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BOOK
ILLUMINATIONS
From Debbie Wiley Book Reviews
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Bleeding Violet
by Dia Reeves
Hanna
Jarvinen is determined to find her mother, Rosalee Price, and make
Portero her home after her father’s death. Rosalee hasn’t been a part
of her life and isn’t exactly thrilled to see Hanna, even less so when
Hanna tells her the background behind her running away! Hanna isn’t
your typical teenager but Portero is strange even by her standards.
From her classmates at school wearing earplugs to the multitude of
missing persons flyers, something is amiss in Portero. Somehow Hanna’s
hallucinations of her dead father seem relatively calm in a world where
monsters lurk in every darkened corner. What in the world is going on
in Portero? And even more importantly, can Hanna find her own place to
fit into this odd little town?
BLEEDING VIOLET is one of the oddest, most unique tales I’ve ever read.
Dia Reeves transforms the world of Portero into an almost
nightmare-like scenario where even the simplest of things can be
deadly. Evil permeates the town of Portero and the lines between good
and evil quickly become unclear. Some readers will find this fantasy
world a bit too harsh as death, sex, drugs, and torture are a regular
part of this unforgiving and often brutal world.
Hanna herself is a mixture of contradictions. On one hand, she
desperately wants the love of her mother. However, she is bipolar and
prone to violent, impulsive, and sometimes self-harming tantrums. In
fact, I suspect part of the appeal of BLEEDING VIOLENT is the
uncertainty of Hanna and her narration.
BLEEDING VIOLET is definitely not a book for everyone. I would highly
recommend that parents and teenagers evaluate carefully the
appropriateness of this tale for their own circumstances. Dia Reeves
doesn’t shirk away from some very difficult topics, nor does she
sugarcoat anything to make it more palatable. Instead, we get a hard
dose of reality encapsulated in a beautifully imagined fantasy world.
Bravo to Dia Reeves for such a stunning and original tale!
Publisher: Simon Pulse (January 2010)
Reviewed
by Debbie, Debbie Wiley Book Reviews
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