Slice of Cherry by Dia Reeves

"Portero was full of doors, and not all of them had four sides and a doorknob."

Slice of Cherry by Dia Reeves takes place in the unusual village of Portero, where strange things are the norm not the exception and girls like Kit and Fancy Cordelle feel right at home. The daughters of the Bonesaw Killer, Kit and Fancy would rather spend time with each other than interacting with the rest of the world, until one summer their mother signs them up for art courses and Kit meets a boy who changes everything. In their spare time the Cordelle sisters have also started following in their father's footsteps as they go on a murder spree facilitated by Fancy's ability to make all the evidence vanish by using a doorway to another world.

I'm not sure exactly what I expected when I picked up Slice of Cherry, but I was certainly surprised by the weird and interesting world Reeves had created. The novel itself is something like Dexter but with teenage sisters and magic, full of graphic but surreal violence. The relationship between Fancy and Kit is extremely well written, as it is evident how much the girls mean to each other, especially for Fancy. One line I loved near the beginning was from Fancy's dream diary, where she wrote:

"A doctor examined me and Kit and said the reason we were sick was because Kit had my heart and I had hers. But when he switched our hearts, they stopped beating."

This sort of imagery reminded me slightly of a Tim Burton film and fit perfectly in with Portero's oddity. However much of Slice of Cherry was perhaps just too weird and graphic for me, and some of it I just didn't quite understand. For example, Fancy wears little girl dresses which are apparently way too tight on her in an attempt not to grow up and in a novel with so much horror, adding in sex scenes honestly made me slightly uncomfortable. I also couldn't help but wonder why exactly Portero was the way it was- perhaps this is touched on in Reeves debut which also takes place in Portero, Bleeding Violets, but in Slice of Cherry it felt as if the reader was just dropped into this world full of monsters with no explanation of how it worked or why it was so different from the rest of the world so it took awhile to get used to. Ultimately this book was just a little too gruesome and odd for me. However, if you are looking for a twisted, strange, slightly creepy book to read, then you just might be craving a Slice of Cherry. 

Release Date: January 4, 2011
Pages: 512
Overall: 2/5
Source: E-galley from publisher
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