You stop fearing the devil when you’re holding his hand…
Nothing much exciting rolls through Violet White’s sleepy, seaside town… until River West comes along. River rents the guest house behind Violet’s crumbling estate, and as eerie, grim things start to happen, Violet begins to wonder about the boy living in her backyard.
Is River just a crooked-smiling liar with pretty eyes and a mysterious past? Or could he be something more?
Violet’s grandmother always warned her about the Devil, but she never said he could be a dark-haired boy who takes naps in the sun, who likes coffee, who kisses you in a cemetery… who makes you want to kiss back.
Violet’s already so knee-deep in love, she can’t see straight. And that’s just how River likes it.
I always really loved jazz music, so the title of this novel was really appealing for me. I wanted to like it, I really did. The synopsis sounded pretty awesome, girl falls in love with Satan, etc. How misleading.
This novel has all the things that I despise in it. A wishy-washy protagonist that is easily pursuaded by the first attractive boy to pay her any attention, a barely there plot filled with a ton of needless exposition, cheesy lines, and a number of flat characters.
So I suppose I’ll start at the beginning: Violet is depicted as a bit odd and very dependent on the memory of her grandmother, Freddie, who used to tell her stories about the devil. I do really love how quirky Violet is, wearing old clothes, being a literature nerd, and a bit of a loner. However, she is clearly going through a rough time, since evidently her parents have abandoned her and her twin brother at home. Seriously? There are better ways to write a character’s parents out of the story than just have them be completely un-redeeming artists that flit off to Europe and leave their kids at home. So this was just strike one for me.
Strike two for Violet was how instantly attracted to River she was and how ridiculously fast their (if you can call it a courtship) relationship developed. Also, time is very distorted in this novel, I’m fairly certain that all of this happened in the span of a week. Sigh, this left River and Violet to be somewhat undeveloped characters and they could barely stand alone from one another. Strike three for Violet is simply that she is so passive in her reaction to River’s secret (which is really just glorified projection at this point) and how he can “control” her…that she doesn’t seem to care that her free will was taken away. That’s certainly respectable. *eye roll*
The plot is somewhat nonexistent until the last 100 pages of the book. Every other part of the novel is exposition leading up to the plot finally starting. I almost didn’t make it through the book because of this. Also, the main antagonist isn’t introduced until page 311. The book is only 360 pages long. Hence my perception of the extensive exposition.
Cheesy lines: I give you one example that made me cringe with its awkward description.
“My lips melted into my heart, which melted into my legs, which melted into the earth beneath me.” -page 81.
So I picture her dissolving much like this:
Overall, I can argue that most of the characters in the novel are flat and hardly developed. Luke is one that I really think was shafted in the character development. I really would like to know what the story world has to hold, considering how random it was for a character to have a “glow” or “spark.” We have NO explanation as for how this phenomenon would have occurred other than genetics.
The novel might be more enjoyable to you, but I’m giving Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea 1 Bard.
Moving! 