Review + Giveaway: The Violet Hour

THE VIOLET HOUR
Violet Hour #1
Whitney A. Miller
Young Adult/Thriller/Horror
312 pages
Flux
Available Now
Source: ARC from author for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Some call VisionCrest the pinnacle of religious enlightenment. 

Others call it a powerful cult. 

For seventeen years, Harlow Wintergreen has called it her life.

As the daughter of VisionCrest's patriarch, Harlow is expected to be perfect at all times. She must be considered a paragon of integrity by the other Ministry teens and a future leader in the eyes of the world.

Despite the constant scrutiny Harlow is keeping a dark and dangerous secret, even from her best friend and the boy she loves. She hears a voice in her head that seems to have a mind of its own, plaguing her with violent and bloody visions. It commands her to kill. And the urge to obey is getting harder and harder to control....

MY THOUGHTS
The Violet Hour is a haunting story, the kind that terrifies on multiple levels due to some graphically detailed visions and an ending that has us wanting to wrap our reality up in a bear hug and thank it for being nothing like Harlow’s world. Though Harlow’s visions are not for the faint of heart or the extraordinarily squeamish, those who fall into that category (like myself) will still find themselves riveted while being simultaneously horrified, the strength of Ms. Miller’s characters anchoring us to the story even as we strongly consider curling up into a fetal ball and rocking. This story is not all horror however, the heart of it revolving around Harlow and the relationships she has to those closest to her, and it’s these bonds that have us flipping the pages, fully engaged and emotionally invested from beginning to end.

Harlow is an ideal young adult heroine, someone who handles her uncontrollable visions of gore and death with a strength we’re quite positive we'll never possess. Her relationship with best friend Dora is an absolute delight, the connection between the two of them full of humor, inside jokes, and genuine, unwavering support for each other, surprising us by making us smile amidst the truly terrifying backdrop of Harlow’s visions. There’s no cattiness between them, and the lines of communication are open almost all the time–secrets something that are reserved for lesser friendships–and we can’t help but be thankful for a friendship that plays as vital a role in the story as the romance.

The relationship between Harlow and longtime friend Adam is one of the highlights of the story, the history between them making the new distance Adam has recently put in place when we come into this tale all the more painful, our hearts immediately going out to Harlow as she struggles to understand why what used to be so close is now suddenly so far away. What makes us fall madly in love with Harlow however is the way she handles herself when the situation with Adam gets particularly difficult, never allowing his deliberate barbs to hit their mark without letting him know they’ve done so. She neither simply accepts the hostility thrown her way nor stoops to his level by returning fire, instead she lets him see her hurt even as she begins strapping on armor to protect herself from future blows. Despite his harshness with Harlow, Adam is not unlikable in the least as it’s very clear to us something huge happened to him to cause this shift in their relationship, and we read with breath held waiting for the moment when he'll let us know what he's been hiding.

Though there is a romance present, the limelight remains with the mystery of Harlow’s gruesome (and slightly traumatizing) visions, goosebumps and shivers as prevalent while reading as the warmth we feel toward Harlow herself. Things take an increasingly strange turn as the story progresses, the why’s and how’s of certain aspects not entirely clear as we reach the end of this first installment, but a revelation in the very last chapter has our questions fading to the background in the face of a pivotal final twist. Those who hate cliffhangers should be aware going in of this epic turn of events–making the release date for book two seem impossibly far away–but overall The Violet Hour is dark and gritty yet also beautifully emotional, and I can’t wait for more from Ms. Miller.

Rating: 4/5
 

Find Whitney:

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Review: Some Quiet Place

SOME QUIET PLACE
Kelsey Sutton
Paranormal Young Adult
331 pages
Flux
Available now
Source: Finished copy from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Elizabeth Caldwell doesn’t feel emotions . . . she sees them. Longing, Shame, and Courage materialize around her classmates. Fury and Resentment appear in her dysfunctional home. They’ve all given up on Elizabeth because she doesn’t succumb to their touch. All, that is, save one—Fear. He’s intrigued by her, as desperate to understand the accident that changed Elizabeth’s life as she is herself.

Elizabeth and Fear both sense that the key to her past is hidden in the dream paintings she hides in the family barn. But a shadowy menace has begun to stalk her, and try as she might, Elizabeth can barely avoid the brutality of her life long enough to uncover the truth about herself. When it matters most, will she be able to rely on Fear to save her?

MY THOUGHTS
Some Quiet Place is a story that fully reflects its title, moving forward quietly and cautiously as we try to solve the beautiful riddle that is Elizabeth and her emotionally empty existence. It's certainly not a story that will appeal to all, the slower nature of it at times a touch tedious as we wait for a petal of romance or mystery to unfurl and reveal the striking color we know know is hidden behind Elizabeth's seemingly impenetrable facade, but the unusualness of the premise and the characters themselves easily pick us up and carry us through when we get stuck and find ourselves occasionally floundering.

Elizabeth is a young woman whom from the blurb we expect to be fairly lifeless and one-dimensional, her immunity to every Emotion keeping our expectations of her very low, but what we don't realize until we're in the middle of her story is how her lack of emotional response to various things serves to heighten our own. We feel a pressing desire to respond in situations where she can't or won't, taking on the sorrow, the fear, the guilt and the pain so as to catalog and record them for posterity, making sure the people who deserve those responses from her receive them even if they don't come from Elizabeth herself.

Elizabeth is not a shell of a person throughout though, showing moments and flashes of feeling when her mind stops reminding her of her emptiness and allows her heart to fill her many spaces, and we simply can't help but root for her and Fear to find the source of her condition so that we might know how she came to be the way she is. Luckily for us, almost all our questions are answered by the end, Elizabeth's journey one evidenced by a series of bloody footprints and pieces of herself left behind for us to find, but instead of there being nothing left at the finish line we find a distinct something–a young woman twisted and molded into different shapes by pain and loss but who emerges the most striking version of herself, ready to remove some of the weight from her shoulders through the acceptance of her past and her hope for the future.

Overall, Some Quiet Place is likely to be on of those stories that inspires a wide variety of conflicting opinions, perhaps a bit more of a mood read than a straightforward romance or mystery, but ultimately something rewarding in its haunting uniqueness.

Rating: 4/5 

Find Kelsey

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This book was sent to me by the publisher free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.