Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

Baaaa…I’m a sheep. I had to follow the herd, so I downloaded Hush Hush to my kindle. I had read a lot of mixed reviews regarding this particular book, but I just couldn’t resist that cover. Talk about tragic! Maybe it is the repressed Catholic in me, but there is something about a fallen angel that just piques my interest. This is how I spent the ride home from Gulf Shores, Alabama getting to know Nora and Patch.

Nora is your atypical, slightly mental from the loss of a parent, 10th grader. What’s with YA novels and dead parents BTW? Does it make one more interesting if their parents are dead, or maybe even divorced? Why can’t an interesting character evolve from a perfectly Beaver Cleaver home environment, or is that too normal? Nothing like a little ADHD and mild sociopathic behavior to give a novel more flavor. But I digress. Ok, back to Nora. Nora is a latch key kid, with very little supervision. She is also a bit on the OCD – and as a sophomore is already obsessed with getting into a top tier college. Nora is also very attractive and on the ezine at her high school. My mental image was screaming Chloe from Smallville – with the added bonus of big curly red hair, and no street smarts what-so-ever.

Chloe, I mean Nora, meets Patch, by way of her biology teacher, who forces her to become his partner and tutor him. Patch isn’t a very good student. He is also an absolute ass. He makes tons of cryptic comments, harasses, belittles and just genuinely annoys Nora. In fact his initial cryptic and insulting comments are a bit reminiscent of the Edward Cullen – without the sultry charm. Patch is a little bit dirty, and bit on the trashy side. He was a great character though. A very well rounded individual with a lot more depth than gullible and naive little Nora.

Nora and Patch commence to circle around each other in a heated, hate/love mating ritual. Nora is thrown off by Patch’s dark side, she has the feeling that he could very easily hurt her, and she can’t trust him as far as she could throw him. Not to mention, during this whole getting-to-know the bad boy phase, she is also plagued by some odd occurrences that make her question her sanity. Either someone is trying to kill her, or she is going schizo. Either or, it doesn’t look good for Nora.

What can I say? I liked the book. Don’t get me wrong, it had its dee-duh-dee moments, but it kept me entertained for those 3 hours that it took my husband to drive us home. 

What I liked about Hush Hush. Fitzpatrick paints a pretty picture with her words. Instead of going into intricate details about his abs, Fitzpatrick writes of the small of Patch and the way he carries himself. You can almost smell the cigar smoke, and imagine how he would linger in a doorway. Her descriptions of the places they visit are vivid and dark, Patch enjoys slumming it, and through her words I could imagine myself in those dingy pool halls and even see the portraits of angels lining the walls of the Archangel.

What I did not like about Hush Hush. I utterly detested Vee. I wanted to beat her in the head with her heal and then shove her in a toilet. She was the most annoying character I have ever read and I could not understand how Nora could stand her. The constant plays for attention and drama were left me nauseous. Vee was obviously Fitzpatrick’s attempt at comic relief, but I didn’t find her funny in the least. At first I believed Fitzpatrick was going for a Stiffler’s Mom type character – the one in Legally Blonde, you know she plays a manicurist or something, but she just came out all wrong.

I recommend this book. Young and Old alike.