Velveteen by Daniel Marks

Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers

Publish Date: October 9, 2012

Source: Author sponsored book tour for honest review

Goodreads

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 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 luke-warm feelings towards paranormal strike again. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy Velveteen, because I did. I just never really got invested in the story.

I liked the idea of purgatory and how dark and dreary it was. Marks manages to shove creepiness into every nook and cranny of the story and purgatory certainly doesn’t escape it. Case in point: souls are all glowy so in order to not run around burning everyone’s retinas, they rub ash all over themselves. Gross, yes? Then we have disturbing descriptions of Bonesaw and what he does, zombies (but, you know, the controlled kind), and even large swarms of flies that eat souls. So, if you’re squeamish, I’d suggest staying far, far away from Velveteen.

Can I just complain about the guy on the cover for a second? You see a guy on a cover and you assume he’s the love interest, yes? Well, that’s most certainly not the case this time. There was a guy introduced towards the beginning who had a similar description as the guy on the cover, but he was said to be in his late twenties (or something like that). So, even after the real love interest was introduced I kept thinking that despite how weird it would be that the other guy would end up being the L.I. since he’s on the cover. I’m here to tell you this is not the case.

Now for the characters. I didn’t really connect with any of them. I admired Nick’s persistence and Velvet’s sarcasm but I never really felt invested in them. It actually kind of drove me nuts how Velvet was constantly pushing Nick away. I just wanted to tell her that you shouldn’t treat guys who are basically throwing themselves at you (in a cute way) that way.

I really liked all the side characters, though. They may not have gotten to be a huge part of the story, but I liked them all. In fact, in the acknowledgements Mark says Velveteen was inspired by a middle grade short story about Luisa. I’d totally love to read a companion from Luisa’s point of view! She was my favorite character out of the whole story :]

Also? I kind of called the bad guy from the beginning.

The Nutshell: While Velveteen wasn’t a favorite of mine, I still think it was good. Paranormal lovers will more than likely enjoy it since it has all the makings for a good paranormal (romance, ghosts, body possessing, mysterious happenings) with bonus gore. Velveteen certainly isn’t your typical cookie-cutter paranormal romance. If you get squeamish, I’d suggest staying far away, though ;]

Pages: 464

Series: Velveteen #1

Review: Near Miss