar

[Michael David (on hiatus) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ten years ago, Hannah’s husband, Graham, was lying on the floor with a knife in his neck. Did she murder him? She had always maintained her innocence, and someone else was arrested and convicted for the murder...filed away as a botched burglary.

Now, Hannah and her daughter live with her fiancé. When a popular podcast called “CONVICTION” decides to focus on the decade-old murder of Graham, it becomes apparent that the folks behind the podcast think Hannah is guilty, and they will do what they can to prove it...and help free the wrongly convicted man.

This is the type of psychological thriller that will keep you guessing the entire time...looking for clues even where they might not seem apparent. I was intrigued for most of the book, and originally thought this was trending towards a 4-star rating.

However...

There are some plot holes. Some of them are minor, as if the author wasn’t sure which direction the story was going in...and then never went back to clean up her earlier work after choosing her path forward. There is also a major plot hole towards the end that had me shaking my head. There are a few other things I am questioning, but I don’t want to put spoilers in this review.

3.5 stars rounded down.

This was a fun buddy read with Jayme. We definitely had some laughs discussing our various theories (some of mine were definitely ridiculous), and I think we both ended up feeling the exact same way about this one.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press, author Katie Lowe, and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

The very best kind of psychological thriller that grabs you by the throat from page one and never lets go. Did that sound a little macabre? Well, so is this book, and I LOVED it.

The book is about Hannah, whose husband was murdered a decade before. Hannah was there, knocked unconscious, and can’t remember anything about it. Or...can she? Although an errant burglar was arrested for the crime....now, years later, a Serial-like podcast is on the scene, and its host has determined that Hannah is the killer who got away, and another man was framed for the murder. Oh also did I mention the title of this book is VERY relevant, in more ways than one? (Yes Ms. Lowe, I see what you did there, clever one!) There are a whole bunch of cool themes I could tell you about but I think it’s much more fun to go in a bit blind, like I did, and enjoy watching them unfold.

First and foremost - I must say that there were ZERO (0) boring pages in this entire book. Possibly even no boring sentences. It was pulse-pounding, smart, sick suspense the whole time. When my heart wasn’t in my throat, my jaw was dropped. When my jaw wasn’t dropped, I was wondering how I would sleep at night or get any work done till I could get back to the book.

But equally worth mentioning — this book is beautifully written from the start, with a much more literary tone than a lot of today’s thrillers. It’s incredibly complex, has fantastic characters and amazing twists, and has an incredibly fascinating main character. And it does all this whole being a cut above (WAY above) most current thrillers on the writing front. I will be surprised if this book does not get nominated for an Edgar. Possession (though different in many ways) reminded me in some ways of Sara Gran’s gorgeous book Come Closer, which is also one of my favorites.

I absolutely loved all the many directions this book went. You will question everything - every motivation, every statement, every character...and yet, there are no real red herrings here, as everything ties together in a great way at the end. Yes friends, this book has the very best kind of satisfying thriller ending — one that is different than what you expect but also somehow exactly what you are looking for. This is also one of those rare great thrillers that you immediately want to read again to see what else you notice now that you know how it ends.

As you may have gathered, I absolutely loved being terrified by this book, and there’s no way this book won’t be on my top ten list at the end of the year. This book was an experience. For my psychological thriller fan friends — get in on this one right away. It’s awesome, and it’s going to be a big hit.

Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Katie Lowe (whose backlist I am checking out immediately) for the ARC of this exceptional thriller.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ten years ago Hannah's husband was brutally murdered in their bed. Hannah was knocked unconscious while their 5 year old daughter lay sleeping in her bedroom. Hannah can not recall the details of what happened. Police investigators are sure Hannah has had something to do with it but then new evidence is found and a young man is accused and charged with Grahams murder.

Hannah has now moved on and is making a living as a psychologist. She is in a long term relationship with nice guy, Dan, and her daughter Evie is your typical teenage girl.

It seems that the true crime podcast Conviction has decided to re-open the case of Grahams murder. The legions of fans that tune in immediately take aim at Hannah making her life a living nightmare. As each episode airs Hannah slowly loses her grip on reality. Does she really not remember what happened? Or is it a convenient excuse that has allowed her to get away with murder?

