Velveteen by Daniel Marks

Title: Velveteen
Author: Daniel Marks
Info: Website | Twitter | Facebook
Release Date: October 9th, 2012
Publisher: Delacorte Books
Pages: 464
Format: Electronic Copy
Acquired: ARC; Netgalley
Interest: Series
Age Group: Young Adult

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

Disappointment. That is the word that comes to mind when I think of this book. Normally, I don't read a lot of ghost stories or anything that goes Boo, just because I feel like there is a lot more out there these days than that. But when I saw this book I was excited to read it. It wasn't just the cover that drew me in, even though it was pretty cool, but just the fact that instead of getting ghost that bump in the night reader's get to see the point of view of the ghost and read her story. That I couldn't miss out on.

It seems to me that I could have actually missed out on this book. I was confused more than half the time and kept shaking my head when the story moved from one area to another, wondering if I had just missed a huge chunk of the book in the process.

Velveteen was sixteen when she was kidnapped and murdered. Instead of going to Heaven or Hell like a good little soul she's trapped in Purgatory. There another society lives where everything is ashen and crumbling. They all have jobs, and Velveteen's job is to find souls and bring them to Purgatory (she holds the record for 56).

What I found most irritating about this book was just how one-dimensional Velveteen was. I mean, if I had been killed and I was able to hang around to torment my murderer, I would. But this has become an obsession with Velveteen, and whenever she isn't trying for revenge she's moody.

She was hard as a brick wall and impossible to connect with.

The character and plot developments were slow, and at times things were happening that I had no idea what was going on.

This book did not hold my interest for very long and I had to force my way through the last few pages. I couldn't lose myself in this tale, which I think is where it fell flat of expectations. When it comes to books I need to be taken from page one onwards.

I don't know yet if I'll read the sequel or not, but as of now this book is not going to show up on my Christmas list anytime soon.