Review: Velveteen by Daniel Marks

Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers

Pages: 464

Received: Received a copy from the publisher through Netgalley

Release Date: October 9, 2012
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Goodreads Synopsis:

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.

My Review:

Oh how excited I was for this book when it came out, I mean first look at that awesome cover, it really stuck out in my mind... well this was one of those the cover tricks you kind of books... and even more than that, the synopsis tricked me! So this book was about a girl who was killed at the young age of 16, now she is a ghost living in purgatory with only revenge on her mind. Her plan to is to haunt her killer "Bonesaw" and give him the punishment he deserves... Doesn't this sound like such a great concept to a book?! Sadly, this is not what I got out of this book at all. This book very quickly takes a different turn than I was expecting and in the end I was just confused with everything I had just read.

I was definitely interested in the concept that actually came out of this book, but I just felt like that the story was a little all over, and it didn't make a completely coherent story. The whole Velveteen haunting her killer and getting revenge really took a backseat to a bigger plot idea, this idea of the ghosts going to purgatory until they fulfill needs that will help them cross over. These ideas always interest me, the problem with this book is that it's not really brought up until quite a ways into the book.

Velveteen was an interesting character and I really liked that she had an attitude, after what she went through I wouldn't be so forthcoming with people either. But I found that there were some sections where her personality didn't really connect with how she acted in the rest of the book, she was a very confusing character, especially when it came to the guy that shows up in the book. She became very back and forth with her attitude.

The biggest thing about this book that brought it down for me was that it left me with so many more questions than answers (and I don't know if it's part of a series). There is this idea in the book about how those living in purgatory all have some sort of job, being "collectors" or being a "salvager", which is a team with many different jobs to it. But how do these ghosts know where they belong, and how did Velveteen get to be the commander of her own team? It was a very confusing book that I just felt I couldn't grasp the concept.

This book is really teaching me to be wary of a book synopsis, in the past I have had too much given away about a book, and this one just gave me a different expectation. I may have liked the book a little more if I hadn't gone in with one idea about what the book was to be about.