This is such a difficult review to write. In the beginning I was really confused with the story line and I almost set this aside but I persevered and found myself getting invested in the story. I needed to know what happened to Graham. I think my problem with this one was that perhaps the author bit off more than she can chew so to speak. There was so much stuff going on that I think could have been left out entirely. I also did not like Hannah as a character. I never warmed to her or felt any sympathy for her plight. However her spiral down the rabbit hole was very well done and it did compel me to keep turning the pages. With some good editing this could have been five stars. 3.5 stars!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the digital ARC.

[Becca & The Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a big fan of The Furies, I knew I had to pick this up, and I was not disappointed.

The Murder of Graham Catton follows a woman whose husband was murdered 10 years prior to the start of the novel. In present day, a popular true crime podcast called Conviction has decided to reopen the case, looking at the main character as the lead suspect.

Throughout this novel we are following an unreliable main character who has no memory of the night her husband was murdered. As the podcast is released episode by episode, we watch her grow more paranoid and unsettled as her life unravels in present day while Conviction are picking apart her past. Leaving the reader wondering whether she actually murdered her husband after all.

I did find that the beginning of this was a slow burn and I would absolutely not recommend the audio (the narrator's voices for side characters grated on me) but by the half way point I was so consumed by the story that I read the last 200 pages of this book in one sitting.

The Murder of Graham Catton is a compelling thriller with some nice plot twists that I didn't see coming. Would recommend but bear in mind that I'm a thriller novice so maybe check out some reviews from predominantly Thriller readers if you're unsure about picking this one up.

[Frank Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ten years ago Hannah's husband was brutally murdered by an intruder, and as a result of the trauma, she has complete amnesia of that night. Fortunately, the authorities were able to identify and convict a suspect, who's been in a prison cell this past decade, and Hannah and her daughter Evie have moved on with their lives. Not so fast! A true-crime podcast called Conviction, known for getting cases reopened and convictions overturned, has recently announced they have chosen Hannah's tragedy for it's new season. Now all of the evidence, witness statements, etc. are reevaluated and the show creates quite the buzz on social media. As the podcast progresses, reconsidering all of the evidence and just how incredibly botched the police investigation was, many listeners now believe an innocent man was framed for the murder and Hannah knows more about that night than she lets on, and in fact may have actually killed her lying, cheating and abusive husband! Some listeners have gone so far as to send threatening messages to Hannah, and even vandalize her home! Will Hannah's suppressed memories suddenly resurface now that she's back in the spotlight? Did she in fact actually kill her husband? As the show gains popularity, and credibility, Hannah starts to lose the trust of everyone in her life she loves, including Evie! Can Hannah piece together what actually happened that night and save not only herself, but everyone she holds dear?!
Katie Lowe, you may just be one of my favorite new thriller/horror authors!! You know when you find those books that you don't want to put down, no matter where you go? The type that you are so enthralled with, you just have to find out what exactly is going on, so you take it with you to the gym, to run errands and even to the bathroom, in hopes of squeezing in a few more pages??! Yep, that was me with this book! This book was a classic example of not judging an author solely based off of their debut. Don't get me wrong, The Furies was definitely a solid debut, however this book was EXACTLY what I need in a perfect thriller/suspense read! It was full of mystery, intriguing, flawed and untrustworthy characters, and a plot that kept me guessing and at the edge of my seat the entire time, up until the very last sentence! I went into this not knowing what to expect, other than yet another podcast-based crime thriller, but Lowe gave us a combination of several different elements, even the paranormal, and that's all i'll say about that! This is definitely one of my favorite reads of 2021 and I strongly recommend it to those that love themselves an exciting read! Now that I know what Lowe is capable of, I can't wait for her next release!!

[Catherine (alternativelytitledbooks) - tired of sickness! · Rating 3 out of 5]

*Many thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Katie Lowe for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 2.9!*

NEXT UP ON Conviction...The brutal murder of Graham in his London home put home invader Michael in jail. But Graham's wife Hannah was at the scene, and claims not to remember a thing. Has the wrong suspect taken the fall for this grisly crime?

This is the dilemma Hannah faces, as Anna Byers' wildly popular crime podcast Conviction has chosen her case to explore and exploit, and the digging begins. Hannah has moved on now, 10 years later, to a quiet home in the countryside with new husband Dan and her daughter Evie. She has left her old profession and the terrible night she can't quite remember far behind, but the past can't stay buried forever. As the threats start coming her way and all eyes are cast in her direction, Hannah reconnects with a former colleague Darcy who has come into ownership of the mysterious Harkwood House, a haunting place that has mysterious ties to Hannah's grandmother and a terrifying incident from the past. Can Hannah muddle through her own memories to discover the truth about the night in question before she ends up behind bars and convicted for good?

