Bleeding Violet [Hardcover]

Dia Reeves (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 5, 2010

Love can be a dangerous thing....

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. As this crazy girl meets an even crazier town, only two things are certain: Anything can happen and no one is safe.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

After her father’s death, 16-year-old Hanna hitchhikes to Portero, Texas, the home of her mother, Rosalee, who abandoned her. Hanna is desperate for Rosalee to love and accept her, and Rosalee reluctantly makes a bargain: Hanna has two weeks to make friends and fit in at her school or she won't be allowed to stay. Hanna has never fit in anywhere, though. Struggling with manic depression, she hears voices and hallucinates, wears only purple dresses, and has a history of violence. Portero is no ordinary town, though, and Hanna learns that it is haunted by doors to other dimensions and plagued by dangerous creatures from those realms. Wyatt, a powerful young initiate in the Mortmaine, a demon-hunting organization, recruits Hanna, and together they struggle to deal with an ancient evil that threatens the town and Hanna’s future. With plenty of sex and violence, this is a book for mature teens, who will find Portero to be an intriguing world and biracial Hanna a startlingly unusual heroine with a poignant, memorable voice. Grades 10-12. --Lynn Rutan

Review

Poor Hanna has had a seriously rough adolescence. It’s hard enough for her to accept the death of her beloved father and to manage her escalating mental illness, but when she shows up in the hometown of her mother (whom she’s never met), she discovers that her mother wants nothing to do with her. What’s more, the town itself has doors that open between worlds, often releasing evil forces onto the residents. Since Hanna has nowhere else to go, her mother agrees to let her stay, if she can prove that she can fit into this guarded, hostile town that considers outsiders merely fresh meat for monsters. Reeves immediately establishes a mysterious, disorienting perspective by allowing Hanna (who hallucinates conversations with her father but, as far as the reader is permitted to know, can also conjure up a swan whose actions impact the actual world) to be the only narrative voice describing the town of Portero and Hanna’s efforts to settle into it. The resulting novel is wonderfully baffling, and as lush, warm, and conflicted as Hanna herself. Hanna is a ref reshingly unbalanced protagonist—unafraid of gore or her own sexual power while also being terrified of any loss and unable to handle simple high-school power negotiations. Her struggles are wrenchingly genuine and often even life-threatening (both against horrors released through the portals and the unrelenting clamor and chaos lurking in her own brain chemistry), and readers will likely literally sigh with relief when Hanna finally captures a bit of good to balance her world. -- BULLETIN, March, 1, 2010, STAR

An original plot, a unique protagonist, and plenty of weirdness makes Reeve's first novel a satisfying read for older teens. Hannah Jarvinen is a beautiful, birarcial teen looking for someone to love her. She speaks the Finnish language and cooks Finnish cuisine. She wears only purple to honor her dead father, whose ghost speaks to her. She is strong-minded, wild, lonely, and very troubled. She is also bipolar and suffers from halluncinations and fits of violet mania. When her aunt tries to put her in a mental institution, she takes a rolling pin and travels to Portero, Texas, to find her mother. In addition to her mother, she finds a town of black-clad people living in fear of strange monsters called "lures" and a group of monster hunters known as the Mortmaine. Portero contains doors to a dark world that can be opened with "keys" fashioned from bones. Being used to the strange, Hannah is not scared off, and instead becomes determined to prove to her mother that she can be accepted in a town where outsiders are called "transies" (or transients). She falls in lust with popular Wyatt, or Mortmaine. When she helps him to defeat five of the lures, she is hailed as a hero in the town and is compelled to learn more. She becomes Wyatt's lover, and soon she is by his side hunting demons. Her relationship with her mysterious mother, however, does not come as easily. She soon realizes that her mother has her own strange dark connections to Portero and the Mortmaine.

This teen novel is not for the faint of heart. There is plenty of blood, gore, violence, sex and bad decisions. The main character would make many parents cringe. Teens who crave all those things and a dose of the dark arts will love this novel. Although Hannah is not a character to emulate, she is interesting. The plot can be a bit confusing at times, and some situations just do not make sense. For instance, Hannah suffers no consequences for violently assaulting her aunt. Nevertheless it is a fantasy, so some suspension of disbelief is required when reading this interesting debut from an author to watch.

