Book Review: Velveteen by Daniel Marks + Giveaway

Velveteen
Velveteen #1
Author: Daniel Marks
Reading Level: YA
Genre: Paranormal/Ghost
Released: October 9th 2012
Review Source: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Available: Amazon

Summary: (from goodreads) Velveteen Monroe is dead. At 16, she was kidnapped and murdered by a madman named Bonesaw. But that’s not the problem.

The problem is she landed in purgatory. And while it’s not a fiery inferno, it’s certainly no heaven. It’s gray, ashen, and crumbling more and more by the day, and everyone has a job to do. Which doesn’t leave Velveteen much time to do anything about what’s really on her mind.

Bonesaw.

Velveteen aches to deliver the bloody punishment her killer deserves. And she’s figured out just how to do it. She’ll haunt him for the rest of his days.

It’ll be brutal... and awesome.

But crossing the divide between the living and the dead has devastating consequences. Velveteen’s obsessive haunting cracks the foundations of purgatory and jeopardizes her very soul. A risk she’s willing to take—except fate has just given her reason to stick around: an unreasonably hot and completely off-limits coworker.

Velveteen can’t help herself when it comes to breaking rules... or getting revenge. And she just might be angry enough to take everyone down with her.

When this book arrived in my mailbox, I was excited just by the cover. The dark, gothic-looking models gave off an eerie vibe. I figured with characters as funky looking as these, it would probably be a good story. And good it was, but it fell short of great pretty quickly for me.

Once I got started, I was grasped by the world of Bonesaw, the serial killer who murdered 16-year-old Velveteen. While the first chapter was intriguing, the rest of them slowed down ridiculously until nearly halfway through the book. Velvet is trapped in purgatory and all she can think of is the revenge her killer deserves. Since she’s dead, all she’s really left with is haunting Bonesaw. Haunting those still living is breaking a big rule for the souls in purgatory, but Velvet is just determined to find a way of destroying Bonesaw and saving new victims.

As the characters are introduced, I felt for one, that Velvet’s thoughts were shifting constantly. She has a way of expressing herself that seems incomplete and random at times. It was one thing I felt was poorly written. As for Velvet’s love interest, Nick, he wasn’t really a character with much depth. He was just present in the story, but didn’t offer much to it. I was glad the romance between them wasn’t kept front and center throughout the book.

I will say that although the story dragged in the beginning and many parts were kind of wordy, I enjoyed the purgatory idea the author created. He was very detailed about that world and it was quite imaginative. The characters within purgatory, ironically, brought a lot of life to the story. I enjoyed them so much, especially the twin poltergeists. Daniel Marks’ attention to detail in this story was mind-boggling. There were some graphic, gory descriptions in various scenes that made my stomach turn a little. I thought those parts were extremely well written though.

For those of you that are fans of the paranormal, I think Velveteen may be one to pick up. The story had its pros and cons, but was an entertaining, dark read. After finding out the series is meant to be a trilogy, I can say I would probably like to pick up the sequel as well and revisit Velvet.

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