I had such sky high expectations coming into this book due to what seemed like a fascinating premise. Possession's eye-catching, terrifying cover really helped to set the tone and I think may have given me some ideas from the beginning as far as what this book might be like. Unfortunately, the longer the story went on, the more convoluted it became, and I often felt like I was losing focus on the 'main' theme of the book. This is a book that tries to be a murder-mystery, a psychological thriller AND a ghost story...and suffers because of it. There were several interesting plot threads brought in throughout, which normally would lead to a big payoff or an "aha" moment at the end of the book...but for me, this one didn't have it. There is a 'fakeout' type twist towards the end, and I actually would have preferred the other ending because I think it fit the characters better and did the story justice. Since the timeline jumps around quite a bit and felt a bit messy, I think that the story would have benefited immensely from either a second narrator or simply first person narration. I never fully felt like I was in Hannah's mind, and I think for this story to work, that is essential.

Possession as a concept fits right in with the hot trend popping up in crime fiction recently: a podcast that blasts open the past and leaves the reader and 'listeners' questioning everything they thought they knew. There were some really interesting ideas here, but I wish Lowe had chosen one underlying theme for Hannah and just run with it. This was a unique read, however, and I am curious to see where Lowe's imagination will take her next! 3 ⭐

[Luvtoread (Trying to catch up) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hannah Catton's husband Graham was brutally murdered in a robbery gone bad while her six year old daughter Evie and herself were in the house but Hannah received a head injury and has no memory of the horrific event. The detectives believed Hannah played a part in the murder until evidence supposedly proved otherwise and a young man was convicted of the crime.
Ten years later there is a new investigation into Graham's murder due to a podcast devoted to reopening possible wrongful convictions and this is putting tremendous stress on Hannah. Bits and pieces of her memory are coming back but she's unsure if they are real because she also feels Graham's presence and hears his voice whispering messages in her ear at times. An old acquaintance (Darcy) has moved back to the area and has been a great support and friend for Hannah because the pressure and stigma of being an accused murderer is taking over on her life with the press camping outside their home and at the hospital where she works. Hannah's mental and emotional state is becoming more fragile as the stress continues to pile on causing disruptions in her relationships with Evie and her longtime boyfriend Dan who has been wonderfully supportive to her. The podcast seems to be pointing the finger at Hannah for the murder due to uncovering more evidence that will prove the wrong person was arrested for the vicious slaying and Hannah's emotional stability is starting to crack more and more each day wondering if she did kill her husband because she knows she certainly wanted to.
How will this story play out? Did Hannah really murder her husband in cold blood with Evie in the house at the time or is it possible that Hannah is being set up for this murder? As time goes on there are more questions than answers as Hannah's life and mental state quickly spiral out of control.

This was a very good storyline with a lot of puzzles throughout the book unfortunately it didn't really work for me. I wanted to love this story but sadly I couldn't. It was very slow pacing and a little confusing at times with alternating timelines and Hannah was just a big mess. She was a psychiatrist who worked with young people who had eating disorders and I would only hope that any person who needs psychiatric help would never be treated by someone with Hannah's instability (frightening). It also was sad the way she was treating Evie since Eve also suffered a great loss and Hannah is just consumed with her own problems yet wants to control every aspect of Evie's life which in turn just alienates the child. Hannah just wasn't a very likeable character although I still wanted her to be innocent of any intentional evil actions. There is also one particular character who plays a very big part throughout the story and then another huge betrayal but you never find out the outcome that the devasting revelation had on Hannah and how she planned on handling that need bomb dropped on top of her head. The writing was very good but there was just too much thrown in and it became very muddled altogether.
Please remember these are just my thoughts on this book and many other readers really enjoyed the story so I encourage anyone to read the book and base your own feelings about it.

I want to thank the publisher "St. Martin's Press" and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this novel and any thoughts and opinions expressed are unbiased and mine alone!

I have given a rating of 3 Muddled 🌟🌟🌟 Stars!!

[Erin Clemence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review.

Expected publication date: January 26, 2021.

