Review: The Obsession

Sometimes I fall for a book for nostalgic reasons. Such was the case with The Obsession by Jesse Q. Sutanto, a YA suspense novel about a girl with a mountain of secrets under the thumb of a creepy teenage boy stalker. Simply put, Teenage Wendy would have loved this book.  She would have probably read a copy from the school or local public library, then desperately saved up money to buy her own copy so she could draw little hearts in the margins.  Have I mentioned that Teenage Wendy was kind of bloodthirsty?  I occasionally strayed but by and large if the book didn't have at least one dead body in it, I wasn't interested.  I also was drawn to competent women from a very early age. Oh sure, the women could be in danger (see every book Mary Higgins Clark ever wrote) but they always pulled themselves out of it in the end.  So yeah, I was primed to love The Obsession from the start, and I did.

Delilah is a Daddy's Girl left adrift after her father dies in an industrial accident (that also was an environmental disaster). Her mother, also adrift, eventually starts dating Brandon, a local cop. Turns out though that Brandon is an abusive asshole, with both Delilah and her Mom bearing the brunt of his rages. They're stuck. They can't go to the cops. Brandon IS the cops. Now her Mom is talking about quitting the job she loves to keep control freak abusive Brandon happy and Delilah has to tread lightly if she wants to keep going to Draycott Academy, a ritzy prep school that her Dad's insurance policy is paying the tuition for. On her first day of school she catches the eye of Logan and that's when things go from bad to worse.

Logan was obsessed with a girl name Sophie. A girl who got hooked on drugs and tragically died. In fact, someone is dealing drugs out of Draycott, a case Brandon has been working on. Every one tells Logan that Sophie is just toying with him, using him, but he's IN LOVE and naturally goes off the deep end when she dies.  His mother finds evidence of his stalking, he tries to kill himself, and he's seeing the school counselor.  The kid is, quite frankly, a scary AF nutbag.  And then he sees Delilah, who looks so much like Sophie that it shocks him out of his funk and suddenly Logan is back to his old stalkerish ways.

The problem being that Delilah doesn't know yet that Logan IS stalking her.  One day, when she's home alone with Brandon, she snaps and Brandon ends up dead (Delilah definitely kills him, but to say more is a spoiler because oh it's just so fantastically gory!).  Logan, of course, catches the whole thing on camera - because he's a stalker. When Delilah finds out the cutest boy in school who likes her is actually a creepy AF stalker?  Well, she's stuck.  Because of course Logan is now blackmailing her with the video.

This sounds suitably dark and twisted - which, it is. What makes it great is that Delilah is a bit of a mouse on the outside, but when pushed to the breaking point our girl is all vengeful Valkyrie. Brandon's ex-partner is now sniffing around, Logan is controlling her every breath, and she's still got yet another whopper of a secret that she has to keep under wrap.  Delilah may seem like a mouse but ultimately she is a survivor, and when you back a survivor into a corner?  Bad things happen.

Is this nice book?  Well, no.  There's no ambiguous to the moral choices that Delilah makes over the course of this story.  She "wins" but at the expense of doing some really terrible things.  Is she justified in those terrible choices?  Certainly yes, you could say that - for some of them.  But like I said, Delilah has got many, many secrets.

Is Delilah a "bad girl?" Is she a "good girl?" Yes. And that's why I loved this book.  It's the how she's going to wiggle her way out of the mess that makes for compelling reading and the fact that our girl is a study in contrasts is a reason why, I'm sure, Sourcebooks has already tapped Sutanto to write a sequel.  Oh sure, everyone in Romancelandia may be talking about Dial A for Aunties right now, but I'll be over here hanging out with cunning, bloodthirsty Delilah thank you.  I'll also be watching my back.

Final Grade = A