The Obsession – Jesse Q. Sutanto

Before I start writing, I would like to apologize for the amount of time I’ve been highly inactive- I was busy for most of that time and had a bunch of tests to study/cram/pass (or my parents would probably be quite clear that they wouldn’t want me spending all of my free time reading.)

For this book, I would want to thank my friend Ads, for recommending me this book after I was in a reading slump. She’s probably one of the few friends I have who reads as much as I do- plus she’s in love with almost any murder mystery subcategorized novella so I think it worked out pretty well. Not sure if I’m alright, but I feel like 2022 was the year I started perusing and devouring murder mystery books, even though some of the tropes are, well, predictable.

Anyways, as an overall adjective description of this book, it was very heart-pounding, exciting, brisk, fast paced, and riveting with a switching first person POV perspective between the 2 main characters- Logan and Delilah.

The author, Jesse Q Sutanto, did a marvelous job on crafting the characters in ways that they could be despised and admired, going respectively from Logan to Delilah. But for now, let’s focus on Logan…

Logan, Logan, Logan, Logan…
Poor him- I guess he’d be a cute boyfriend if he actually wasn’t an obsessive maniac who made a point to write down EVERYTHING he knew and more about his a.t.m. girlfriend in a file that he kept for bribery and blackmail. If he didn’t have those kinds of traits, I’d actually like him for being the utterly devoted, committed, ‘dreamy’ (i guess???) lacrosse player, but as I now know, his girlfriend choices couldn’t be more wrong.

Firstly, the book starts with him literally pining over his now dead ex, where he appears to be a normal, grieving boyfriend who can’t exactly get over the fact that she was his ~eVeRyThInG~ (cue that cringe saxophone music but like, put it on a recorder and that’s how bad it was.) The red flag I see now was that he just looked up and saw a girl who was like a doppelganger of his ex… Delilah.

That was quite a large shift because one moment he was longing for his ex girlfriend to come back from the dead, grace him with her presence, all kinds of crazy stuff like that, and now we have another girl, looking moderately like the ex, and he tries to find out EVERYTHING about her.

Side Note: Logan is a whole mess and he’s been warned by his school counselor to get a GRIP on his life and stop wondering what life would be like if Sophie (dead exgf) was still alive.
For this, yeah, I guess I can agree but from first glance it seems a lot like guilt- how he felt to be responsible for her death. What you don’t know is that theory is absolutely… well, you’ll get into that/figure it out when you read the book…

As soon as he figures out the broad spectrum of who Delilah is, he goes on every single social media account (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you get the drift) and desperately searches for each one of her accounts. Through those, he writes down all the valuable pieces of information he’s under the impression that he can use to get Delilah to like him; her favorite author, her given Singaporean name, the books she reads, the places she volunteers at, her SCHEDULE. The whole nine yards, essentially, but he goes as far as to put them into a file.

NOW FOR DELILAH.

Delilah was said to be a pretty half-Singaporean, half-American girl who a lot of people thought was some sort of ‘Asian hybrid‘ as mentioned in the books.
She was the kind of first-glance, stereotyped, damsel in distress girl who needed consolation since her biological father died a while back, and her mother now has an abusive boyfriend who mentally, verbally, and somewhat physically plays around with her. She was a mix of an emotionally distressed and confused girl who is now caged from her mother’s boyfriend from doing things he sees as ‘inappropriate’ or ‘not her age’.

A classic love story- except someone will end up dead.
What hooker, I don’t UNDERSTAND ajhkdsgheghsgf (not me spamming on my keyboard hehe.) This book took me on a rollercoaster ride with suspense, suffocation, and broken-glass breaking points. I have no idea how, but Sutanto managed to create 2 distinctly different MCs who were, in the end, symbolically similar.

With Logan’s delusions towards Sophie and Delilah, it was written to be so that readers including myself thought that he was the one twisted, broken, and highly brain damaged… but later it’s figured out that that’s not the case, seeing as we were made to sympathize with Delilah only to realize that she wasn’t as morally sound as we thought she was. Even though the trauma and stress she was in almost justified her situation, the ending made it a bit difficult for me to completely agree with her actions.

Something I didn’t entirely understand, or feel the need to agree with was the personality disorder that was set against Logan. As much as almost all the personality disorders are thorough, unforgiving, and incredibly hard to cure, Logan needed help rather than being used against as a personified revenge plot. Pinning Logan’s behavior on just a mental illness didn’t exactly sit right with me as some people can also be just that horrible but not have the exact qualifications for being in the category of Obsessive Love Disorder… not sure if that’s the actual description or not but I’m hoping you get the point.

Though this novel succeeds and hits all of the markers as a surprisingly well done thriller, it doesn’t go further in the aspects of being truthful and completely accurate with the blame game on disorderly activities. I mean, if you’re gonna try Logan out for a mental disability, why not just pin one on Delilah too? The way Delilah dealt with her abusive stepfather was just surprising- in retrospect I saw it coming, but the way she executed it… flawless *chef’s kiss 💋* for a psycho I mean.

Overall though, I think it wasn’t a book to be categorized, Love @ First Sight, but rather Obsession at First Glance- so I guess it was decent in terms of the plot, really good in terms of the writing style and quotes in the book and the blurb was just…
boy meets girl, boy stalks girl, girl get’s revenge. it’s a classic sort of love story- except someone might end up dead.
*proceeds to slap cover affectionately*

This story was brisk and to the point, but also suspenseful. Though it could have used some more tortuous plot twists, the riveting escalation of Logan’s obsession and Delilah’s ruthlessness was just amazing. Back and forth dialogue showed their absolute wanting to murder each other- they were literally monsters, but I liked it. The Obsession is one of those books where I thought I knew how things were going to go, and the author laughed at me, threw a block of cheese at my face, then put me in a fixated situation where I needed to stay up on my tablet until 3:07 in the morning to finish the last couple hundred pages.

If someone asked me to explain The Obsession in one sentence, I would just say that it was a book that would make anyone question their own morals as well as going forth with Logan and Delilah. If you like morally grey characters with plots unveiling tense moments and surprising tidbits, then you’d love this read for SURE.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you in the next review- tell me your thoughts on this book please!! Love y’all <3