Hannah Catton’s husband is murdered in their bed, while she is left with minor injuries and no recollection of that night. Although a local man sits in jail for the murder, many people believe Hannah to be responsible, her memory loss nothing more than an easy excuse. Now, ten years later, Hannah is happily remarried to Dan, and the two are raising Evie, Hannah’s daughter from her previous marriage. The trouble begins when a local crime podcast entitled “Conviction” makes claims that Hannah’s husband’s murderer is still out there, and that the wrong man sits in jail for his crime. As the podcast grows in popularity, attentions are soon put back on Hannah, and after years of trying to hide, her secrets will soon be made public.

“Possession” is the second novel by U.K novelist Katie Lowe. Her first novel, The Furies, came out last year and it piqued my interest, although I never had the chance to read it. “Possession” is about an unsolved murder, a family secret and an old, decrepit psychiatric hospital that may or may not have some paranormal secrets of its own.

Hannah is an interesting character; a psychiatrist with a troubled past, she is likable and immediately creates empathy and relatability with the reader. Hannah is desperate to protect her child and her family (even if it means protecting them from herself) and there is a vulnerability in her that most readers will find endearing and personable.

The twists and turns in this novel are quite complex. There is the murder plotline (who really killed Hannah’s husband? Did she have something to do with it? Is her memory loss real or just an excuse?) , then of course the potential haunted family history tied to Hawkwood House (and the spirits that possibly reside therein) and the separate storyline of Hannah’s grandmother and her supposed mental breakdown. This is definitely a novel that you need to pay attention to, as the twists and turns come fast, and they require some sorting through.

I liked the ending, although there was a bit of a predictable element to it (I knew one of the characters was fishy, but I hadn’t figured out why until the end, when the author revealed it) . The fact that a random character, mentioned only a few times in the story, could play such a large role was hard to swallow.

Overall, the novel was a good read, full of murder, intrigue and haunted family secrets. The ending was a bit out there, though, as if Ms. Lowe tried too hard to make the twist unpredictable.

“Possession” started off hot, and kept my interest the whole way through, without flagging once, and this is difficult to do with a novel of this genre. Kudos to Ms. Lowe, and I look forward to reading what she comes up with next!

[Rosh ~catching up slowly~ · Rating 2 out of 5]

#InANutshell: If this weren’t an audiobook, I would have DNFed it for sure.


Hannah’s husband Graham was murdered about a decade ago. The murderer, a teenager named Mike, was convicted and the case closed. Hannah has somehow got her life back on track, raising her daughter Evie with the help of her new partner Dan and settled in a small town psychiatry practice in an NHS hospital. This is until she hears that a popular radio podcast named Conviction is planning to investigate Graham’s murder as they believe Ted to be innocent. Soon, Hannah and her family are in the public eye and she finds her personal and professional troubles spiralling out of control. How and when all this will end forms the rest of the story.


You might have heard of the Gestalt theory, which emphasises that the whole of anything is greater than its parts. This book proves the theory wrong. We have many potential wonderful parts in the book. Hannah’s complicated relationship with her daughter Evie, Dan’s almost selfless and blind love for Hannah in spite of her traumatic past and present, the possibly paranormal element when Hannah begins to hear Graham’s voice and feel him around, the obsession Hannah has with a local house that was a psychiatric hospital earlier… The last two points especially would have been mind-blowing if they were developed properly. But they all come together in an ad-hoc manner that don’t blend into a perfect whole, and some points were just abandoned midway. The whole book dipped for me as a result.

If this were a book written in third person, I might still have enjoyed it. But it comes to us from the first person perspective of Hannah, an absolutely self-obsessed and presumptuous character. Hearing her “I felt” and “I thought” and “I knew” again and again and again tempted me to pull my hair out in frustration. She is supposed to be a psychiatrist yet she can’t even diagnose her own symptoms, or does she seek medical help for her PTSD or her hallucinations. Also surprising was how Dan and Evie couldn’t sense anything wrong with her while another minor character immediately realised that Hannah blanked out at times.

Even the original murder investigation seemed to be utter nonsense. When you hear the clues revealed by the podcast, you’ll also begin to wonder how the heck Mike was convicted on such flimsy evidence without any judge or jury questioning the situation. The entire plot seemed too farfetched. If a character fails, a thriller can still sustain itself on unforeseen twists. But unfortunately for me, even that didn’t happen as I could guess the possible killer much before Hannah.

