Velveteen by Daniel Marks (ARC)

Velveteen
Daniel Marks
Expected Pub: October 9, 2012

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.  

Riddle me this: Why does a book description that goes off about a ghost seeking revenge against her serial killer, but is mostly about an uprising in the weirdest purgatory I've ever heard of, have so many good ratings? Answer: Hell's bells if I know.

Oh, yeah...there are spoilers ahead, because this book was just a modge podge of wtf-ery.

Velveteen started off so promising with Velvet using her ghost mojo to destroy things in the serial killer's home, and then realizing the sicko had collected another girl to torture. Instead of moving forward with that story, she leaves because she has to slip back into purgatory because somebody might notice she's missing. Hmm...okay. (Why does she have to be butt naked to travel through - and arrive in a dark alley that's frighteningly similar to Nocturn Alley? Cobblestone pathways, weird clothing...totally felt like I was in Harry Potter). And I've never heard of a ghost that practically had to be present for roll call and participate in something I can only call group counseling in purgatory. They're dead...leave 'em alone already. If they wanna hang out in purgatory, that's their decision. Then out of nowhere some shadow thing comes along whipping up souls into its tendrils and showing them really bad things. O-kaaaay.... They're dead right? It's not like this shadow can destroy their soul or anything, but they scatter like it's that deformed monster from Cloverfield snatching them up. 

Apparently, our girl Velvet, who's just a kid and been in purgatory for only a few years, is the leader of a team of scavengers that have the best fight record against the shadows. Say what? It's purgatory! How can someone so new have the best record? People have been there for thousands and thousands of years and this two year old is better? (You can't see it, but I'm shaking my head right now, cause her out of this world - ahem...purgatory - number is 57.) Sigh...Velveteen is just filled with things that make my eyes roll and my head shake, and I'm not even gonna get into how quickly Velvet and Nick are rolling around in her bed groping each other - oh, wait...yes I am - a few hours after they met!

Are you sure were not just in the head of some delusional mental patient in Bellevue? Cause this book is filled with crazy stuff all over the place. Now I try to find the good in every book I read, but Velveteen made this really hard. I loved the chapters where she faced off with her killer, and for that, I was ready to upgrade this nightmare to two stars, but they were so few and far between, I just couldn't mislead my readers into thinking this was worth two stars. And I hate giving one stars. Oddly enough, I had to upload my one star pic from the harddrive cause it had never been used before on the Crazy Dream blog. The first chapter with her screwing with Bonesaw was awesome...but then I had to suffer through totally unawesomeness for 200 more pages before I was given another short glimpse of Bonesaw. I'm so disappointed right now, cause the author was onto something really great with this whole ghost-revenge-on-a-serial-killer thing, but fell flat when the focus shifted onto this ridiculous version of purgatory.

I'd pass on this one peeps. It took me forever to read cause it put me to sleep every night. And to be honest, I pulled the sheet over Velveteen and called her death at 277 pages.

Novel provided by publisher via NetGalley.