The city of Ludlow is gripped by the hottest July on record. The asphalt is melting, the birds are dying, petty crime is on the rise, and someone in Hannah Wagnor’s peaceful suburban community is killing girls.
For Hannah, the summer is a complicated one. Her best friend Lillian died six months ago, and Hannah just wants her life to go back to normal. But how can things be normal when Lillian’s ghost is haunting her bedroom, pushing her to investigate the mysterious string of murders? Hannah’s just trying to understand why her friend self-destructed, and where she fits now that Lillian isn’t there to save her a place among the social elite. And she must stop thinking about Finny Boone, the big, enigmatic delinquent whose main hobbies seem to include petty larceny and surprising acts of kindness.
With the entire city in a panic, Hannah soon finds herself drawn into a world of ghost girls and horrifying secrets. She realizes that only by confronting the Valentine Killer will she be able move on with her life—and it’s up to her to put together the pieces before he strikes again.
Paper Valentine is a hauntingly poetic tale of love and death by the New York Times bestselling author of The Replacement and The Space Between.
- Used Book in Good Condition
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
A great novel that kept me alert the whole time
By Melanie
3.5 starsWhat would you think if I told you to read Paper Valentine without reading synopsis? I bet you'd think romance immediately. That's what I thought, because of the pretty US cover and cute title, I went for it. Now imagine my surprise when it showed up on my doorstep as the Australian cover with this paper love heart, decorated with blood? I practically went all freakish as I always try to avoid ghost stories. Even though I seem to be reading all the ones being published this year.Paper Valentine is a mixture of three main components: Contemporary, romance and most importantly, mystery thriller. Each of these aspects fit perfectly with each other, it's so obvious of how well Brenna Yovanoff can write. Even though the beginning wasn't exactly the best, as I read this dark and creepy book, Paper Valentine grew onto me. Expect this book to stun you with twists, cute romance and overall, a quite mysterious killer.Hannah has been seeing her best friend after six months of her death- as a ghost. But that's the least of her worries, as there's a killer on the loose, murdering girls in Hannah's suburban area, leaving children's toys and paper valentine hearts on the dead corpses. As Hannah attempts to seek out the Valentine Killer, she becomes closer to danger herself. 'Ghosts are the kind of thing you go your whole life with everyone telling you they aren't real. I believe in them anyway, because the world is full of things that no one really understands. Mostly though, I believe in them because my best friend died six months ago and now she's with me all the time, materialising silently out of the shadows, creeping closer, reaching out.'For me, Hannah was hard character to analyse and categorise. But one thing is for sure, this girl has depth. After some thought, I have come to a somewhat relevant conclusion. Hannah sets the mood of this book. If she's depressed, I was set in a melancholic subtleness, then when I reached the creepy scenes of tense mystery I was almost immediately dragged into this phase where you just want to look behind your shoulder and jump at every freak in the floor. Brenna Yovanoff created Hannah's personality so intricately genuine that it takes ages of thought about exactly WHAT type of person Hannah is, with the fat layers of emotions being played with, I still can conclude that Hannah was a loveable and appreciated character by me.So like I was saying, Hannah was relatively a quite character throughout even though she manages to keep a cogent voice throughout the novel. But the siding characters she conscientiously mingled with, the connections were stable and unforgettable. My cherished bond had to be Hannah and her little sister's one. The way her little sister wanted to be protective of Hannah was not only cute but also ringed the tightness in this hopeful family and the same genes of Hannah, except her sister was more outspoken.Another admirable connection was the romance. While I wasn't too happy about the amount supplied, Paper Valentine does justice with a bad boy. Finny; misunderstood, rebel, deep and willing to fight anyone in his way, mysterious, suspected murder even. All if those word(s) are it exactly sufficient to describe Finny perfectly. He is a bad boy, but really soft hearted inside. Nonetheless, he was the perfect match for Hannah- even though I thought it was an absurd match at the beginning, Brenna manages to satisfy with her secret ways.One major thing that bugged the crabs out of me in Paper Valentine was the background information and loose strings at the end. I wanted to know more about Lillian as a person when she was alive, while there were flash backs and referrals, I wanted Lillian herself to open up so I could explore more of her. Same for Finny. Okay, so maybe he's a mysterious guy that doesn't really reveal much about his past, especially because he was the love interest, I wanted to get to know him more. Moreover, why can Hannah see ghosts? Why can she talk to Lillian? Maybe if there was a sequel, these issues wouldn't have bothered me, but quite frankly and sadly, there is no sequel.All in all, Paper Valentine was a capturing sinister yet quiet read. For my first Brenna Yovanoff novel, I must admit that I'm off on a great start and will be eagerly awaiting more of her books. While the prose took some time to adjust to, this book filled me with chills. I recommend this book to people who enjoyed The Dead and Buried, Pretty Girl-13 and other mystery thrillers out there!What happens when we shine the moonlight down through the words... AKA let's find the moral/second meaning in this bookThis isn't necessarily a book about a girl trying to find the Valentine murderer while being haunted by a friend. This is a book about a girl redeeming herself after the shock of her best friend dying. About a girl trying fight her way of independence, of strength, and of a long lasting friendship.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Part Heathers, part Scream, and part Judy Blume
