Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves

Book Description:

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.

First Impression:

After reading several reviews about this book, I was entirely convinced that Bleeding Violet is going to be a once-in-a-blue-moon-book. It tackles several issues that thrive within the unusual setting of Portero.

My Thoughts:

I don't think I've ever encountered a book that possessed all the elements that are present in Bleeding Violet. Dia Reeves truly is a talented author for weaving all these elements in her novel, successfully.

Bleeding Violet revolves around Hanna, a half-Finnish, half-American girl who longs to be loved. Armed with her swan and accompanied by the ghost of her dead father, Hanna journeys to her mother's house in a town in Texas. But Portero is an unusual place, stuffed with freaky-looking monsters, dotted with hidden doors and covered by a sheet of mystery. It's a good thing Hanna is a little crazy. Okay, she's probably insane. And that's what I like about her. But unlike other people with loose screws in the head, she doesn't deny that she's crazy.

Bleeding Violet explores the issues of identity. Hanna is biracial, living with the consequences of belonging to two different races at the same time. She struggles to fit in, to find a place for herself in the town of Portero and in her mother’s heart. Apart from this, the subject of mental illness is also manifested. After being diagnosed and misdiagnosed over and over again, the issue of Hanna’s sanity and insanity is somewhat still unclear. All she knows is that they probably diagnosed wrong and no shrink could ever truly understand what’s going on inside her head.

Her hallucinations fascinated me. There are times when I’m sure that Hanna's just hallucinating and there are other times that I doubt their being unreal. The hallucinations that struck me the most are the ones where Swan comes to life.

In this town, she meets a monster hunter named Wyatt Ortiga who she blackmails to take her hunting, so that she could prove to her mother that she can take care of herself. Wyatt and Hanna have a physical relationship. And as the days pass and as things get weirder and weirder, they have come to develop a relationship that is built on trust and forgiveness.

Strange things happen everyday in Portero. No one is ever safe. When Hanna finds out that something is utterly wrong with her now-nice mother, Hanna decides to fulfill her duty as a daughter, no matter how dangerous and deadly are the consequences.

Bleeding Violet is a dark, strange and unique read that will definitely blur the line between possible and impossible, sane and insane and right and wrong. This is a story that opens our eyes to the various supernatural tendencies that accompany the normal things around us, as well as the issues of identity and mental health.

I really liked this!

Thanks to my Mom for this copy. We had a deal. I succumbed to her persistence and agreed to participate in the "No Late Challenge" of hers. Every week - five weekdays - that I complete without being late, she buys me a book. It's a good deal, if you ask me.