Sorry to say but this book didn’t work for me at all. All I need in a thriller is a quick pace, intelligent writing and decent twists, even if the main character is unlikeable. I didn’t get any of those from this book. I’m just glad I completed it and all credit to that goes to the narrator Amy Scanlon. Her narration was spot on, with every character voiced distinctly. I doubt I would have completed this book if the narration were poorly done. For a 13 hours long audiobook, Scanlon’s voice was the only motivation.

Thank you, NetGalley and HarperCollins UK Audio, for the audio ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.



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[Theresa Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ended up really enjoying this mystery/thriller. Hannah begins the novel telling us that she killed her husband, but we’re increasingly sure that she’s not mentally all there, so we don’t know what to believe.

This had to be a challenging book to plot, because it bounces around in time: 2008, when the murder occurred. Years before, how their marriage was leading up to the murder. 2018, the present day, where the podcast Conviction comes out, questioning if the young man put in prison for the crime for the last ten years is, in fact, guilty. It paints Hannah as a vindictive wife against her philandering husband, trotting out women he allegedly slept with as well as interviewing the cop who was first on the scene and so on. Thus, as people in her small town listen, Hannah looks more and more guilty, and thus her life with her now-16-year-old daughter and long-time boyfriend crumble.

There were a few clues I picked up on during the course of the novel about what was really going on although in one I didn’t figure out the whole story, thus, I thought the ending was a nice twist, and thought this was a fun, engaging read.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to review this novel, which RELEASES JANUARY 26, 2021.

[JaymeO · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ghosts, unreliable narrator, mental illness and psychopaths? Yes please!

Hannah’s past has come back to haunt her when Amy Byer uses her true crime podcast “Conviction” to cast doubt on her husband’s convicted murderer. The problem is, Hannah has no memory of what happened the night he was killed and is afraid of what she could have done. The podcast calls attention to the police’s mistakes at the time and seems to point the finger at Hannah. But Hannah has secrets of her own, a grandmother who killed her whole family and ended up at Hawkward House, a psychiatric facility. Does mental illness run in her family? Could she have brutally murdered her husband? When her former colleague, Darcy offers her a glimpse into the place where her grandmother’s medical records may reside, she jumps at the chance to do her own investigative work into her family history. She must hurry to learn the truth in order outrun her past.

Wowsers! I was not expecting to love this book as much as I did! I started listening to the audiobook and was immediately hooked! The narration was fabulous and perfectly captured the eerie mood that is needed to convey the suspense and Hannah’s uneasiness and confusion. While I was wholly absorbed in this twisty plot, my book automatically returned before I could finish. Argh! I immediately acquired the print book and feverishly finished the unpredictable shocking ending. It keeps you guessing all the way until the very last page. Katie Lowe is a new author to me and is now on my auto-request list! You don’t want to miss this psychological thriller!

5/5 stars

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Possession has a great premise-- woman whose husband was murdered has made a new life for herself with her daughter but now a popular podcast threatens to overtake her life and potentially charge her with her husband's murder.

The problem with the book is that the pace is so slow. Glacial, even. I think Katie Lowe did it in an attempt to build "atmosphere" but it doesn't work and by the end, I definitely didn't care about what had happened to the mc, Hannah, at all.

Slow and dull. A disappointment.

[Krystin | TheF*ckingTwist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book Blog | Bookstagram

This is another podcast-meets-unreliable narrator thriller. It’s not my favourite I’ve read in that very specific new subgenre, but it was okay. Meh. Whatever.

What this novel did do well was capture living in an abusive relationship and the trauma that leaves behind. For me, that was the best part of the plot and I could have done without the podcast shit almost entirely.

Hannah’s husband was murdered while she was sleeping right beside him. She doesn’t remember what happened, but people start to believe she’s guilty of his murder when, ten years later, a popular podcast starts looking at the case and questioning whether the right man has been convicted. And oooo boy, the court of public opinion these days is filled with loud, entitled fucking idiots.



The narrative is very heavy in unreliable narrator bullshit to the point that it became annoying. Like just cut out one thing next time. Just one, like maybe suddenly hearing your dead husband whisper your name. We can start there. It wasn't needed.