----VOYA April 2010

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Simon Pulse; 1 edition (January 5, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416986189
• ISBN-13: 978-1416986188
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 7.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (87 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #827,202 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

When she's not out manning space missions for NASA and hobnobbing with the rich and famous, Dia spends her time tweeting naughty stuff, reading and writing eleventy billion books--though usually not at the same time--and making up lies about her life and posting them online for all the world to see. Bleeding Violet is her first novel.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unusual But Brilliant Take on the Paranormal, December 29, 2009

By 

Stephanie Su (Swarthmore, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bleeding Violet (Hardcover)

Hanna Jarvinen is an unusual teenager. She is biracial, sees and hears hallucinations, wears only purple to remember her dead father (with whose ghost she still communicates)--and is hardly extraordinary when she arrives on her mother's doorstep in Portero, Texas, after her aunt kicked her out.

That's because Portero is far weirder than Hanna could've imagined. It contains dangerous monsters and many doors between worlds. Portero is hardly the place for Hanna to fall in love and get to know her mother better, but Hanna is nothing if not determined to get what she wants, in spite of both human and inhuman obstacles.

Not since I read Holly Black's TITHE five years ago have I encountered a story as unique and fascinatingly compelling as Dia Reeve's debut novel, BLEEDING VIOLET. Indeed, BLEEDING VIOLET defies adequate description and categorization, blending snark, relationship issues, and the supernatural into a sexy paranormal read that will be hard to forget.

From page one, Dia unapologetically yanks readers into a dark and twisted world where monsters and mental illness are simply Hanna and Portero's way of life, confused people be damned. While this total immersion in the world of Portero may be initially jarring, once I began figuring things out, I felt like I had been let in on a terrific secret, and I LOVED being in Hanna's world. It's brutal and shocking, and not for one second can you look away.

Hanna is a protagonist like no other, with her crazy thoughts and her way of looking at the world. She's slightly disturbing yet inexplicably alluring, the kind of girl you know you should stay away from but who part of you almost wants to be. Hanna is fearlessly original in her interactions with the Porterenes: the awkwardness of her developing relationship with her mother is well drawn, and I found Hanna's budding romance with Wyatt, a local boy with an important job in monster-policing, to be one of the most well-developed romances I've read in recent YA literature. From beginning to end it's no fairy-tale relationship: there's no immediate rush of physical and soul-mate attraction, but rather the blossoming of it through witty repartees.

BLEEDING VIOLET is not for those who like their reading fluffy. It's dark, unapologetic in its occasional gory and weird scenes. Some may disapprove of Hanna and Wyatt's physical relationship (though personally I found it sexy and well done). Others may be too hopelessly confused by the first couple of chapters or the occasional vagueness of the plot to connect with it. But if you're looking for a one-of-a-kind dark read, I will find it hard to resist thrusting this book into your hands. Read it, and maybe you will savor it like I did!

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Different, weird, original, December 31, 2009

By 

Sab H. "YA Bliss" (Houston, Tx) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Bleeding Violet (Hardcover)

This book was so weird. I cant even say if I loved it or didn't because it was both. One thing is for sure, this is one of the craziest book I've read. I felt I was about to quit reading at least two times, but then there were parts where I was like OMG, this is so good! But after finishing I think I would ask everyone to read it, it is so different and unique (and crazy) that I think it's worth recommending.

