Review of Possession

I finished editing my current draft of Bonded recently. I wanted to reward myself. It was a tough edit, so my prize had to be something really really good.

Books are the best thing in the world, so to celebrate my finished-current-draft, I’d read Possession by Elana Johnson.

And it was a fabulous book! I loved especially the characters. Vi has such a unique voice and Jag . . . he is awesome in every way possible. I think the best part about them is that they are very much imperfect. Now, you might be thinking that’s a negative, but actually it’s not.

Perfect characters never get on our nerves. They never do what we know they shouldn’t. They never disappoint us. In essence, perfect characters are boring.

For writing, this doesn’t mean you should just stick any old flaw on your characters to make them less boring. Readers will see through that Band-Aid so fast. The key is to create a character that feels like a real person with all of their imperfections.

Pure genius is the writer that can create a character that we adore, even when they are annoying us. Those are the characters that will stick in the reader's mind.

How do we do that? I don’t know, but if you want to read a book by someone that does: Elana Johnson’s Possession.

And note: The sequel to Possession, Surrender is being released on June 5, 2012. (That’s in six days!)