Velveteen is a snarky, intelligent, tenacious teenager who has been kidnapped and murdered by a serial killer called Bonesaw.  Velveteen winds up in purgatory where she isn’t in heaven and definitely is not in hell.  It’s one of the grayest places you could imagine and it’s parallel to the living world.  Velveteen plots on how to go about getting revenge on Bonesaw, even if secretly crossing from the dead world to the living world is risky for everyone.  She’ll do anything to make Bonesaw’s life a living hell.

Velveteen is being marketed as a young adult horror, fantasy novel.  It’s not scary and there isn’t much horror.  It doesn’t focus primarily on Velveteen taking revenge on her murderer as is pitched on the back of the book, which was a little disappointing for me.  In spite of that, you’ll fall in love immediately with Velveteen.  She’s great!  She’s kick-ass!  She’s the kind of friend you’d like to have.  The salvage team that she’s a member of is great to read about too.  The world of the dead is composed of some extremely creative descriptions and characters – good and bad.

What I disliked was that the action was sometimes difficult to follow.  I found myself rereading some parts because I felt there were things I was forgetting or just didn’t understand well.  The thing I adored was that it didn’t read like a typical YA novel.  I read it in three days.  I could have read it quicker, but NaNoWriMo started on the first of November.  The writing was exceptional!  The progression of events was engaging and the vocabulary was elevated!  I could hear the author’s voice the entire time – very humoristic.  Great teenage dialogue!  If you don’t know Daniel “Danny” Marks, he has a successful You Tube channel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vp1moxN_FY&feature=plcphas and contributes to another channel called YA Rebels http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q69R7oAdo4. Velveteen is Marks’ first YA horror fantasy novel and I hope it won’t be his last.  He’s had various jobs like being psychotherapists for children and adolescents, a cafeteria janitor, and a Halloween store manager(I could see him doing that).  I’m sure all these jobs have contributed to Dannny Marks’ captivating writing style and ingenious ideas.  I rated Velveteen three and a half stars on Goodreads, which is right between I liked it and I really liked it.  I docked a half of a star for the lack of Bonesaw.  Check out the video below which is Danny Marks being interviewed by Bunny Cates on You Tube.  Thanks for the interview Bunny and Danny!

                                                                                                ——Blaise PASCAL