After something happened from her past, Edie has felt disconnected from the world which makes her an excellent "body" for the Elysian Society in THE POSSESSIONS, the literary debut by Sara Flannery Murphy. . Through this organization, people can visit with their friends and loved ones. In essence, the bodies swallow a pill, don something that belonged to the loved one and become that "someone" for a session. Edie has worked as a body for longer than anyone else. She doesn't develop relationships with the others, in fact, her dealings with colleagues are achingly awkward. She doesn't remember any of her experiences as the dead people she possesses until something, or someone, changes it all.

For someone so good at detachment, Edie falls hard for one of her clients who comes to visit his wife who died under suspicious circumstances. Lines blur between Edie and the wife, and she finds herself remembering events from a past she never experienced. She becomes obsessed with the couple's relationship. Does she want to take the wife's place? Does the wife want hers?

A murdered girl, Edie's obsession, love, possession and mystery all have roles in this drama.

I'd call this book literary fiction with elements of the paranormal, and I enjoyed it, but it was one of those books that I breezed through while reading it, but once set down, it didn't call to me to return to it. Murphy's characters intrigued, especially Edie, but I kept wanting to know what had happened earlier in her life and found the book slow in places.

Murphy does a nice job of heightening the drama as a couple of plot lines weave and twist together coming to an unexpected conclusion. Most of my questions received answers by the end. Murphy has a talent for language, stringing words together with intelligence and flow. I look forward to reading more work from this interesting author.