By AJ
PAPER VALENTINE by Brenna Yovanoff is a magnificently, hauntingly, wonderful book.I first read Brenna Yovanoff in last year's THE SPACE BETWEEN. Her writing is arresting and-at times-uncomfortably immersive. It's as if Brenna cracks open her characters skulls and lets all the messy and heartbreaking parts spill onto the pages. In PAPER VALENTINE, that same raw and naked emotion drips across every scene. As in THE SPACE BETWEEN, we meet a character whose life has been battered by grief. Hannah had to watch her vibrant, glittery best friend wither away and die-only she never ended up leaving Hannah. Lillian is like a super pissed off Jiminy Cricket, constantly telling Hannah what to do and disparaging the choices she makes. It would be funny if their relationship-both before and after Lillian's death-wasn't so tragic.No one knows that Hannah still sees Lillian, not her overly protective mother, her boisterous and outgoing little sister, or her trio of Heathers-like friends. Certainly not the criminally inclined Finny who tormented her as a child. In the months since Lillian's death, Hannah has tried to keep a smile on her face even as her friends become less friendly, Finny becomes more confusing and surprisingly tender, and girls start dying in gruesome ways.There are so many achingly realistic relationships portrayed here. The most compelling is the relationship between Hannah and Lillian. It's laced with anger and bitterness and a love so strong that it defies even the grave. The relationship that creeps up between Finny and Hannah is just as powerful, just as alluring, but for different reasons. Finny isn't an obvious hero or love interest. But like all good characters, he's got layers upon layers. And as Brenna peeled back one painful layer at a time, my heart could barely contain him.PAPER VALENTINE is part Heathers, part Scream, and part Judy Blume. I couldn't think about anything else for hours after reading it. The story will hook you, the writing will transport you, and the characters will forever reside in your heart. Whatever Brenna Yovanoff writes next-and I mean whatever-I will be reading it.Sexual Content:Kissing
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.Review of Paper Valentine
By Lydia
I really hate not liking a book. Especially when that book has a fantastic cover and title and a great premise backing it up. But this is the second time Brenna Yovanoff has tricked me into picking up a book with her pretty covers and interesting premises and the second time I've been disappointed by what I've read. And folks, that breaks my heart, because I really, really wanted to love this book and I really wanted to love Yovanoff as a writer. I kept making excuses all the way through Paper Valentine but finally, about 3/4ths of the way through, I decided to finish the book because I needed to finish it and not because I wanted to finish it. My excuses ran dry.There are several big issues that I have with Paper Valentine. I'm going to go through them one at a time. You may disagree with me - but as someone who reads a lot of books each year, I can tell you that there is a lot of great stuff and a lot of crap going through my hands at various times and you quickly learn to pick out what is just not good.First: Hannah. Where do I begin? She's haunted by the ghost of her best friend. She seems to have no backbone, then suddenly has backbone. She is into boys - but only those who seem to have hurt her at some point in her past. She is so many fragments of so many different things that I had a major issue trying to just figure her out. The real mystery of the story was "Who is Hannah" - because if I cannot identify with the main character, any other mysteries or strange happenings just don't make sense to me.Second: Hannah's parents. I know little about them except they sometimes cook together and her step-father has a sleeve tattoo. Seriously - it's mentioned at least three times. I don't know why this is relevant - is he some kind of badass? Is he a cool guy? Does he represent something in Hannah's life? Where is her real father? How long have her mother and step-father been married? Is Hannah's younger sister a product of the marriage of Hannah's mother and step-father? These are valid, real questions and would have done wonders for fleshing out Hannah's background.Third: Lillian. I get what Yovanoff is trying to do here with the guilty that Hannah is struggling with due to Lillian's death but.. seriously, repeating the same things over and over does not make Lillian's death more powerful. It becomes redundant and feels like a gimmick. Oh - Lillian died slowly, cue the tears. Sound harsh? Perhaps it is but I got so tired of reading the same lines (almost word for word) describing Lillian's passing. I wanted to know more about Lillian and why she ticked the way she ticked. Why Hannah didn't say anything. Why no one stepped in, even when the signs were visible, and most importantly, I wanted to see some kind of message on the right way to handle that situation if you ever see your friend experiencing it. Not just guilt after all is said and done.Fourth: The mystery/thriller section. Okay, so I didn't get the significance of the birds. Yeah, it's creepy but it didn't fit. I could understand the constant descriptions of the heat - it set the mood (but mostly I just wanted to sit in front of a fan while I read the book). And finally, I was beyond surprised when we went from knowing nothing about this murderer on the loose to when all of the sudden it seemed solved. A mystery/thriller writer Yovanoff is not. This would have been better off as an exploration of the issues that Hannah was dealing with as a result of the death of her friend. The addition of a murder mystery plus all of the other elements put into the story was just too much. Also - what was the point of the paper valentines??So those are my issues. Unfortunately, I cannot overlook them and so I will have to say that, unfortunately, I will not be picking up Yovanoff's future books - no matter how pretty those covers are.
