Book Review: Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves

Author	Dia Reeves
Title	Bleeding Violet
Publisher	Simon Pulse
Date of Publication	January 5, 2010
Page Count	454 pages
ISBN	978-1-4169-8618-8

Hannah is not your regular teenager. She is plagued by hallucinations, has a whole medicine cabinet full of pills and fills her closet with frilly, self-sewn dresses in violet - all of them! In search of love, Hannah runs away to Portero, Texas, to find a new home there - with her mother. Portero, however, turns out to be about as regular a town as Hannah is a regular girl. Soon, she discovers dark secrets and meets very mysterious people. As the cover flap text says - Anything can happen and no one is safe.

I have to admit, I saw the cover and just had to get it. The various darker shades of violet are absolutely georgous, and the girl on the cover seems to be mysterious, not stick figure thin, but beautiful. And then, there's the added effect of a POC actually displayed on the cover. And yes, even I, a white girl (think Snow White with reddish-brown-dark blonde hair) takes issue with incorrect portrayal of main characters on the cover!

But in the end, my absolute love for this book does not only have to do with the cover. Dia Reeves created characters that are absolutely amazing! They're not perfect the way some authors in the past have portrayed their characters, because I strongly believe that no one ever is perfect and that it is actually our quirks that make us likeable. With Hannah, her mother Rosalee, her friend Wyatt and all the others have flaws that are addressed head on.

What intrigued me even more was the fact that Hannah's mental illness, shown from her own point of view. Mental illnesses are often subdued or toned down in books unless they're specifially intended to teach about one such illness. Reeves instead showed how Hannah suffered from it and how she tried to cope with both her mental illness as well as the ways adults around her tried to deal with it.

I absolutely loved Dia Reeves' debut novel with its paranormal aspects and everything. I hope for a seque as I would love to revisit Hannah's world and I would like to find out more about the mysterious world of Portero. And of course, I also would love to find out how the relationship between Hannah and Wyatt develops in the future.

Addendum:
So far I know there will be another book by Dia Reeves which will be published in January 2011. Its title is Slice of Cherry, and I'm so excited, I already pre-ordered it!