“Omg she has mental health issues so she must be crazy and we shouldn’t believe anything she says.” I hate this trope. Hate it. The author takes it a step further by having Hannah consider that mental illness and being violent are hand-in-hand traits one can inherit.
But also, Hannah is very ugh, and it is kind of sketchy that her husband was murdered right beside her. But instead of trying to keep things level and chill, Hannah consistently does stupid things and is cagey with her loved ones for no reason, which only makes her seem guiltier and guiltier. And I fucking hate that trope too. Hate it.

Hannah spends so much time ruminating on the same thoughts and ideas that the repetition really slows things down. Like, bitch, we get it. You don’t remember what happened to your husband.



Anyway, I didn’t really like her.

Because of the podcast, and also because of Hannah's own actions, her life starts to unravel. She’s suspended from her job, her home is repeatedly vandalized, her child turns against her, her fiancé doubts her, her friends leave her, and she’s seeing things and hearing things… I mean, it’s A LOT. You wouldn’t blame a person for not handling the stress very well.

The only person who wants anything to do with her is a former colleague, and her appearance brings in possible ghosts, hallucinations, catfishing, and a dark family history involving Hannah’s mother and grandmother, into the plot.

I mean, I kept it all straight, but there are so many plot elements that it feels muddled and rushed and over-the-top. The story doesn’t progress with a smooth flow, so the overall vibe is blah and monotonous. Like all this weird shit is happening, but Hannah is so bland and the character development is stagnant, that the pace doesn’t create any sparks.

The chapters reflecting on Hannah’s bad marriage with her dead husband were visceral and spoke to me from a place of experience, and the mystery of what happened to that dead husband was fucking interesting as hell and kept me reading this messy novel.

Not the best or worst book I’ve read this year. It’s just whatever.

⭐⭐⭐ | 3 stars

[Vonda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book stayed highly confusing. The storyline was interesting but the timeline kept bouncing around to explain what was happening in the past and present and there were too many plotlines to keep track of.

[Chelsey (a_novel_idea11) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hannah's husband was brutally murdered ten years ago while she and her daughter were home with him. Apparently traumatized and suffering from sort of PTSD, Hannah has blocked most of the memories from that evening and has never been able to recover them. When the police presented a likely scenario implicating Mike, Hannah jumped on it and Mike was found guilty of murder.

Now, a decade later, Anna Byers has decided to take on Mike's case to prove his innocence as part of her famous podcast 'Conviction.' In so freeing Mike, Anna has convinced the world, and even Hannah, that Hannah murdered her husband in cold blood and walked away free and clear.

As the podcast gains traction, Hannah's life is turned upside down. Threats come at her constantly, her house is vandalized and broken into, and slowly but surely, Hannah's grip on reality seems to loosen.

Told from Hannah's perspective but at various time points over twenty years or so, we learn of Hannah's past, her relationship with her first husband, her problems with maintaining a grip on reality, and several side stories that ultimately weave together a robust and complex storyline.

The novel includes many separate but related plot lines with Hannah's history including family, friends, work, and relationships. At times, the side stories felt a bit too much for the overall plot but Lowe tied everything together really well and in some unexpected ways. I found some aspects of the story more predictable than others and there were a couple loose ends left that didn't impact the outcome, but all in all found the story entertaining, twisty, and engaging.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for a copy of this novel.

[Mandy White (mandylovestoread) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book sounded just like the kind of book that I was going to love. A murdered husband and a wife who can't remember what happened. A podcast re-investigating the case - sign me up.

I did enjoy The Murder of Graham Cotton,. It was addictive and had all the elements of a fantastic psychological thriller. I love books that reveal the truth over multiple time lines and plenty of twists. Hannah, the wife, was not the most likeable of women.

The narrator did a fantastic job

Thanks to Harper Collins UK for my audiobook via Netgalley to read.

[Rainz ❤️rainnbooks❤️(on a break) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many thanks to Net Galley, St.Martin’s Press and the author for a chance to read and review this book. All opinions are expressed voluntarily.

This is gonna be complicated. On one hand, I loved the creepy, mysterious aspects of the book and on the other, I am like ‘no way’, this is just not happening.

10 years, it’s been 10 long years but Hannah is still suffering. Her carefully cultivated life with her partner Dan and her daughter is on the verge of exploding as a crime podcast is back with her worst nightmare, that of her husband’s murder. As facts about the night of the death tumble out of the closet, Hannah whose memory of the night is zero begins to doubt her own culpability.

