Review: Crescendo (Hush, Hush, #2) by Becca Fitzpatrick

Rating (Out of 5): ~2

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Spoilers?: Vague.

Goodreads Synopsis:

 Nora Grey's life is still far from perfect. Surviving an attempt on her life wasn't pleasant, but at least she got a guardian angel out of it: a mysterious, magnetic, gorgeous guardian angel. But, despite his role in her life, Patch has been acting anything but angelic. He's more elusive than ever and even worse, he's started spending time with Nora's arch-enemy, Marcie Millar.

Nora would have hardly noticed Scott Parnell, an old family friend who has moved back to town, if Patch hadnt been acting so distant. Even with Scott's totally infuriating attitude Nora finds herself drawn to him - despite her lingering feeling that he's hiding something.

Haunted by images of her murdered father, and questioning whether her nephilim bloodline has anything to do with his death, Nora puts herself increasingly in dangerous situations as she desperately searches for answers. But maybe some things are better left buried, because the truth could destroy everything - and everyone - she trusts.

Review: 

I hate Nora. Hate her, hate her, hate her.

That’s, um, pretty much the biggest emotional feeling I have toward this book. Because I hate Nora, you guys. She’s just so stupid and irrational and practically emotionally unstable and immature and lets everyone get inside her head and keeps denying things even though they are staring her in the face. And she pretended that she was a nice person and stayed to do meaningless conversation with two different people that she was fighting with, for no reason other than they were in her path. What is up with that? It’s okay to just pass people, without saying something to them, okay? And she really needs to learn to trust people, Patch in particular, and especially when they have given no reason for you not to. And she’s way too caught in the fact that Patch can’t feel physical touch; he can still feel emotions! Get over it already. I hate how conflicting she was, too. How she would pull away from him and then want to be with him, want him to leave her alone, want to hate him, and then want him to tell her he loves her. And that no matter how much she would try to hate him and be away from him, at the first sight of him, she would stare and kiss him given the slightest chance. I just… I just want to punch her in the face or something, okay?

Anyway, this was the second book in the Hush, Hush series, and I had much higher hopes for it than what it gave me. First of all, I was hoping to see more of Patch and Nora being together and actually falling in love and all of that. What I got, was the two getting into a fight almost immediately into the book, and then Nora making dumb decisions and being angsty about it the rest of the book. And I mean the rest of the book. That was practically the whole plot to this over-four-hundred-page-book: Nora being upset about her decisions about Patch. She told him she loved him at the beginning of the book, after, like, two weeks (maybe it was two months? Not that much longer, really, and not showing any of their closeness to the reader at all) of being together and with showing no reason to why she is in love with him, and then they got in a fight. And he tried to make things better, did nothing wrong, but she continued to push him away and want him to make things better and come apologize (when he did very little wrong) while making it near impossible for him, because she kept refusing everything he was saying. It was beyond frustrating. And it was painful to read.

It really bothers me that they showed barely any chemistry or actual attraction, or genuine emotional feelings, toward one another. In the last book, there was the lust and temptation, and that’s pretty much it, and then in this book, there’s she loves him and fighting, no getting to know each other, no meaningless or meaningful conversations, nothing. Nothing at all.

I still like Patch. He wasn’t irrational or stubborn or trying to ruin their relationship. He was actually trying to help her and make things better, no matter how many times she ruined it for him. The one thing that bothers me about him is that he keeps trying to help her and actually likes her. Why? I don’t like her. He deserves much better than her.

There was a little bit of plot, aside from the relationship angst. (A little bit.) There was some drama with Scott, an old childhood friend of Nora’s, who is mixed up with the archangels and all of that business (also, Scott is described as boyish a few times, despite everything else about him and described about him that points to the opposite. This just confused me) (oh, and she called what her mother set up between her and Scott a ‘meet cute’. What does that mean? I mean, I got the gist of it because of context, but I’d never heard the phrase before. Do people actually say that?). There are some complications with Patch’s being Nora’s guardian angel. Some stuff happens with Marcie Millar (which, honestly, seems a little ridiculous to me. And much too dramatic. A little childish, even.) Again, within the last thirty, fifty, or whatever, pages, someone tried to kill Nora. (Someone who upset me, because I actually liked him a bit, even though I suspected as much.)

A lot of drama was brought up with Nora’s father. Which was kind of stupid, in my opinion. There was a bit of a surprising twist near the end of the book, which she totally overreacted to, but other than that, it just seemed dumb. Mostly because Nora never really thought much of her father, or felt any sorrow for him, until it was convenient for someone to mess with her mind about him, or because it gave a reason for her to do something about his death. None of it seemed like sincere sorrow to me.

Also, it still bothers me that she’s so easy. She has almost no willpower. She fights but gives into Patch much too easily, and then just about anyone can get into her mind. She needs to get a bit stronger, but I see very little chance of that happening.

The ending was a bit lame, too. Just like in the first book, not a lot of actual plot movement happened until the last fifty-ish pages, when someone tries to kill Nora and so she has to run and be saved and all that. It actually kind of annoys me.

So, yea, I really didn’t enjoy this book. I like Patch, and the whole archangel-angel thing interests me, but there just isn’t enough focus on it. I have the next one already, and so I will try to read it, but I don’t know how that will work out. I can really only hope that it doesn’t suck. And that I can get through it quickly, and not spend as much time on it as this one took. (But, really, it’s about the same size. Doubtful that I will get through the book quickly.)


