Velveteen (review)

At sixteen, Velveteen was kidnapped, tortured, and eventually murdered by a serial killer named Bonesaw. Since then, she’s become the top-ranked Salvager in the City of the Dead and the leader of a crack team sent into the mortal realm to help convey passing souls into the next world. Her postmortem success is all a façade, however, and she spends much of her free time trekking back into the “daylight” and haunting Bonesaw—an act that is strictly forbidden by the souls that rule the City of the Dead. Besides her clandestine hauntings, Velveteen is also trying to juggle her attraction to Nick, the newest and most charmingly annoying member of her team, and figure out what to do about the Departurists, a revolutionary group that threatens to upend the City’s tightly controlled order—not to mention the mysterious shadowquakes that are literally ripping purgatory apart. There’s a lot going on here, and while each story is individually compelling, the threads never quite coalesce into a seamless narrative; readers will be left feeling a bit overwhelmed rather than satisfied. The world-building is messy at best, and the rules shift in accordance to the needs of the plot. Perhaps most successful is the development of Velveteen: violent, vengeful, and ready for battle, Velveteen is anything but the sad, mopey ghosts girls YA lit has offered of late, and she’d make quick friends with the bloodthirsty vigilante sisters in Dia Reeves’ Slice of Cherry (BCCB 1/11). Her final confrontation with Bonesaw is therefore disappointing in its brevity, but the arrival of a new enemy for Velveteen and the open ending that hints at a sequel may persuade readers to want to linger in the City of the Dead.