Book Review: Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves
Until I read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, I hadn’t realized that madness gives you a key to the faerie/ magical worlds. Then I read Bleeding Violet, which shows that crazy can be cool- though with some immediate repercussions.
The blurb from Amazon:
Hanna simply wants to be loved. With a head plagued by hallucinations, a medicine cabinet full of pills, and a closet stuffed with frilly, violet dresses, Hanna’s tired of being the outcast, the weird girl, the freak. So she runs away to Portero, Texas, in search of a new home.
But Portero is a stranger town than Hanna expects. As she tries to make a place for herself, she discovers dark secrets that would terrify any normal soul. Good thing for Hanna, she’s far from normal. And when a crazy girl meets an even crazier town, only two things are certain: Anything can happen and no one is safe.
Hannah is a girl who suffers from bipolar disorder. She has been shunted from one place to the next after her father’s death and is in therapy. In one particular burst of manic depression and hurt, she hits her aunt on the head with a frying pan, and runs away to her mother’s home in an obscure weird city called Portero, Texas. Portero is called thus because it has a lot of portals (doors) to other worlds. Hannah’s mother, Rosalie, is not happy because she had abandoned Hannah as a kid because of various reasons. But Hannah is determined to stay in this crazy town and win her mother’s love. The highlight of the book is Hannah, (who is a flawed heroine but is instantly loveable) and Hannah’s need for mother’s love and her willingness to do anything to get it. One way to do this is by becoming friends with the Mortmaines, especially Wes - tale too complicated and fascinating to summarize- who go around hunting crazy creatures in the night.
The crazy creatures that Reeves cooks up in the book are all kinds of cool. It will bring to your mind all those strange blobs and goons from Cartoon Network scifi shows (like Johnny Quest, if you will). In fact, Bleeding Violet is like a comicbook, with some really fun-horror scenes and cool stunts.
There is a darker theme running underneath, of course. A crazy ghost is in town who’s looking to re-unite with his daughter, and who’s - spoilers - possessing Hannah’s mother, due to a series of unfortunate events set in motion by Rosalie and Hannah themselves. Getting Rosalie free of him will take Hannah all her love and all her badass effort. That’s the best part of this book- dealing with really weighty issues with lovely dollops of hope, and a treat to read.
Rating: 8/10
The blurb from Amazon:
Hanna simply wants to be loved. With a head plagued by hallucinations, a medicine cabinet full of pills, and a closet stuffed with frilly, violet dresses, Hanna’s tired of being the outcast, the weird girl, the freak. So she runs away to Portero, Texas, in search of a new home.
But Portero is a stranger town than Hanna expects. As she tries to make a place for herself, she discovers dark secrets that would terrify any normal soul. Good thing for Hanna, she’s far from normal. And when a crazy girl meets an even crazier town, only two things are certain: Anything can happen and no one is safe.
Hannah is a girl who suffers from bipolar disorder. She has been shunted from one place to the next after her father’s death and is in therapy. In one particular burst of manic depression and hurt, she hits her aunt on the head with a frying pan, and runs away to her mother’s home in an obscure weird city called Portero, Texas. Portero is called thus because it has a lot of portals (doors) to other worlds. Hannah’s mother, Rosalie, is not happy because she had abandoned Hannah as a kid because of various reasons. But Hannah is determined to stay in this crazy town and win her mother’s love. The highlight of the book is Hannah, (who is a flawed heroine but is instantly loveable) and Hannah’s need for mother’s love and her willingness to do anything to get it. One way to do this is by becoming friends with the Mortmaines, especially Wes - tale too complicated and fascinating to summarize- who go around hunting crazy creatures in the night.
The crazy creatures that Reeves cooks up in the book are all kinds of cool. It will bring to your mind all those strange blobs and goons from Cartoon Network scifi shows (like Johnny Quest, if you will). In fact, Bleeding Violet is like a comicbook, with some really fun-horror scenes and cool stunts.
There is a darker theme running underneath, of course. A crazy ghost is in town who’s looking to re-unite with his daughter, and who’s - spoilers - possessing Hannah’s mother, due to a series of unfortunate events set in motion by Rosalie and Hannah themselves. Getting Rosalie free of him will take Hannah all her love and all her badass effort. That’s the best part of this book- dealing with really weighty issues with lovely dollops of hope, and a treat to read.
Rating: 8/10