Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves

1 star -- I hate it (on principle)

I will write about this book while I feel passionately about it, despite the fact that I've read two others I need to write about before I forget about them completely.

Bleeding Violet is a terrible book, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, much less a teen.

I don't remember why I picked up this book. The flap copy is terrible. The cover is not great (very The Dark Divine, and I don't care for knock-offs). I really thought this would be a terrible book, and I was really uninterested, so I can't explain why I took this home.

But when I first started reading it, I was pleasantly surprised by the book. The character isn't nearly as off-putting as the copy made her seem, and there are definitely some interesting concepts. The book had potential to be really, really good.

BUT it goes downhill really fast.

The main character, Hanna, is 16 and bipolar. She lost her virginity when she was 14 and decides to have sex with the Wyatt after, basically, one date.

While I realize that kids have sex and start early, and that 14 is by no means an unusual age to lose one's virginity, I do take issue with the frivolity with which Hanna treats this issue. She says STDs are for losers, when the plain fact is that STDs happen to those who have unprotected sex. Mistakes happen, condoms break. Anyone who's having sex with someone who's had sex before can get an STD. Anyone who's having sex can get pregnant. When you're writing for teens, you have a responsibility to treat sex carefully. While it's a realistic issue, so are STDs and teen pregnancy. They're not just "for losers."

I also take issue with the fact that Rosalee, Hanna's mother, gives her an entire box of condoms without question. Granted, Rosalee isn't a great mother, but the whole point of the story is that Rosalee does indeed love Hanna, and I think any loving mother would sit and have a chat before handing over a box of condoms.

Both Rosalee and Hanna are also quite proud of the fact that they use sex and their attractiveness as a weapon and that they use men. It's a terrible message to send to teens. Relationships should be mutual and beneficial and not harmful to either person involved. If a girl got raped, the man would be jailed. The feeling, to me, is the same if a girl uses a boy through sex. It's wrong and should not be condoned.

The sex issue gets even weirder when Hanna strips down by a naked boy in a lake, and her mother strips down too. All three completely naked, the boy aroused, and Rosalee starts cutting up the poor kid. The violence and torture is bad enough, but I think having familial nudity and very sexual tensions was completely unnecessary and uncalled for.

Besides the fact that the entire book is swamped in underage sex and other sexual situations, there is also a drug usage issue. Again, I understand that teens do drugs, and I have no problem with the scene where Wyatt and Hanna and their friends "do drugs" (forget-me-not flowers, for goodness' sakes), because that's realistic. But I do take real issue with the mom giving the daughter drugs. While I personally know families that actually do drugs together, I don't think it was ever the parents who said, "Hey, you haven't expressed any interest in this. Let's give it a shot!" but more of a, "Well, they do it and we do it, why don't we do it together?"

And then there's the suicide. Throughout the book, Hanna and others are very violent. But this climaxes when Hanna commits suicide. She slits her arms "from wrist to elbow" (both of them) and smears her blood on the walls of her house to make Rosalee sorry. Granted, Hanna is saved (so that she can commit suicide publicly), but suicide is a very heart-wrenching and real problem. The fact that Hanna is so blase about suicide and then finds her bloody "artwork" "beautiful" is horrifying. Teens shouldn't assume that someone will save them at the last minute. Sometimes it happens, but sometimes it doesn't. And teens also shouldn't be taught that you can change your mind after you commit suicide. You can't. If you do it right, you're dead. If you do it wrong, you're emotionally and, more than likely, physically scarred for the rest of your life.

I feel like authors have a responsibility when they write YA to be or set examples. I don't mean that the stories have to say "Suicide is bad, kids" or "Just say no to drugs!" or that the stories can't have sex, drugs, or violence, but I feel like it should be approached cautiously and with care.

Bleeding Violet feels like a bondage smut book toned down for teens, and it doesn't work. Movies have ratings and books have genres to prevent children from reading or seeing what may not be good for them, and I think Bleeding Violet should definitely not be in the YA fiction genre. It has too much unnecessary sex, drugs, swearing, violence, self-violence, stealing, lying, and hatred. There is a place for these issues, but it's not in the teen sci-fi/fantasy section, and they need to be treated appropriately.