The characters were well done, -loved Wyatt- the writing was really good and the plot was... um, original. I felt that the world she created was hard to believe at first, but then I found myself wrapped in it and mesmerized. Plus, the cover, is breath-taking. I mean, it looks so good in your shelf. Sigh. Overall, its a really interesting read that explores love and acceptance. It has some supernatural elements even though I don't think it relates to any other book. So if you are looking for something different, this is definitely it!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Strange and Disturbing (B Grade), April 16, 2010

By 

K. Garrabrant "Katiebabs" (Bloomfield, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Bleeding Violet (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves is a very strange book indeed. I would say if this book were made into a movie, it would be a cross between Tim Burton's Beetlejuice and Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. Trippy is the word that comes to mind while I read the adventures of Hanna Jarvinen. Hanna is a biracial teenager born from a Finnish father and a black mother, who may or may not be a professional escort, and never wanted her to begin with. Hanna not only is manic-depressive, hallucinates, and sees and talks to her dead father, but won't think twice about killing to get what she wants.

Hanna may sound a bit bloodthirsty, but she is pretty much the only "normal" one when she decided to live in Portero, Texas where her mother is. Hanna ends up on her mother, Rosalee's doorstep and has this fantasy that she will be welcomed with open arms. Rosalee does anything but, and is bit wary of her daughter, probably due to the fact that Hanna may have killed her aunt but hitting her head with a rolling pin. Hanna shrugs it off, and is more concerned that she didn't get all the bloodstains out of her dress. Hanna pleads with Rosalee to let her stay and is given two weeks where she must try and fit in. Hanna thinks this is a piece of cake, but Rosalee thinks Hanna is doomed to fail since Portero is not your normal, everyday American town.

The first day of high school for Hanna is very weird, to say the least. The whole school wears earplugs and the majority of the student body is in black while Hanna wears purple. She doesn't just stand out because of the way she looks, (she loves to wear long dresses and high heels) but because she's a transy. Transies are people who haven't grown up in Portero and usually wear bright colors because they have no idea that if you stand out too much, you may just end up dead. Hanna becomes fixated on Wyatt, who wears green because he's Mortmaine; one who hunts the evil creatures causing mayhem in town. Hannah practically jumps for joy because everyone is freakier than she is and decides she wants to be Mortmaine and fight evil alongside Wyatt.

Now Hanna has to be on the look out for things called lures that turn you into glass, doors that appear out of nowhere that will show you worst nightmare, and monsters that want to take your soul and suck you dry. Things hit really close to home when Rosalee becomes possessed by a nasty spirit called Runyon, who used to be Mortmaine but went off the deep end. Runyon is causing major mischief and it's up to Hanna to stop him before he destroys Portero.

Bleeding Violet was one reading experience I will not soon forget. I have to hand it to Dia Reeves for writing a very imaginative story, but one that is not comfortable reading. And in all honesty, I would be very wary in allowing any teen under the age of sixteen to read this book. The violence and bloodshed will make your head spin and have a bit of a sadomasochistic feel to them, especially when Rosalee, who channels Runyon, decides to torture and kill a young boy she finds at the lake with the help of Hanna. This a very squeamish, snuff like stuff.

Along these lines, the topic of sex, especially between Wyatt and Hanna is somewhat a fade to black kind of variety, which I couldn't understand at all. I guess it is one thing to explain the scene above in graphic detail, but when Wyatt and Hanna have sex, which I really don't think added anything to the story, it was glazed over as in they kiss, fade to black and next where Hannah is pulling on her underwear and thinking how great it was.

This is where I have to ask, why in a young adult book like Bleeding Violet, are graphic scenes of voice and murder acceptable to be written in great detail, but when a our main character like Hanna has a tender moment with Wyatt, that leads to sex, why is that glossed over? Extreme violence is perfectly okay, but showing detail sex scenes are not? What gives?

These issues aside, I absolutely adored Hanna. Her tenacity, positivity and unique personality were a breath of fresh air. Hanna has this wonderful inner strength and big caring heart, even though her actions may be strange, but then again Bleeding Violet is one massively, wacky book.

I was on the fence on what grade to give Bleeding Violet because I wasn't sure what to think. It's not all that often and author like Dia can make me have such a strong visceral reaction, where I was flinching as I read. I certainly wouldn't recommend this for anyone younger than high school. Hanna was the saving grace for me and one character I can't help but applaud for her bravery and facing down those who feel she is not worthy or important.

Katiebabs