Merry Wanderer of the Night + YA

Award Winning Wednesday — Repossessed by A.M. Jenkins

Hey everyone! It's another Award Winning Wednesday! I hope everyone participating in the challenge is still on track & reading well! (Let me know if you need any recommendations!: p) And, anyone not participating in the challenge, I hope you've been enjoying the posts too! These award lists have some excellent books to chose from!

Like today's review! Repossessed by A.M. Jenkins has got to be one of the funniest books that still has a strong message I've ever read.

Kiriel is a demon. But don't call him that. He much prefers the term Fallen Angel. Because that's what he is. An angel who sided with Satan in the war in heaven, instead of God. But that's a bit complicated too.

So, Kiriel decides that he needs a vacation. He's spent ages down in Hell tormenting the souls of the damned and he wants a shot at living on earth. So, he takes over the body of a kid right before he gets hit by a truck (because he's too lazy to create a new body out of nothing) and he takes over his life.

It's hilarious watching Kiriel learn how to control the human body he's just inhabited, but it's also humbling. There are so many things that I take for granted everyday. Like color. How often do you just stop to think about how beautiful color is. Not the color of a particular flower, or in a particular painting, but just color in general. Or smell. Touch. Sound. Movement. I don't know many, if any people who spend time thinking about how amazing it is to just be able to move unless they've recently lost some mobility or are fighting to gain it back. There are all of these amazing parts and pieces to being alive that so many of us, myself included, just don't think about on a regular basis.

But the book doesn't really feel preachy. It's a demon (ahem... 'fallen angel') who has been alive for a gazillion years who still seems to have the mental capacity and age of a teenager. He thinks and reasons in a lot of the same ways that teenagers do and it's really interesting to watch the juxtaposition of spending an eternity watching the damned souls in Hell torment themselves (and making it worse. He's a bit of a reflector/amplifier) and this mental maturity of a teenager. It makes for some really interesting observations and I loved it.

I will say that there are two ways to read this book — There is a lot of talk about God and the Devil, because he is, after all, a demon. But I tend to disagree a lot with other people's imaginings of heaven, and so I usually read these parts of angel/heaven/hell/demon stories fairly superficially. It does bring up a lot of really interesting questions, so you can read it more 'religiously' if you choose, but I chose to read it as more straightforward. I didn't spend my 'thinking' time on this book with the religious stuff, but it is there.

This is a book that I'd highly recommend and it would be perfect for a lot of different moods. It's great if you just need a laugh, or if you want to spend more time doing some thinking and pondering on life. All books give you a slightly different reading experience with each reread, because we are different each time we read them. But this is a book that I think will have a stronger distinction between each reread. There is a lot you can take away, or not take away, as you choose with this book, and your mind set as you read will definitely change that each time. It's definitely one I look forward to rereading. I'd love to see what it would learn me next time.

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Award Winning Wednesday — Repossessed by A.M. Jenkins + YA