Velveteen by Daniel Marks Review

Velveteen by Daniel Marks
(Velveteen, #1)
Release Date: October 9, 2012
Publisher: Delacorte Books; 464 pages

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.

What an interesting book. Before I get in to my review on the book I want to make a comment on the cover. The cover is dark and intriguing, which works really well for the book because it is pretty dark but why oh why is the male cover model a brunette? Maybe blonde is just too bright for the cover but it always bothers me when the cover models don't match the description of the character inside the book. Obviously, I'm not holding the cover against the contest because that's just silly. It's just an annoyance of mine...

Now on to the book. This book was awesome. It started off really weird and sort of sluggish. (Notice I've had issues with the beginnings of books lately, its weird...) But it certainly picked up and totally made up for the beginning. Velvet was brutally murdered by a serial killer nicknamed, Bonesaw, when she died she didn't go to heaven nor hell - a place sort of in between. A place that many teens and children go to while they await where their souls will be taken, since they are so young when they die the powers that be don't exactly know where they truly belong. However, the purgatory isn't full of just kids but other, older souls who don't belong to either Heaven or Hell yet.

The idea of that alone is just rad. Then he mixes in that everyone who enters the purgatory is assigned a district (like Velvet lives in the Later Quarter), if you will, and then assigned a job. There are rules but the number one rule is absolutely no haunting. Velvet doesn't listen and she haunts her murderer a lot and has saved other girls lives because of her haunting. When shadowquake's start happening more frequently and more severe she can't help but wonder if her haunting of her murderer is the cause. What some are calling the Departure is coming and it's up to Velvet and her team to find out how to stop it and whose behind it.

Velveteen is action packed, unique and highly creative. Daniel Marks has created a whole new world in the purgatory and in a way, gives you hope that maybe something like this does truly exist. You have to love and appreciate books that make you consider the possibility of it being true. Velvet is such a bitch but I like to call her a necessary bitch. What I mean by that is, she kind of has to be a bit of a bitch with what her job entails and really, if I were murdered by a serial killer, I do believe I'd be a little bitchy as well. But it works for her and it works perfectly for the story, so a necessary bitch. Nick, her 57th soul that she's brought back to the purgatory happens to become her weakness. No guy has ever had this effect on her and it's legit. She tries and tries and tries to shoot him down, be extremely rude; basically anything she can think of to scare him off but he's still there. This relationship is probably one of my favorites and I cannot wait to see more of them (plus the twins) in the next book.

This is a long book and I don't feel like it's one you can speed through. If you struggle in the beginning I just encourage you to keep going because I really enjoyed where it went. It's a dark story, so if you don't like dark stories I wouldn't risk it. But from the cover you should be able to gather that it is a bit darker than most YA. Definitely not a bad thing, it's actually good, refreshing thing. Definitely check this out when it hits shelves next month!