Book Reviews

Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff

Book: Paper Valentine

Author: Brenna Yovanoff ( http://brennayovanoff.com/ )

Genre: Speculative Fiction

Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin Group

Number of Pages: 304

Price:  $6.89- $28.95

Inside Cover: The city of Ludlow is gripped by the hottest July on record.  The asphalt is melting, the birds are dying, petty crime is on the rise, and someone in Hannah Wagnor’s peaceful suburban community is killing girls.

 

For Hannah, the summer is a complicated one.  Her best friend Lillian died six months ago, and Hannah just wants her life to go back to normal. But how can things be normal when Lillian’s ghost is haunting her bedroom, pushing her to investigate the mysterious string of murders?  Hannah’s just trying to understand why her friend self-destructed, and where she fits now that Lillian isn’t there to save her a place among the social elite. And she must stop thinking about Finny Boone, the big, enigmatic delinquent whose main hobbies seem to include petty larceny and surprising acts of kindness.

With the entire city in a panic, Hannah soon finds herself drawn into a world of ghost girls and horrifying secrets.  She realizes that only by confronting the Valentine Killer will she be able move on with her life—and it’s up to her to put together the pieces before he strikes again.

Paper Valentine is a hauntingly poetic tale of love and death by the New York Times bestselling author of The Replacement and The Space Between.

Review: This is a story about murder. However, it is not a murder mystery, or anything like that. For me, this story was about what makes people special. People think that 'everyone is special' and all that, but in this story, each person makes themselves special. This review can only be explained utilizing passages from the book, so if you don't like spoilers, don't read. :D

Lillian

        Lillian is Hannah's dead friend. While she was not one of the murder victims, she still 'haunts' Hannah. Lillian died of anorexia, which was what made her special. 

Page 195: I understand that she's finally getting right down to the heart of something real and ugly, and it sort of surprises met hat it's taken her this long to say it out loud. "Are you sure you don't really mean that you worried people might be saying, 'Look at Lillian'? That you worried so much about what everyone thought?"  "It was all that really mattered," she says softly. "All I really cared about. Isn't that funny?" I kneel over my stack of newspapers with the scissors clenched in my hand. "I don't want to talk about this." 

        Lillian sighs and rolls over so she's lying on her back with her head hanging limply over the side of the desk. "It didn't happen all at once," she says. 

....... lots more text, until i get to the next passage. 

        At first I think I might as well have slapped her, but then she tubs her hair and nods. "Yeah, sometimes. Maybe it was for attention sometimes. On days when I felt like I was invisible, or when my mom was on some rampage about how I should join drama or choir and kept telling me that if I just got a little smaller, I'd be really pretty. It was like- it was this hobby I had." 

        But after that it was a monstrous, ugly thing. There must....... (more text) "Back then, when it was a... hobby, what made you want it, though? Why did you hold on to it?" 

        Lillian looks down at me over the edge of the desk and her face is so unbearably miserable. "Because it made me special." 

       (Back to the review) And that is the core of what this book seems to be made of. People doing horrible things to be special. Lillian starved herself to death, just to feel special, to prove that she could be different and unique. 

Connor and Nick: Connor nd Nick (SPOILERSSSSS) are... the villain. They also does some pretty awful things (SPOILERSSSS) like maybe homicide in this book, just so they can feel special. There's always that push to be unique, so one day the both of them just started killing girls, and found out they liked the feeling of power it gave them. It made them feel different and special. 

Finny: He is more obviously special. He's a kid who has done some bad stuff, but proves, against everyone's expectations that he can do good things too. 

Murder Victims: They were also special. They were decorated with toys, and, of course, the valentine. 

        For me the message of this story was: You are not special by your mere existence. You must make that existence special by what you do with it. 

        I loved this story. It was full of layers and stuff I had never thought about before.