Feature book: Die for Me

Die for Me by Amy Plum

Sometimes the cover gods smile on an author, and Amy Plum was lucky enough for this happen with her debut novel. As soon as I first saw it, I knew that it was a book that I would want to read. Luckily for the reader, the contents of the book do the cover justice.

Die for Me introduces a new kind of paranormal mythology to the YA world, which at times seems to be very saturated with vampires, werewolves etc. It is kind of a mixture of zombies, ghosts and gods as far as I can tell.

Kate Mercier is 16 years old and moved to Paris after the death of both of her parents in an accident. She lives with her grandparents and her older sister Georgia, but she is finding it difficult to cope with everything that has happened in her life in the previous year. When she meets Vincent, she is immediately attracted to him, but what she doesn’t know is that he is a revenant (‘one who comes back’) and that means that he dies over and over again to save other people, thereby prolonging his life, forever if he wishes. He is of course in a life or death battle with the enemy of the revenant—the numa—and they have to kill people in order to maintain their life strength.

Kate is introduced to Vincent’s fellow revenants and must gain their trust as she learns more and more of the secrets of this strange new world that she has been introduced to.

As a YA heroine, the author avoided some of the cliches surrounding young kick-ass heroines for most of the book, although there were moments where some cliche slipped in. Vincent is of course a teenage girl’s dream, but he was definitely a likeable character and I can see why Kate reacted to him in the way she did.

One of the points of difference in this book was the use of Paris as the setting! Amy Plum clearly knows Paris and loves the city and it shows in the way she guides the reader through the city, both the well-known sights, but also some lesser known features. She made me want to visit Paris again!

This is the first in a planned series, and there is definitely a lot of scope for more development and exploration of the revenant/numa mythology. I also suspect that we are going to find out more about Kate’s family background in future books, which I definitely plan to read!

reviewed by Marg B

A review copy of this book was provided by the publisher.