Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves

Thank you Staysi from Around the World Tours for this ARC!

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.

I think the description is rather vague and even a bit misleading. I went into the book not knowing if it was going to be fantasy or realistic fiction. As it turns out, Bleeding Violet is an urban fantasy novel about a homicidal girl with manic depression. This is going to be a bold, compelling read, I thought.

The thing about Bleeding Violet is that it does not know where it's plot wants to go. It heads toward one sort of supernatural element, gets you interested...then dies off and veers in another direction. None of the characters had normal human reactions to the intense situations they were in, and I found myself unable to sympathize every time they made a mistake. At least, the writing wasn't getting their emotions through to me.

Bleeding Violet has some incestuous overtones throughout the book

that made me cringe. You could brush it off and think of these characters as living in a different place with a different set of societal rules but it gets out there. I could have screamed at the fact that the narrator and her mother have the ability to ensnare men with their beauty. This was my biggest problem with the book. When a woman's most influential quality is her looks despite her intelligence and power, I can't take the story seriously anymore. No matter how flawed this character is, great beauty is not a redeeming quality. And the bad boy boyfriend? The best thing about him was his hilariously pathetic father. I wish my dad dressed in a cape and tried to perform magic in the basement. (Note: I don't actually wish that.)

The book does contain sex between teenagers, which was not a problem for me. I actually applaud authors who aren't afraid to portray teens in all of their hormonal glory, but I can't overlook the supernatural beauty aspect.

If you want to read something weird and off-the-wall, go with this book.

2.5 wingspreads