Happy Reading, and Happy Birthday (to me and anyone else!)!

Teaser Tuesday[5]: Crescendo (Hush, Hush, #2) by Becca Fitzpatrick

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by MizB over at Should Be Reading! All you have to do to participate is:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

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I’ve been trying to get some actual reading done, still, but I have several books that I only have another week, maybe, to get through, and they’re all a little long and hard to finish. This one, included. I review the first book, um, last weekend, I believe. And I was supposed to finish this one over the weekend, but it looks like that didn’t happen, but I’m going to within the next couple of days. And then I will have to move onto the third book after only a small pause. I’m not exactly looking forward to it. (Because I kind of hate the main character.)

Crescendo (Hush, Hush, #2) by Becca Fitzpatrick

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

        

“I asked my dad if he’d heard the same voice telling me to hold still, and he said it was instinct. If I listened to it, nine times out of ten I’d make the best move.

Instinct was speaking now. Get out.” (Paperback, pg. 197)

“I used the railing to propel myself faster, keeping my shoes light on the stairs. I was halfway down the second flight when the stairwell door opened above me.” (Paperback, pg. 197)

Happy reading!

Review: Hush, Hush (Hush, Hush, #1) by Becca Fitzpatrick

Rating (Out of 5): ~4 (could be anywhere between 3.5 and 4.5, really)

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Spoilers?: No.

Goodreads Synopsis:

For Nora Grey, romance was not part of the plan. She's never been particularly attracted to the boys at her school, no matter how much her best friend, Vee, pushes them at her...until Patch comes along.
With his easy smile and eyes that seem to see inside her, Nora is drawn to him against her better judgment, but after a series of terrifying encounters, Nora's not sure whom to trust. Patch seems to be everywhere she is, and to know more about her than her closest friends. She can't decide whether she should fall into his arms or run and hide. And when she tries to seek some answers, she finds herself near a truth that is far more unsettling than anything Patch makes her feel.
For Nora is right in the middle of an ancient battle between the immortal and those that have fallen - and when it comes to choosing sides, the wrong choice will cost her life.

Review:

I’m kind of unsure what to think about this book. I’m just… I don’t know.

I read this a couple years ago, when it first came out, and remember thinking it was amazing, but then a while after, I couldn’t remember anything about it. I wanted to re-read it when the second one came out, but a friend of mine had it, and I only recently got it back, and then only read it so soon because another friend of mine loves it and wants me to read the others. And then I read a few pages, paused it to read something else, and when I started it again, couldn’t remember what I had read already. For some reason, I read some of this book, am really interested and feel like I’m paying attention, only for all of the information to disappear as soon as I go to something else.

Some of that seemed to clear up, though, when I continued reading, which is nice, I guess.

Anyway, Hush, Hush is about Nora, a girl with some seriously conflicting trust issues, who is suspicious of but also attracted to, Patch, a fallen angel. Someone, or several someones, is(are) after Nora, and she doesn’t know who to trust or what to do about it, while also thinking that maybe she’s imagining all of it.

Nora was alright. At times I liked her, and other times I was frustrated with her, and thought that some of the things she said/thought were out of context or were dumb. And it frustrated me how she would go on about how Patch was maybe the one after her, but would then let him give her a ride. She would jump to conclusions, dumbly, without really doing much to fight him off. And I didn’t like how she never did much to fight anyone off, only ran and hid; and how easy it was for them to get inside her head. But I guess that’s better than her being somehow really strong and unknowingly fighting them off, as most other heroines seem to do, since that made her seem more normal, I guess; still, she should have been able to put up some resistance, once she realized.

I did kind of like Patch, even though he was mysterious in a bad way, and felt that him and Nora work together really well. Patch knows how to deal with her, and it’s good that he likes dealing with her. Because she’s frustrating and conflicting, and she’ll yell at him while feeling the complete opposite, and so it’s good that he will continue to push and not take what she says seriously, because she doesn’t mean it and needs someone to push her like he does.

Vee and Nora’s friendship also works rather well. Vee likes drama and sneaking around, and Nora probably wouldn’t get as much done without Vee, since she protests but gives in rather easily to her, as well

The relationships in this book seemed really well made. Some of Nora’s logic, however, did not. Like her looking through Patch’s things, and then jumping to a conclusion immediately, without anything to back it up.

I didn’t feel as much chemistry between Nora and Patch as I would have liked, either. I was expecting to feel more, too. Maybe just because of the fact that Nora was convinced (with reason that I won’t spoil) that Patch was trying to kill her, and then when he admitted to something (that I also won’t spoil), that probably lessened the attraction to me, since I just didn’t like it too much (some of it grew back, though, later). But none of that stuff seemed to make her lust go down, and that kind of irritated me. I’m hoping that the chemistry will be better in the next book, since they will actually be together in it.

I’m not sure how I feel about the ending. It seemed… too good to be true, I guess? Like everything worked out too well, and I don’t like it. Plus, I wanted a different ending for Patch; hopefully I will grow to like it in the next book.

I should be reading the next one (and maybe even the third one) soon, since my friend has them and wants me to read them, and I am going to try to in the next couple weeks. I'm hoping for better romance and more information about all the angel stuff and Nora's part in it, and if Patch's place in it is going to change. So, look forward to that, I guess.