Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves

Released: January 2010

Publisher: Simon Pulse

# Pages: 454

Copy provided by: Library

Summary: Goodreads

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.

Bleeding Violet is basically the story of Hanna and Wyatt and the very strange town of Portero. When I started reading, my first thoughts were 'Weird', but as I continued reading, my thoughts turned to 'odd', 'strange', 'bizarre' and 'downright crazy'. Hanna is just wild. Her obsession with purple dresses was never adequately described for me - although I did love the idea that she made all her own clothes and after a while, I found that my initial sympathy with her problems had disappeared and I basically just didn't like her very much. I couldn't be particularly taken with a character who keeps bashing her relatives over the head with blunt objects.

Wyatt, who is the tall, good looking hunter - a Mortmaine - was a little more likeable and he seemed very centred, but I really couldn't warm to his character all that much. When he manouvered Hanna into being swallowed by a 'worm' so she could kill it from the inside out, I lost faith with him. I loved the idea behind the story, but something about it just wasn't working for me. So much so, that I finally gave up on it about half-way through, when I realised I'd put it down at least 3 times to read something else.

I read a review on Goodreads that described the plot in movie terms as a cross between Beetlejuice and Pan's Labyrinth - which just about nails it. It's not that I didn't like it - I just didn't like it very much. Sorry Bleeding Violet, but I was 'Just not that into you'.