Book Review: Hush Hush

Becca Fitzpatrick
 ★ ★ ★ ★☆
Reading level: Young Adult
Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher:Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing 2009

Hush Hush was awesome, but very predictable. It has your basic YA ingredients: hot-mysterious-bad boy, pretty-yet-naive-heroine, and crazy romance-drama. Very easy to slip into and get lost in. I admit the only reason I kept going was in vain hope it would all pan out into something good through a cool plot twist or stellar character growth. But Nora just made me want to slap her, and it was obvious who the villain was…ugh hem the guy who’s never around when all the major stuff happened.

Patch is the typical "twilight era" YA hero. He's smart-mouthed, mysterious, and dangerous, and despite blatantly lacking qualities, he attracts the heroine like a bees to honey. Yep, Nora just has to wade through all his crap, because something is telling her that beneath all of Patch's jerk wad facade, there's a heart of romantic gold. How else to explain why she pursues him? Patch is one of those types that immediately rubs the heroine - and this reader - raw. He's constantly insulting Nora, and uncooperative in their typical science lab partnership. He leads her on the craziest dance I've ever seen, meanwhile Nora following behind, picking up his crumb trail of crazy as if it was honey. I say honey because even though she is highly suspicious of him, as well as wary and guarded against him, she does eventually go on to love him. How? WHY? Never once do these two have a scene worthy of igniting a romance. They only trade insults, argue and mistrust. Yet, she falls for him. Don’t get me wrong, if he had a personality, I’d fall for him too. It was love at fist argument.
I'm all for the air of forbidden desire and the excitement it can bring to a growing romantic relationship, but this wasn't romance. A hero does not prey on the heroine's fears, enjoying it all the while and then suddenly the two are "in love". Had Patch stopped being such a jerk, and Nora such an nauseating twit, perhaps a more believable romance could've risen from the ashes.
Becca Fitzpatrick creates a story that you want to read, all the while knowing what’s about to happen, then makes you curse yourself for wanting to read the damn book in the first place. It sent me on a roller-costar ride of emotions and once it let me off, I was a bit disappointed on the drop.
Still sexy fallen angels are fun to read about. If you love Twilight-ish books, you'd love this one...