Books I Love – Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves

After her father’s death, 16-year-old Hanna hitchhikes to Portero, Texas, the home of her mother, Rosalee, who abandoned her. Hanna is desperate for Rosalee to love and accept her, and Rosalee reluctantly makes a bargain: Hanna has two weeks to make friends and fit in at her school or she won't be allowed to stay. Hanna has never fit in anywhere, though. Struggling with manic depression, she hears voices and hallucinates, wears only purple dresses, and has a history of violence. Portero is no ordinary town, though, and Hanna learns that it is haunted by doors to other dimensions and plagued by dangerous creatures from those realms. Wyatt, a powerful young initiate in the Mortmaine, a demon-hunting organization, recruits Hanna, and together they struggle to deal with an ancient evil that threatens the town and Hanna’s future.

This book is majorly f***ed up…but in a good way. The main character is totally crazy cakes. Hanna’s father is dead, but still speaks to her and her mother doesn’t want anything to do with her. She also may or may not have killed her aunt when she ran away to find her mother. Um…to say she has faults is a bit of an understatement. Hanna makes decisions based on faulty reasoning…but who doesn’t? She knows she’s gorgeous and is really selfish, but is completely likeable because she is so very refreshing. There isn’t another main character like her out there.

There’s a lot going on in this book and you don’t know at first if the paranormal things are really happening or if they are a product of Hanna’s schizophrenic mind. I like this ambiguity, though it soon becomes apparent that Hanna isn’t just crazy…strange things happen to everyone in the town.

This book is for older teens, there is a lot of sex and violence, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Hanna is confident, in her looks and her body (if not in her grasp on reality) and understands the power that some women hold over men. Her mother is an extremely sexual person as is Hanna. She’s not naïve or clueless, as so many teenage girls are portrayed. Just a warning, if you like your YA PG, this is more like PG-13.

Has anyone else read it? What did you think?