Velveteen by Daniel Marks

2/5 Stars

Veleveteen by Daniel Marks
Publisher: Delacorte Books
Publication: October 9, 2012

Review:
I wanted to like this book, the author is from the Pacific Northwest and is definitely funny his YouTube is hilarious, and he wrote about some of my favorite book themes: YA, death/murder, and purgatory but this book was just not my thing.

Velveteen was murdered by a man named Bonesaw and is now living in purgatory. Velvet is a member of an elite Salvage crew that is tasked with stopping cracks that are appearing in purgatory which are in part a result of her crossing back and forth between purgatory and the regular world to haunt Bonesaw (I think?). In retrospect I’m not entirely sure why there are so many cracks in purgatory, or even why Velvet was in charge of such an important Team when she was clearly the one breaking all the rules.

In general I didn’t like any of the characters. Velvet is selfish, succumbs easily to petty banter from the collectors, doesn’t listen to advice, and puts her entire world in danger. I think her saving grace was supposed to be that the reason she did all of this was to kill Bonesaw before he took another victim but in the end I felt there were other ways she could have gone about getting even with him. A vengeful main character is not someone I can easily relate to and that may be the reason I didn’t like this novel.

The other characters were just kind of dry stereotypes. The Collectors were the “mean girls”, there was hot love interest (I can’t even remember his name now ^^’), and the twins Logan and Luisa who were, I think, meant to be cute but came off rather creepy. Actually the whole idea of salvaging was kind of creepy and disgusting, think exploding bodies and flies.

The relationship in this book was flat out terrible. It was insta-love, shaken and stirred, with a dash of don’t come near me it’s forbidden. It made me roll my eyes whenever Velvet and Nick (that’s his name!) wanted to have a little alone time. I actually would have preferred the author skip the romance, because no romance is better then a bad romance (got you to sing Lady Gaga there didn’t I?).

This book while I didn’t care for the plot or characters is still well written and you can see that the author has a specific audience in mind (the darker YA crowd). I just do not happen to be in the audience. If you liked the synopsis though or are looking for a dark slightly gross read this might be right up your alley!

Thanks you Netgalley and Delacorte Books for Young Readers for allowing me to read an advanced readers copy of this novel. 

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Velveteen by Daniel Marks