Repossessed » (Reprint)

A. M. Jenkins is the award-winning author of Damage, Beating heart: A Ghost Story, and the Printz Honor Book Repossessed, and lives in Benbrook, Texas, with three sons, two cats, and two dogs. Jenkins received the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship for night road.

Don't call me a demon. I prefer the term Fallen Angel.

Everybody deserves a vacation, right? Especially if you have a pointless job like tormenting the damned. So who could blame me for blowing off my duties and taking a small, unauthorized break?

Besides, I've always wanted to see what physical existence is like. That's why I "borrowed" the slightly used body of a slacker teen. Believe me, he wasn't going to be using it anymore anyway.

I have never understood why humans do the things they do. Like sin—if it's so terrible, why do they keep doing it?

I'm going to have a lot of fun finding out!

Publishers Weekly

Arebellious demon (who prefers the term "fallen angel") named Kiriel takes over the body of 17-year-old Shaun Simpson moments before the teen steps in front of a speeding cement mixer in Jenkins's (Beating Heart) latest. Eager to experience life as a human being-and feeling long overdue for a vacation from his duties of subjecting souls to eternal torment-Kiriel quickly gets underway living Shaun's life. (There is no conflict between the two personalities-in Jenkins's story, Kiriel's takeover sends Shaun's soul on to the afterlife.) Shaun was a prototypical slacker, brushing off his younger brother Jason (whom he calls a "jerkwad"), dressing and living like a slob and barely engaging at school. With funny and heartwarming results, Kiriel tries to engineer a lasting, positive impact on Shaun's family and friends, confronting a school bully-as a demon, Kiriel knows where the teen's actions will land him in the afterlife-and taking the reclusive Jason under his wing. Jenkins displays a wry sense of humor throughout-Jason catches his older brother "French-kissing his shirt" as Kiriel relishes the tactile sensation, and later Kiriel receives an IM from his demonic superiors who have discovered his transgression. Kiriel's own spiritual crises (he himself questions a "Creator" whom he's never seen or heard from) may mirror readers' uncertainties, and the demon's winning mix of cocksureness and inadvertent bungling should resonate with teens. Ages 12-up. (June)