OBSESSION

I recently found myself reading three books with very similar titles, and it wasn’t on purpose. I had placed a hold on Libby for the book The Obsession by Natasha Preston and had completely forgotten about it since it was about a three month wait. A few months after placing the hold, I decided to reread a favorite of mine Obsession by Traci Hunter Abramson. Shortly after finishing Abramson’s book, I was again on Libby and looking at the currently available books and was intrigued by the book The Obsession by Jesse Q Sutanto. I promptly checked it out and read it. Shortly thereafter my hold came up on Preston’s book. Therefore, in about a one month span, I read three books with practically the same name and all about stalkers!

Each book had a different take on stalking. In Abramson’s book we have a pop star who is being stalked by who we come to find out is one of her own bodyguards who has been murdering girls that look just like her for years. In Sutanto’s book we have a boy who is instantly fascinated with the new girl, he starts stalking her, and he inadvertently gets evidence of her killing her mom’s boyfriend. He then uses that evidence as blackmail to force her into dating him. In Preston’s book we have a YouTuber who is left home alone and begins to feel like she is being followed. We later find out it’s her own best friend causing all of these “scary” instances.

I really enjoyed the storylines of both Abramson’s and Sutanto’s books. As for Preston’s, I really didn’t enjoy it. I felt like the whole book was very wishy-washy to the point that I couldn’t tell if our narrator was supposed to be unreliable or if Preston herself was just confused as she wrote it. Also, the motivation behind the stalking in her book was quite stupid. 

If I were to rank these books from my most favorite to least favorite I would say Sutanto’s takes the win, simply because I was hooked the entire book and had no idea where it was going to go next. Abramson gets second place, probably because, like I said, I have read it before, so I knew what was coming which takes some of the excitement out of it. In third place, we have Preston’s book because I couldn’t really get into it and the ending just made the whole thing that much worse.

I would highly recommend checking out these books! If you want more romance than stalking go for Abramson’s. If you want a wild story full of twists and turns go for Sutanto’s. If you want to read one that I didn’t vibe with, go for Preston’s. You might like it, you never know until you try!