Dwellers

Philippine National Book Award winner Victoria (Lambana) mixes magic and mystery in this addictive but uneven urban fantasy. In contemporary Manila, two unnamed “dwellers,” entities that can possess bodies at will, take over the corpses—and lives—of brothers Jonah and Louis, both professors, following a fatal car crash. Then they find a woman’s rotting body in a basement freezer of the brothers’ house, and worry they may have chosen wrong. As neither retains any of the original Jonah or Louis’s memories, they have no leads on the murder—until a chance encounter with their neighbor, Ivy, helps them piece together what might have happened, and how their new identities may have been involved. This mystery propels the plot as the new Jonah and Louis investigate, with the help of former students who know them as favorite professors, but the tight focus on the whodunit leaves little room for much else, including any significant character development or worldbuilding. Still, readers who don’t mind the hazily constructed world will find this a fast-paced page-turner. [em](Aug.) [/em]