"Possess" by Gretchen McNeil

From Goodreads: "Fifteen-year-old Bridget Liu just wants to be left alone: by her mom, by the cute son of a local police sergeant, and by the eerie voices she can suddenly and inexplicably hear. Unfortunately for Bridget, it turns out the voices are demons – and Bridget has the rare ability to banish them back to whatever hell they came from.

Terrified to tell people about her new power, Bridget confides in a local priest who enlists her help in increasingly dangerous cases of demonic possession. But just as she is starting to come to terms with her new power, Bridget receives a startling message from one of the demons. Now Bridget must unlock the secret to the demons' plan before someone close to her winds up dead – or worse, the human vessel of a demon king."

The large majority of time the female lead of a YA book doesn't really do it for me- I find that they are too indecisive, they are ruled by the boys in their lives (yes, boys, as they are typically involved in a love triangle), or they just don't have a personality when compared to their male counterpart(s). There are very few female characters that make me think to myself, "Wow, she is so bad-ass, I wanna be just like her!" (in fact, I think that I can count how many female characters I consider to be bad-ass on one hand, Dru from Lili St. Crow's "Strange Angels" series, Rose from Richelle Mead's "Vampire Academy" series, and Isabel from Cassie Clare's "Mortal Instruments" series). But after having read Gretchen McNeil's "Possess" I finally have another female character to add to the ranks! Bridget is everything that I look for in a female character, snarky, an independent thinker, unwavering in her beliefs, and the likes of.

Now not only does this book have a bad-ass female lead, but it also has a pretty unique storyline as well. Storylines involving angel/ demon mythology run rampant in today's world of YA, but never has there been a book quite like this (or at least that I have come across and I believe myself to be a connoisseur of YA angel-related books ;) ). Furthermore, I haven't really ever come across a YA book before that has spooked me before, but there were a few times while reading this that I did find quite creeped out/ covered in goosebumps (*cough, cough, evil dolls and creepy cat running through house), therefore I thought it was really awesome that Gretchen was able to influence and impact the reader in such a way that they had a physical reaction to what they were reading.

All in all, I highly recommend this book (though maybe not to those who have a phobia of dolls- seriously, this book may just traumatize you ;) ) and I believe this to be one of the most unique debuts I have read to date! I cannot wait to see what Gretchen has in store for us next!

Rating: 10/10

I received this book from the publisher to read and honestly review. I was not compensated in any way for said review.

Thanks to HarperCollins Canada and Shannon!

Memorable lines from the book:

"The green eyes narrowed on Bridget. "What are you staring at?" 
Could she be anymore of a Mean girl stereotype? Unbelievable. Bridget rolled her eyes. "A harpy, apparently." 
"A what?" 
"Seriously, crack a book once in a while" (pg. 67). 

"I have a bad back." 
"You have a lazy ass" (pg. 68). 

"... the last time that she checked there was no Most Likely to Banish Demons category in the St. Michael's yearbook" (pg. 32).