hush, hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

Synopsis

A sacred oath, a fallen angel, a forbidden love...This darkly romantic story features our heroine, Nora Grey, a seemingly normal teenage girl with her own shadowy connection to the Nephilim, and super-alluring bad boy, Patch, now her deskmate in biology class. Together they find themselves at the centre of a centuries-old feud between a fallen angel and a Nephilim...

Forced to sit next to Patch in class, Nora attempts to resist his flirting, though gradually falls for him against her better judgment. Meanwhile creepy things are going on with a mysterious stalker following her car, breaking into her house and attacking her best friend, Vi. Nora suspects Patch, but there are other suspects too - not least a new boy who has transferred from a different college after being wrongly accused of murdering his girlfriend. And he seems to have taken a shine to Nora...Love certainly is dangerous...and someone is going to have to make the ultimate sacrifice for it.

First off, let’s be clear: this isn’t Twilight. No sparkly vamps here, people. The only thing these two books have in common is that it is about a boy and a girl and it’s genuinely a matter of life or death. Not un-death, either. And of course the element of romance with someone that is “other”. It’s a very dark and unexpectedly intense novel as Patch is not your average teen love interest and Nora is well, unique in her normalness – but I'd like to point out that she has enough guts and get-go to not become the irritating damsel in distress.

As a reader you want to be friends with Nora – she’s an average girl, good grades, living a decent life with her mom in a house outside of town. There is nothing odd about Nora at all and it is her utter normality in her personal, home and school life that the author uses to alert us to the danger dogging Nora’s steps.

When she’s teamed up in Biology class with new boy Patch, she is both drawn to him and slightly repulsed by his cocky attitude. He is a strange person, intense, teasing, enigmatic and strangely charismatic. He rubs Nora up the wrong way, refusing to cooperate on their Biology assignment and making her life uncomfortable.

It’s after being teamed up with Patch that her life takes on the weird. The overall sense that someone is watching her grows and becomes truly unpleasant. When she borrows her friend, Vi’s car, to drive home one evening a dark figure wearing a balaclava crashes into the car, doing some damage, almost killing Nora in the process. No one is there to see the accident and she drives back to her friend’s house – once there, there is no evidence of anyone crashing into the car, apart from a small nick in the windshield. Other bizarre things happen around Nora – someone breaks into her house and utterly destroys her bedroom, yet when the cops come to investigate, nothing is there – her room is as before. The story about “the boy who cried wolf” came to mind here! The cops treat her badly and she’s shaken. Needless to say, this isn’t the only weird thing that happens to Nora in the novel and to prevent spoilers, let me just say; the weirdness has her questioning her own sanity. Is she seeing things, is she going mad or someone playing some foul trick on her?

Mix into this uncertainty about her mental state, her friend Vi being attacked and Patch’s reluctance to come clean about his background and his odd behaviour towards Nora, and it makes for very tense sections in the book. Everything points to Patch being the culprit of a variety of misdemeanours and I have to admit I genuinely thought things were becoming unstuck because, you know – our heroine’s love interest can’t be that weird!

And this is the one major difference about the other book that shall not be named – Nora and Vi remark several times on Patch’s odd behaviour throughout the novel. They are wary of him, especially Nora. His behaviour is questionable, every single time he’s in the scene and yet you know there is more to him than you are being made aware of. And this layers a further level of uncertainty about Patch. Regardless of this Nora is inexplicably attracted to Patch even though in her deepest heart of hearts she knows he’s not good for her. It’s interesting to read how the author takes the story and spins it around because you know, you know, that something is going on that you’re not being told. And instead of becoming annoyed and wanting to skip ahead to find out what it is, you are swept up in Nora’s determined quest to find out what exactly is going on.

As the revelations happen they are both expected AND unexpected and I loved it. A strong satisfying read and I’m thinking I’ll have to go and make myself a Team Patch t-shirt now. To match my Team Werewolf t-shirt in honour of Jacob (Twilight) and Sam (Shiver).

As I genuinely hate doing these: “If you like this, you’ll love” comparisons but I’d like to point out that hush,hush is a very unique novel and that although it will appeal to readers of SM's Twilight, it will also appeal to readers who liked Philip Pullman’s books (for the dark undertones) JK Rowling (for the imagination) and Sarah Rees Brennan (for the creation of a top-notch anti-hero) and Richelle Mead (for her character creations).

Find Becca Fitzpatrick’s website here.

COMPETITION NEWS:

Becca’s amazing UK publishers – Simon and Schuster – have agreed to let me have ONE SIGNED PROOF COPY OF HUSH, HUSH to give away.

The competition will run for ONE WEEK only. Final date for entries will be: Wednesday 26th August 2009! The competition is open to UK residents only. Email is through: myfavouritebooksatblogspot(@)gmail.com . The winner will be decided by Random.org.

Good luck!