Bleeding Violet ~ Paperback ~ Dia Reeves

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. Review In Reeves's dark and stylish first novel, 16-year-old Hanna arrives in the Texas town of Portero seeking Rosalee, the mother she's never known, and fleeing her aunt, who wants her back in a mental institution (Hanna is manic-depressive and has conversations with her deceased father). But Hanna soon learns that Portero has doors to other worlds, allowing ghoulish creatures such as “lures,” who can turn people to glass, to wreak havoc. A group called the Mortmaine keeps the population safe, and when Hanna helps a member named Wyatt defeat the lures, she finally earns acceptance in the unfriendly town. Hanna's sassy voice reflects her freewheeling, unstable personality (“back in Dallas, I decided to sleep with all the boys in my class in alphabetical order”). Even as Rosalee slowly warms to her daughter, walls remain, at one point driving Hanna to attempt suicide. Reeves writes surely and with flair, though readers should be prepared for gore (Hanna slices flesh from Wyatt's father's leg to defeat a demon) and other disturbing moments, as when a naked Hanna and Rosalee torture a boy. Not for the faint of heart. Ages 14–up. Publishers Weekly