What’s the next big romance now that Bella, Edward and Jacob have found their eternal happy ending? Will it be a werewolf whose loved and craved a human girl? Another vampire? Zombies? In Becca Fitzpatrick’s hush, hush, due from Simon & Schuster in October 2009 (moved up from a Jan 2010 release), our star-crossed lovers are Nora and fallen angel, Patch.
To begin with, I love the cover of this book. In looking for the next tormented bad boy yearning to be good for the sake of his one true love, fallen angels seem like a great choice. After all, they’re characters whose desires, needs and rebellion drove them to make the wrong choices and face the ultimate sacrifice & punishment for what they desire. What teen can’t identify with that? So I opened to page one with very high hopes.
Unfortunately, what followed was for me too one-dimensional to compel me to devour page after page. There isn’t much to Nora: we don’t really get an idea of her as a character beyond her fairly normal friendship with her best friend Vee, her typical relationship with her mother and other adults, and her predictable waffling between desire and disgust towards Patch. The conflict should lie in the mystery and danger that surrounds Patch, but it wasn’t there, even though Fitzpatrick creates numerous instances where Patch seems to be stalking Nora.
The mystery and danger brought to the story by the other players- Elliot, Jules and Nora’s menacing stalker/attacker – aren’t satisfactorily woven into the story; I was frustrated by how a dangerous episode would occur and then within a page (or sometimes a paragraph) the episode was dismissed, brushed under the rug, or forgotten as Nora flitted on to something else (or a heated run-in with Patch).
While I personally feel that this romance wasn’t compelling, I do think that those readers who relished forbidden romance of The Twilight Saga will find something here to tide them over until the next Bella/Edward/Jacob come along.
- Posted by Cori
I just finished reading Hush Hush and was disappointed. I kept reading hoping the story would get better but it never does. Your review nails it. Too many missing pieces for the story to be compelling.