Velveteen

Author: Daniel Marks
Format: ARC  eBook
Print Length: 464 pages
Publisher: Random House
Published: October 9, 2012

Velveteen Monroe is dead.  At 16, she was kidnapped andmurdered 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.

My Thoughts

The cover page of this book is stunning, the models portraying Velvet and Nick were exactly as I pictured them.  The book itself was also stunning, graphic and at times a little confusing.  The confusion comes due to too many subplots within the book.  The major plotline was the cracking in foundations of purgatory caused by Shadowquakes.  The very thing that Velvet is supposed to prevent/ stop from happening.  Her haunting Bonesaw does not cause them- more evil ghosts do.  A subplot is the revolutionaries that want to breakout of purgatory.  Hence the confusion within the novel- revenge, shadowquakes, revolutionaries and of course forbidden love.  Although Nick kinda kicks that subplot to the curb real fast- he doesn’t really care that it is forbidden.  To him it is a no brainer.

The first chapter will wrap you up into Velvet’s world.  She is a ghost bent on revenge- or that is how others will see her.  I kind of saw her differently.  She is ghost bent on saving victims of a death as horrific as hers.  She kept trying to thwart Bonesaw’s next murder, if that means haunting his sorry behind then so be it.  As the team leader of a group of Salvage’s (search and rescue of wayward souls), she further proves my point. 

Her personality is spunky which I can relate to and I love her sarcasm.  She is extremely loyal and trustworthy to her friends.  Nick, the love interest, is adorable.  There really is no other way to put it. Even though he discovers he is dead and that he could of course control corpse he keeps a positive attitude.  When Velvet is being witchy, he calls her on it.  The fact that he even likes her is adorable- considering he was the basketball jock to her Goth gal.  This was even pointed out by Velvet, which was awesome.

I only had two complaints about the book.  The romance was not really romantic. Nick was not introduced until chapter 10- wish he got to the party a little bit earlier. Falling in love should have taken longer than five minutes. The other thing is how descriptive the book it.  Does the reader really need to know that “a pair of gruff-looking souls in coveralls chained the funicular cars to a massive wedge…”?  Some of the vocabulary used in the descriptions was on the higher end of a SAT vocabulary studying list.  This caused the book to be a little choppy for me.

My Rating 3 stars out of 5

Other Characters

Luisa- Velvet’s best friend, happens to also be on her Salvage team as poltergeists along with her brother
Logan- Luisa’s brother, on the Salvage team as poltergeists
Nick- Velvet’s love interest, she of course becomes his boss