Review: Violet is Blue – Anne Shaw Heinrich

I received this book for free from in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Violet Sellers is blue, and for good reason. She’s repressing a shocking secret she won’t tell anyone, especially her comfortably middle-class parents. When she makes a new friend in school, Jules Marks, who lives on the “other side of the tracks” with his five little sisters, she is introduced to a dark world of self-abuse. As Violet learns about Jules and his shifty mother, Lee, she retreats further into her shell. Her parents, Gloria and Skip, are horrified and do their best to find out what happened to their adolescent daughter while bending over backward to keep the whole town from knowing their business. Jules has an aunt and uncle who know his desperate story, and they finally get a chance to free him and his sisters from a loveless world of poverty. Meanwhile, a spinster named Margaret Burns watches and waits. She knows all about redemption and she’s got a master plan up her sleeve. Margaret and most of the quirky characters in Violet is Blue eventually learn to dance between the worlds of the “haves” and the “have nots” in ways none of them ever anticipated.

Violet is Blue is heavy but heartfelt. Anne Shaw Heinrich tells a story that does not flinch. Violet’s pain runs deep and the silence she keeps feels suffocating.

Every chapter pulls you into the weight she carries. Then Jules shows up with his own mess and a strange kind of hope. The parents are frustrating, more worried about image than truth, but that just makes the tension hit harder. Margaret Burns is a quiet storm who brings purpose when everything feels scattered.

This story sits in the hard stuff but still finds room for healing. It is messy, raw, and honest in all the right ways.

Reviewed by: Orsayor

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