Review: Living Violet by Jaime Reed

  April 7th, 2013

Living Violet by Jaime Reed

First let me start of by saying that this book had major potential to me.The writing was solid, the lead characters steered away from the cliche stereotypes and the girl showed strength and discipline that other female heroines rarely show in YA books today. I didn't exactly hate it but was it took me a whole two weeks to finish it, which for a book with less than 300 pages is highly unusual for me.The reason why, I kept putting it down.

Let me start with what i didn't like about the book.The lead characters constantly complained about her being "Bi-Racial". In her head it ostracized her from other people and made her feel different, but out of her wide circle of friends, it seemed like she was the only one who ever mentioned it. She claimed that black girls made fun of her because she "talked like a white girl", but to be honest she had more of a typical urban voice of an African American girl.She talked proper when she needed to and used slang around her friends. It was references like that that made me question the authors feelings about black people.

 Another example of this is that when she described Caucasian people it was always so flattering and seemed to paint a beautiful picture but when she described any type of minority it was only to demonize and and somehow paint this picture of the angry, bitter and uppity black person. She spent little time describing her best friend, who was Filipino and spent more time on how beautiful her co worker at work was. I know they were friends too, but wouldn't you spend more time talking up your best friend, who you've known for years as opposed to some chick you've just been working with for like a year?????

I felt like the author was coming from a place where she could only relate to suburban people which is okay, but if that was the case why make Samara use slang and emulate the speech a urban African American girl???I felt like she could have just been written a girl with two black parents, because her being bi-racial added almost nothing to the story. I could have lived without the issue of another author not having the guts to just make a girl with two black parents just for the sake of not getting published.For some reason people have it in their minds that making a character just black is somehow limiting to the success of their book, fearing that their book will make the ethnic fiction shelf and never make it in the hands of a white reader.But this is just not true, i know a lot of people who are just dying for diversity and see this route as a cop out.

The flow of the book seemed to move slow.There were time the pacing was steady but others where absolutely nothing happened in certain chapters. I put the book down a few times because of this.

I also want to say that I didn't really like the villain. He was extremely corny, there were very little chapters on him and i just didn't feel the threat like the characters did. Yea I know he was killing people, but i didn't really feel like the author conveyed his pain and his true goal, if he even had one. She spent so much time on filler chapters that she could have spent that precious words, sentences and pages on properly developing her villain so that i truly feared him.

Now let's discuss what i liked about the book:

I liked the voice of this heroine.She was very relatable. I found myself laughing about the way she put things because she talked very similar to myself. I grew up in the urban area but went to schools where it was predominantly caucasian so i have this habit of using slang when i'm around people i'm familiar with but speaking with more of an interview voice when i'm around people i don't know.I felt very close to the author's choice of dialogue because it felt realistic and fresh. A definite step in the right direction. Also Samara wasn't all lovey dovey like more heroines.She was realistic with her goals and aspirations with having a boyfriend.She liked him but didn't worship the ground her walked on.

And our Hero, Caleb?Hmmmm... I gotta say that i liked Caleb.The only thing that distracted me was the boy on the cover because she never described him with having blond hair, but rather brown. I pictured a celebrity crush of mine instead who has brown hair and similar features to Caleb's description. Caleb wasn't described as overly attractive and honestly that made his appeal more likeable. In real life some of use don't date the overly good looking guys because they treat us like crap, and let's face it in YA novel the insanely good looking guys do treat the girls like crap at first. He seemed to genuinely like her and wasn't a sap when it came to romance. He reminded me of most guys, even though they will have strong feelings for you, it's just hard for them to express them so they just don't.But he had such a cute way of doing it, I won't spoil the surprise.

The paranormal creature that this author chose to write about was kinda cool.It was an interesting take and totally different from the trending madness of vampires, werewolves and fallen angels.

All and all I liked this book more than i hated it but i finished it through and plan on getting the sequel just because i'd like to see how Samara's story unfolds.

My Dream Cast 

 Antonia Thomas as Samara

Matt Prokop as Caleb

Ashley Argota as Mia

Libertad's Rating: