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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.

This is, hands down, one of the oddest books that I have ever read, and mostly odd in a good way.  Hanna is one of the most unique protagonists that I have run across, and despite her mental instability, or maybe because of it, I found that it was very easy to relate to her.  I didn’t always agree with her actions; in fact, most of the time she behaved in a way that was the total opposite of what i would have done.  Because she is such a flawed character, her decisions made perfect sense for her and were appropriate for her.  If any other character had acted in the same manner, I probably would have disliked them intensely.  Dia Reeves gives Hanna such a profound vulnerability that her indiscretions, while I didn’t condone them, were certainly understandable.  She just wanted, more than anything else, to win her estranged mother’s love.  This is her obsession.  This is her motivation.  This is her reason for living, and if she can’t ever earn Rosalee’s love, there is no reason for her to live.

To compliment Hanna’s uniqueness, the city of Portero is one of the most bizarre places I have visited in literature.  It is a creepy and dangerous place, where monsters lurk behind every corner.  The threat of death is a daily concern, and the townsfolk try to stave off its murderous stare by trying to blend in with one another, wearing black and trying to keep a low profile.  When Hanna waltzes into town with her vibrant violet garb, it isn’t just her classmates who notice her arrival.  Hanna is like a spotlight beaming through the darkness, and even if she wanted to hide her presence, her bright personality commands attention.  She is not one to sit quietly in a corner, waiting to be drawn into the action. As soon as she enters a scene, you know that something big, something potentially shocking, and probably very dangerous, is going to happen, and the tension can be unbearable as events play out.

Bleeding Violet is a fast read, mainly because it is so engrossing.  I was in an agony of suspense to figure out what would happen next.  Hanna’s voice is confident and hypnotic, and I hung on her every word.  She doesn’t shy away from difficult decisions, she possesses an incredible amount of courage, and yet what she longs for most is something that most of us take for granted.  She just wants to feel a sense of belonging and to know that her mother loves her.  She has no one left after the death of her father but Rosalee, a woman she hasn’t seen in 16 years.  She pins her every hope and dream onto winning her love.  This one constant hope shone like a beacon throughout the book, overcoming the darkness that closed frighteningly around Hanna.

I do have one quibble about the book.  As events began to crescendo, building toward the conclusion, some of the Hanna’s activities seemed more about increasing the shock factor than moving the plot along.  Some of these scenes were brutal and more than a little disturbing.

Bleeding Violet is another title from a 2010 debut author, and it’s another impressive work.  It’s intense, gripping, and very hard to step away from.  Once you get sucked into Hanna’s life and the weirdness that is Portero, it will very, very difficult to leave them behind.

Grade:  B+

This book was rented from my local library.  Support our libraries!