Review: Die for Me by Amy Plum

Kate has a tragic start to her tale in Die to Me with the death of her parents and thus moving from her beloved city of Brooklyn, New York to Paris, France with her older sister Georgina.  They both have a love for Paris and their grandparents that they live with, in the city but when everywhere you go reminds you of your lose and the new life you are forced to live it’s no wonder that she struggles.  She returns to her life inside her favourite novels and her room where as her sister parties and socialises to forget her woes.  What comes next can only described as a twist of fate as Kate decides to push herself out into the world a bit (I say she decides but really there is a far amount of nudging from her sister and grandma).  Her path crosses with Vincent and some of his friends and from then on this book begins the real journey into the second life that Kate could never have foreseen.

The world of Revenants and Numa becomes part of Kate’s life with meeting Vincent and soon life and death become very different concepts.  In a way she finds a new way to deal with the death of her parents and her old life by finding life with someone else and the fact that it’s surrounding by some much death and life is ironic.  The concept of Revenants is something I found so interesting and really intrigued me more than anything else.  The idea of people using their special gift of extended life to save others is something that is really commendable.  They are selfless heroes and yet they struggle with this eternal cycle and limited socialisation in causes.  How to you even begin to explain to someone new then idea of the un-dead and forever looping cycle of your life that you give over in order to save others?  Well; it’s easy to explain the logic of it but it’s a bit harder to explain to someone without them totally freaking out.

The allure of the city of art, love and lights as well as a handsome guy that is clearly into you and has an accent that makes your knees weak is hard not to get sucked into.  What really made me love this book was the concept of Revenants, just because it seems so original and wasn’t a pre-established supernatural or mythical being.  There weren’t any preset concepts or boundaries that confide Amy Plum’s story and thus it flows freely in the narrative.  The balance of the Revenant characters was nice to mix up the action and view points to Revenant existence from the serious to the light hearted.  The secondary characters like Charlotte, Georgina and Charles all had established histories and existences outside Kate’s story and this made them real and 3 dimensional to me as I read Die for Me and so their actions and reactions to Kate and Vincent’s actions were believable.  

There is definitely more stories to be told in this world and I’d want to see more but my only niggling issue was just how overly perfect Vincent was.  You may be flapping your arms up and down and screaming at me now at how I could find the ‘perfect’ guy an issue.  I just think that I like my leads and romantic heroes with a few more flaws and not so physically attractive that you want to shield your eyes from his Abecrombie and Fitch beauty.  It’s just personal preference I guess but give me the geek or scarred and tragic hero any day over the model.  You can’t have everything but I DEFINATELY wouldn’t kick Vincent out of bed for being ‘too handsome’.  I’m not stupid.

Rating: 8/10

Published by Atom Books and is available here and at all good book sellers