African American Read-In: Bleeding Violet

Hosted by Doret, Edi and I.

Yay it's time for the African American Read-In! You voted on Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves so we're discussing it all day over here and on Twitter, use the hashtag #BleedingViolet. If you don't mind, I'll post Twitter comments on this post too :) Drop on over anytime throughout the day. I (hopefully) installed a new commenting system so that should make things easier... (please let me know if IntenseDebate installed). Anyway, let's discuss! To start us off we have three questions. Feel free to reply to the questions, ask your own, link to your reviews, etc. I want to read a few reviews and maybe discuss points brought up in them. Around noon or so central time, I'll probably post some more questions and at 6 PM CT, it will be completely open forum. Anything mentioned in the book is fair game to be discussed. Be as silly, serious or bizarre as you would like. Make Hanna proud.

1. The mother-daughter relationship of Hanna and Rosalee. Did you like it, dislike it? Did a particular scene bother you especially? Did a particular scene make your heart melt in the most unexpected way? Personally, right away I figured things would be OK when Rosalee made Hanna wear raingear on her way to school but then I started to worry..

2. Who would win in a verbal exchange-Hanna's or Wyatt's mom? Oooo tough one. I'ma go with Rosalee though. She's got ice in her veins!

3. Swan. Did Swan creep you out? Is there some hidden meaning behind this wooden Swan carving? Personally I'm not one to find deeper meanings in things, but I love it when other people do. To me, Swan just makes Hanna feel closer to Poppa....

4. Did you like or dislike Hanna? Did you feel you could trust her or were you waiting for the moment when this would be revealed as a psychotic episode?

Take it away!

Edi said: Yeah, that swan was a bit random! In any other book it seemed odd, but what wasn't odd in this book? Odd was the new normal!
Did you know swans mate for life? I think with all the people who kept leaving Hanna, the Swan was something that would always be there for her. Wyatt and her mom left her and came back, but Swan would always be there.

Next set of questions

1. Did Hanna act like a high school student to you?

2. Do you want to see more main characters like Hanna, independent, carefree about sex? Would you read more books with female main characters confident in/about their sexuality?