Ashleigh Paige

I'm a full-time college sophomore pursuing my B.A. in English with hopes of one day working as an editor. Cats, musicals, documentaries about cults/disasters/tragedies, and curse words are just a few of my favorite things. Also, check out our blog or I WILL FIND YOU.

Paper Valentine

Paper Valentine - Brenna Yovanoff See more of my reviews sooner on The YA Kitten! My copy was an ARC I received in a swap with a friend.Readers coming to this book looking for a paranormal murder mystery will need to adjust their expectations. Readers looking for an exploration of Hannah's grief over her best friend's death and a young woman who lets life float by finally doing something about it will be right at home. The deaths, while they do play a part in the novel, aren't the focus for much of it.Hannah's a likable character with a boatload of issues she works through over the course of the novel, her best friend's ghost haunting her, and a crush on a bad boy named Finny (actually Finnegan, but that's rarely used). Her relationship with Finny happens pretty much just because YA needs romance, but more of the focus is on Hannah and her dead best friend Lillian. Even as a ghost, Lillian exerts a massive amount of power over her best friend by pushing her into investigating the murders. Between the deaths, Hannah dressing up in all sorts of beautifully odd clothes, and Hannah living life, we get glimpses into Lillian's mind as she spiraled into anorexia and eventually died from it.Yovanoff's prose is beautiful--so beautiful that there are too many passages I want to quote. Oh, why didn't I mark any of them?! There are a few flubs here and there, such as when Hannah describes the way blood bubbles out of a wound like water when it's just starting to boil in a pot, but for the most part, the poetic, evocative writing style is the best part of the novel. If her story matched her style, this might be a five-star book.Hannah is rather disconnected from the world; problems roll off her like water off a duck's back most of the time. Even her younger sister says if Hannah was on fire, she'd still say she was fine! Hannah's way of being distanced from life and the crimes also distances readers from the narrative. Getting connected to the story is difficult, especially when the mystery we expect to be drawn in by gets less focus than we expected. It isn't until the very end, when the killer tries to off her, that I got nervous for her and invested in the story.Yovanoff can definitely write, and I'm looking forward to reading more of her books in the future. The two I've read from here have been rather average or slightly above average, so here's hoping she'll be able to write a book that can really wow me. She has the ability. She just needs the story.