Dia Reeves

The premise of this novel really intrigued me. The daughters of a serial killer? I'm in. Even better, they are kinda twisted themselves, rather than hate and shy away from what their father did, they are sort of like him. They like to kill as well. Sounds awesomely fucked up right? It could have been. The thing that I think ruined it for me was the town and the happy place. The town these girls live in is like a weird fantasy place. Monsters coming around to kill people is normal, casually show more mentioned from time to time and Fancy can see things in reflections. She can transport herself and her sister into what she calls The Happy Place. A paradise world where she can basically make anything she wants happen. For me, the fantasy portion ruined it. Not to the point where I disliked the book, but it could have been a supremely fucked up great mess of a novel that would have blew my mind, instead, it became a fantasy, which somehow lessened the kills. It made them seem like a fantasy as well. I still enjoyed the novel, but for a book about two killers, it wasn't very dark, in fact, it was hardly dark at all, and thats how I went into it thinking it would be. I was slightly disappointed I guess, but it was still interesting and worth a read. A quick read as well, despite its 500ish pages. show less

Hanna is not an easy heroine to like. She does certain things that people may find unforgivable, or at least wish she had paid a greater consequence for. I know some people who also think that the book perpetuates stereotypes about the violence and promiscuity of the mentally ill and young black women.

I definitely see where these people are coming from, but for me, Hanna's violence and unashamed sexuality are separate, if still somewhat linked, to her identities as a young woman with show more bipolar and a black woman. And I loved her. I loved having a heroine who suffers from mental illness, who saves the day neither in spite of nor because her condition. I love the fact that there wasn't a supernatural explanation for her condition, unlike many contemporary fantasy/paranormal novels where the character's mental illness is revealed to be some kind of supernatural power. I loved the painful, fraught relationship she had with her mother, and how that was the primary driving relationship in the story, despite the romance.

Bleeding Violet is not a book for everyone. But if you don't mind violence and are interested in spunky, kick-ass heroines who deal with mental illness in a creepy, fantastic setting, I'd definitely recommend giving it a shot. show less

Kit and Fancy Cordelle are more than simply sisters: they’re practically the same person. The daughters of an infamous killer, the girls keep to themselves, yet are always aware that their father’s tendencies may manifest in them as well. So when they begin to kill—only those who deserve it, of course—the sisters are not all that surprised.

What shocks Fancy, however, is when Kit begins to want to branch out beyond their close relationship. The more Fancy kills, the more she tries to show more hold on to the way things were, the more things change. Turns out there are some things more horrifying than killing, and that may be acknowledging the real world.

Dia Reeves is like a bucket of cold water on YA lit’s face…and I mean that in the best way. Her debut novel, Bleeding Violet, turned paranormal inside out and made it fascinating, in a sexy and gruesome sort of way. Her sophomore novel, SLICE OF CHERRY, is like a twisted childhood fantasy come true. Which is to say that I LOVED it.

As she did in Bleeding Violet, Dia kind of simply throws readers to the wolves and makes you fight to understand and be sympathetic to what’s going on in the story. In a world where some YA writers seem to “baby” their readers, this is a refreshing challenge. Things are not outright explained to us, but rather allowed to unfold gradually over the course of the book’s many pages. SLICE OF CHERRY focuses greatly on the horrors of the human psyche. I mean, Portero is weird enough on its own, but Kit and Fancy’s sociopathic behavior could technically happen in any normal American town, which is the truly creepy part of this novel.

The characters in SLICE OF CHERRY are fantastically messed up, definitely out there in a caricature-like but still completely understandable way. Little time is wasted on backstory, on explanations of what made the girls the way they are. Instead, they—especially Fancy—believe so thoroughly in their oddness that they leave us no room to question how they came to be that way…and that was totally fine with me. We don’t need complicated psychiatric explanations because they are so fully realized, their bizarreness so beyond our comprehension of typical human behavior that they successfully straddle the line between the real and the macabre.

SLICE OF CHERRY is in a genre all its own. If Bleeding Violet didn’t convince me that Dia is a genius, then this book most definitely did. This book will appeal to anyone who has even a pinch of darkness to them, who ever felt like they were weird and enjoyed things that no one else seems to. show less

Plot: Hanna has been diagnosed with many different things over the years; at the moment she’s manic-depressive. She’s fine most of the time but when she doesn’t take her meds she sometimes does bad things: like hitting her aunt in the head with a rolling pin. She runs away to the small town of Portero where her mother lives. But she isn’t welcomed with opened arms and Portero is even stranger than her hallucinations. Here she can see, not only hear, her dead father and the show more inhabitants have grown used to monster attacks. Hanna is desperate to prove to her mother that she can fit in and survive.

This was a truly unique urban fantasy. I wasn’t sure it was an urban fantasy before I started reading it; I picked it up mainly on the recommendation of Cindy Pon (author of Silver Phoenix) because I was looking for some good ya staring women of color. In a market flooded with urban fantasy, finding one that approaches the subject in a new way is a treat. Hanna’s mental disorder frames the narrative in an interesting way for one; at times it is hard to tell what is her delusion and what is simply fantastical. The characters are also very complex and interesting; ultimately the monsters simply exist to move forward the human drama of the piece. Ultimately it is a book about duty, loyalty, family and love and the different ways people understand and live these things.

There is romance too but it is not the same tired “fated love” story that I’ve read so often. Hanna’s love affair with Wyatt is bumpy to say the least, in part because both of them have other priorities. Ultimately, the main relationship in this book is the one between Hanna and her mother Rosalee; it is Rosalee’s love she is trying to win and Rosalee’s life she would sacrifice anything (even her relationship with Wyatt) to save. show less