Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick
Buy on Amazon: Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick
Seriously? This is the book everyone’s been raving about?
So this is a story about Nora Gray. She’s a seemingly typical, smart teenager with an outgoing, fun-loving best friend named Vee. Enter Patch – a mysterious bad boy and one of many stereo-typical characters. As evidenced by the cover, this is a story about a fallen angel, and trust me.. Fitzpatrick hits every cliche in this book.
Indulge me for a moment while I rant. Why is it the popular, full of buzz, teenage book these days center around the bad boy, stalker types?! First we have Edward in the Twilight books hanging around at night watching Bella sleep and now we have “Patch”. This is not romantic, folks! This is CREEPY. Where is Nora’s backbone? Why does she need to be protected? This is not the message I want my teenage sisters to read and think is normal. I want them to learn to be strong, self-sufficient, bold women who make good choices and not leap forward into bad decisions and hope that they’ll be saved by their own “fallen angel”.
I know strong female characters are possible. Look at Katniss in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, look at Katsa in Kristin Cashore’s Graceling.. or even Yelena in Maria Snyder’s Poison Study. It’s possible to grab the teenage community (and those of us adults addicted to the YA genre) with strong, decisive female leads.
I won’t even begin to discuss the issues I had with the naming in this book. All I will say is.. “Patch”? Really?
Now I will admit that I was entertained enough to read the book all the way through. I was disappointed that I could predict everything (and predicted it correctly even). I wanted more back story. Everything seemed all.. “patched” together haphazardly. If there’s not enough space for you in one novel to bring out the full story then flush it out with the promise of another. The books I mentioned in this very review did that and their companions and sequels are heavily anticipated and snatched up.
Final summary: Yes, the book is easy to read, Fitzpatrick has the potential to write exceptionally well, and demonstrates it a few times, but also has a habit of falling into the trap of cheesy, thrill-seeking cliches. Patch is a horrible name for a “bad boy” and Nora makes me want to strangle her more than a dozen times in the book.
