Book Love: Velveteen by Daniel Marks

Book love is a new feature talking about books I've read long before their release date. Like, I read A Want So Wicked six months before its release date and wanted to talk about it SO badly with someone. I'm hoping these book love posts will be a sort of early buzz for the books, and also a discussion for me, who likes to read books months before their release date.

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.

I love Velveteen. I love how angry she is. I just really love angry characters, I guess. And she was one of the most amazing main characters ever; I absolutely adored Velvet. 

Purgatory. YO. I'll reread this book for the world building alone. Oh man, it was amazing. It was described so perfectly that I can still see it months after reading Velveteen by Daniel Marks. Marks knows how to describe a world; he must have been a painter in a former life or something because MAN, can he paint a scene with his words. 

The amber glow of gaslight trickled into the train from the tunnel's mouth, not in steady streams but jagged rivulets, mixing with the dust until the air around the passengers were streaked a muddy sepia. The gruff rail men bolted from the lead car and tossed off the heavy chains that bound the railcar to the giant wedge beneath them. The metal screamed back with a loud echoing clatter. Then the car was lurching forward, rattling across the connecting tracks into the station itself. 

- p. 64, egalley

I think of that passage a lot. Especially the first line. I LOVE the image. Gorgeous.

I also loved that it wasn't your average YA read. There's cussing, it's dark, and there's Bonesaw who is fucked up in the head. I honestly hated Bonesaw and was rooting for Velvet to complete her mission all while keeping Purgatory intact. Oh, and that leads me to: 

The consequences. It is against the RULES to go after the living when you are dead (as you can tell from the summary above) and I absolutely adored it. I don't think a lot of YA have those high stakes consequences, and Daniel Marks knows exactly how to execute them. J'adore, Daniel Marks ! *MWAH*

The first line: "When Velveteen Monroe pictured Bonesaw's house—and she did, more often than could be considered healthy—blood striped the paint a muddy reddish-brown, internal organs floated in jars of formaldehyde, and great big taxidermy crows leered from branches that twisted from the walls like palsied arms." 

- p. 1, egalley 

Oh, yes, dear readers, this book is written in third person POV and it's totally kickass. I hope you now understand why I adore this book! 

If you're looking for something haunting this October, I highly recommend picking up Daniel Marks' YA debut, Velveteen. 

Velveteen by Daniel Marks hits shelves October 9, 2012. You can preorder it from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound. You know you wanna. Or you can add it to your Goodreads pile, or check out the author's website.