Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Hush, Hush


Nora Grey is a quiet high school sophomore with an ambition to go to college. She lives with her widowed mother in a house outside of town and has a generally peaceful existence until Patch comes into her life. Patch is her new assigned biology partner who has no regard for school and he's frankly driving her crazy. After he enters her life, a lot of weird things have been happening to her: creepy figures have been following her and she's been having horrible things happen to her only to have no evidence of the event to show to anyone. Then a man attacks her best friend, Vee,and she immediately suspects mysterious Patch, but there's also another boy, Elliot, who has just moved into town under suspicious conditions. Is Nora just trying to protect Patch or is Elliot really dangerous?

Hush, Hush is a mixed bag for me. I really enjoyed some parts of it, but some other aspects really annoyed me. The writing is really engaging and flows really well. I found myself wanting to lose sleep just to finish a chapter or two. Nora and Patch are interesting, layered characters. The attraction between the two characters is palpable and makes sense to me. Many people argue that their relationship is abusive, disturbing, stalker-y, etc., but I disagree. Yes, he does do some mean things and debates between evil and good, but the ending of the story proved him to still be likeable. Nora is kind of annoying because she lets people push her around a lot, but other than that I did enjoy seeing the story through her eyes.

There are a few things that annoyed me. Vee, Nora's best friend, seriously needs to be removed from these books. At the beginning, she represented the foil to Nora: someone who is outgoing, loud, and funny. Then as the story goes on, she shows her true colors. She constantly puts herself and Nora into danger without a second thought. When Nora is assaulted by Elliot, Vee's response is that he was drunk and that makes it ok because he didn't mean it. Are you kidding me? This is the worst best friend in the entire world. Nora repeatedly states that she doesn't want to see this guy and Vee constantly tries to get her to. I think this relationship is much more disturbing than Patch and Nora's. '

The pacing is also a little weird. The mystery about what Patch is (which is spoiled on the front cover) takes way too long to resolve. The same goes for the attacker mystery. The ending could have been a little more gradual to feel more natural. At the beginnig of the novel, Nora is reported to be a cello player and interested in baroque music, but that's the last mention through the entire book. She doesn't practice or listen to music or even touch a cello. I love music in my books and I am disappointed by the lack of follow through.

I enjoyed this book and I will be reading the second in the series. Those of you who like Twilight and Fallen will surely love this book. There are a lot of similarities between these novels. The rest of you might want to steer clear of this one.

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins

5 comments:

Mrs. DeRaps said...

I loved this book! I thought that it was far better than Fallen...But that's just me. Thanks for your review!

M.A.D. said...

Very good review, - I've been wanting to get ahold of this one for ages!
Love the cover art, too!

Kelly aka yllektra(I Work For Books) said...

I started reading this today and I really like it so far!
I love how realistic the dialogues are!
THanks for the review!

Candace said...

It's funny, I really liked this when I read it but I read it on vacation and wrote up the review a couple days later and had a hard time remembering it. As I read reviews I think that 'oh yeah, that did bug me' and now I'm annoyed that I wasn't able to remember that to include in my review. I do have to say that if this one annoyed you at all, be prepared for Crescendo. That's one I seriously wanted to throw across the room!

Sugarbeat said...

Wow, sounds like something I want to pick up! Thanks!