Unreliable narrators are a sort of the norm for psychological thrillers and that ‘unreliability’ is what raises the tension in the novel to pitch high. But having a practising psychologist for teenagers to be under such duress and unwilling to seek help was a bitter pill to swallow. That point aside, Katie Lowe has written a very ingenious tale and craftily plotted this house of cards. Each dialogue casually mentioned offers a clue and it keeps the reader on tenterhooks throughout. As the podcast reaches its crescendo, Hannah with Graham’s cruel words ringing in her ears is subjected to bullying and public scrutiny. The investigating police do not seem to see anything beyond what is obvious and to protect her daughter Hannah has to get to the truth herself.

Possession is an exciting and fast-paced read full of red herrings and Hawkood House adds to the gothic frightening feel. There are too many things that go wrong in Hannah’s personal and professional life and honestly, I would have loved that she had a single person to call a friend. I would have, also, loved a more tied in neat bow ending, coz that is my personal preference, else Possession by Katie Lowe is a compelling and engaging read!

This review is published in my blog https://rainnbooks.com/, Goodreads, Amazon India and Twitter.

[Darinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hannah is haunted by her husband’s murder that happened ten years prior. She doesn’t remember the night he was killed, and is considered a suspect by many. However, someone else was convicted for the murder. After the conviction, Hannah and her young daughter moved away from London. Presently, a podcast has revived interest in the murder. Once again, Hannah’s life is disrupted and she’s thrust into the spotlight.

Possession is a new psychological thriller by Katie Lowe. The story is told using alternating timelines. It is hard to determine if Hannah was involved with her husband’s death. Even she is not sure how innocent she is, making her an interesting unreliable narrator.

A slow burning thriller. Possession is a suspenseful and captivating novel. Recommended to fans of psychological thrillers with unreliable narrators.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

[Stephanie Kay Pastore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my goodness how I love the way this book ends! I’m starting there because it’s the kind of ending that makes you look back and really think. I’m not giving anything away by saying that because I had a zillion theories and thought I had it figured out from the beginning but I was deliciously wrong and I couldn’t love it more! I love the first person perspective. I love being in Hannah’s head. The truth unravels like a sweater string being pulled and it’s fascinating! I can’t wait to read more from Katie Lowe! 5 massive stars from me!!!

Huge thanks to St. Martin’s Press via NetGalley for allowing me the privilege of reading Possession in advance!

[8stitches 9lives · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Murder of Graham Catton is a wickedly twisty, atmospheric and compulsive psychological thriller. Ten years ago, psychiatrist Hannah McLelland’s husband was brutally murdered in their home, and she (conveniently) doesn’t remember a thing about that night. But the police charged someone else—a stranger—and put him away for life. And Hannah packed up her six-year-old daughter and left London behind. But now her hard-won countryside peace is threatened. Conviction, a viral true-crime podcast known for getting cases reopened and old verdicts overturned, has turned its attention to Hannah’s husband’s murder for its new season. They say police framed the man who was found guilty, and that Hannah has more suspicious secrets than just her memory loss: a history of volatility; citations at the clinic where she worked as a psychiatrist; dependencies on alcohol and pills; and a familicidal grandmother, locked away in a Gothic insane asylum until her death. As Hannah loses the trust of everyone she loves, the only person she feels she can confide in is a former colleague, Darcy, who’s come back into her life—but who may have ulterior motives of her own.

But Hannah can’t tell even Darcy her deepest secret: that she’s still tormented by the memory of her husband and the crater he carved through her life. This is a riveting and compulsively readable thriller exploring miscarriages of justice, abuse and online mob mentality and the idea of those online becoming the judge, jury and executioner in what has oft been called trial by media. Anonymous do-gooders and keyboard warriors at the behest of their flawed judgement launch hate campaigns and harassment against those who may not have committed any crime at all. It's depicted in a thoroughly believable manner and I love how Lowe’s thrillers invariably feature a deeper, more philosophical and cerebral side to them but that doesn't mean they are lacking in terms of the thrills, intense drama and shocking twists. As the tale unravelled, I found myself devouring pages more and more rapidly to discover exactly what was happening and loved the parts in which the podcast script becomes part of the narrative as it adds to the already palpable tension. Engrossing, chilling and with an unsettling feeling of claustrophobia as the truth emerges, this is a slow-burner of a novel exploring unreliable characters and truth v perception.