Finale (Hush Hush #4) by Becca Fitzpatrick

 Title: Finale

                                                                   Author: Becca Fitzpatrick

                                                                   Pages: 454

                                                                   Published: 23rd October 2012, by Simon & Schuster

                                                                                         Series: Hush Hush book #4

                                                                                         Genre: YA, Angels, romance

                                                                                         Stars: 3/5

Will love conquer all?

Nora and Patch thought their troubles were behind them. Hank is gone and they should be able to put his ugly vendetta to rest. But in Hank's absence, Nora has become the unwitting head of the Nephilim and must finish what Hank began. Which ultimately means destroying the fallen angels - destroying Patch.

Nora will never let that happen, so she and Patch make a plan: lead everyone to believe they have broken up, and work the system from the inside. Nora will convince the Nephilim that they are making a mistake in fighting the fallen angels, and Patch will find out everything he can from the opposing side. They will end this war before it can even begin.

But the best-laid plans often go awry. Nora is put through the paces in her new role and finds herself drawn to an addictive power she never anticipated.

As the battle lines are drawn, Nora and Patch must confront the differences that have always been between them and either choose to ignore them or let them destroy the love they have always fought for.

                                                                 


Not my usual long written review....but to be honest there wasn't anything really there for me to write.

The last book in the Hush Hush series; Finale was an okayish read. It wasn’t great but it wasn’t horrible.

My opinions about the characters within the book are pretty much the same (I’ll use this attempt to just plug in the links to my reviews of book 2 and 3 here and here).  

The plot only picked up in the last couple of chapters when we find out who the villain is and what their motive was. To be honest, most of the time it just seemed like it was a constant battle between Nora and Patch what with their relationship and trusting each other.

The ending seemed to be rushed and irregular compared to the rest of the book. It was as if the author wanted to give everyone a happy ending (which is fine) but just didn’t know how it should be written. I will say this though, that the ending for Nora and Patch was really nice, even if I did suspect it from the beginning.  

Silence (Hush Hush book #3) by Becca Fitzpatrick

 Title: Silent

                                                       Author: Becca Fitzpatrick

                                                       Pages: 448

                                                       Published: October 4th 2011, by Simon and Schuster 

                                                       Series: Hush Hush book #3

                                                       Genre: Fallen Angels, supernatural, YA

                                                       Stars: 4/5 

Nora Grey can't remember the past five months of her life. After the initial shock of waking up in a cemetery and being told that she has been missing for weeks - with no one knowing where she was or who she was with - she tried to get her life back on track. Go to school, hang out with her best friend, Vee, and dodge mom's creepy new boyfriend.

But there is this voice in the back of her head, an idea that she can almost reach out and touch. Visions of angel wings and unearthly creatures that have nothing to do with the life she knows.

And this unshakable feeling that a part of her is missing.

Then Nora crosses paths with a sexy stranger, whom she feels a mesmerizing connection to. He seems to hold all the answers...and her heart. Every minute she spends with him grows more and more intense until she realizes she could be falling in love. Again.

So this time, Nora cannot remember what happened to her in the last few months.  Everything else seems like a haze and no one is willing to provide her with some answers to fill in the missing gaps, not to mention her mum suddenly dating Mr Hank Miller, Nora’s enemy’s dad!

I have to admit that I found Silent a LOT better than Crescendo (see my review for Crescendohere). It seemed like it finally has a story line, whereas Crescendo, the plot seemed to be all over the place.  

However, I no longer found Patch to be mysterious or dark. In my opinion, he lost his bad boy touch for me and with it the lustre that he held in the beginning of the series. Nora, as always annoyed me, but not as much as she did in Crescendo. Granted she lost her memory and she was trying to get it back at any cost, which took some fighting spirit. Perhaps the memory loss caused Nora to forget her personality as well. She just seemed off until the very end of the book.

Scott Palmer, who appeared in the second book, was still a favourite character of mine. He is sweet, funny and cute.  I REALLY want to see his and Nora’s relationship grow into something more (we can see that Scott definitely wants this) but despite there being bits of chemistry between them here and there, we all know that the only relationship they are going to have, is one of friendship. But hey, I think poor Scott will have some sort of love interest, maybe with Nora’s best friend Vee. Who knows?

We get to know more of Mr Hank Millar (Marcie’s dad). His ultimate agenda totally surprised me and Becca did well to hide it in the previous books. However, I liked this particular villain then the two previous villains. Hank Millar was a total psycho and did not care if he hurt his loved ones. I mean the guy was hoping to sacrifice his daughter at one point just to get power! If that’s not being evil than I don’t know what is.

In the relationship department, I was so tired of hearing him call Nora "Angel”. The romance in this one is unrealistic and there’s nothing more I can say about that.

In addition, I just didn't find the plot of this one to be that riveting. It was the same old song and dance between the Nephilims and the Fallen Angels. There was additional information about Archangels that was interesting, but since it didn't drive most of the story, I was slightly bored. Despite, the plot being a tad bit simpler in this book, things were even simpler in the first book. Girl meets bad guy, who turns out to be supernatural and wants her dead. Falls in love, saves her life and grows some wings. Now in the third book, it seems that there is more to just fallen angels and nephilims which just gets more complex as readers read on. It felt like Becca kept on adding new things about the angels whenever Nora found something out. I will say this; you HAVE to read the other two books before reading this one, since one would be very lost.......some readers are still lost after reading all books.  However, the ending was interesting and did bring a whole new problem into view.

Notable quotes/passages: 

“He inclined his head at my dress. "What's the occasion?" "Homecoming," I said, twirling. "Like?"
"Last I heard, Homecoming requires a date."
"About that," i hedged. "I'm sort of...going with Scott. We both figure a high-school dance is the last place Hank will be patrolling."
Patch smiled, but it was tight. "I take that back. If Hank wants to shoot Scott, he has my blessing.” 

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Crescendo (Hush Hush book #2) by Becca Fitzpatrick

Title: Crescendo

 Author:   Becca Fitzpatrick

Published: October, 2010 by Simon and Schuster

Pages: 427
Series:  Series #2 of the  'Hush Hush' books
Rating:3.5/5 stars

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 (if that's possible) and what's worse, he seems to be 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 hadn't 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.

If that weren't enough, Nora is haunted by images of her murdered father, and comes to question whether her Nephilim bloodline has anything to do with his death. Desperate to figure out what happened, she puts herself in increasingly dangerous situations to get the answer. But maybe some things are better left buried, because the truth could destroy everything - and everyone - she trusts.

The book picks up with Patch and Nora just a few weeks after the ending of Hush, Hush — and while things seem idyllic at first, events quickly spiral out of control. Although the ‘Hush, Hush’ novel was okay....ish, I’ve had the second instalment to the series on my calibre for some time, but never felt that eager to pick it up, mostly because I had kind of forgotten what had happened in the first book. But I alas I did read and finish the book (well obviously, or otherwise there wouldn’t have been a review with the book’s title!). I found this book okay...ish too!

However, unlike the first book, where the plot was very simple and easy to follow, the story line in ‘Crescendo’ felt like it was all over the place, with different things happening all at the same time. It actually even felt like Nora (the heroine) was also feeling this complexity of the issue that she didn’t know where to look, what to think or what questions to answer. It seemed like Nora had just stumbled upon a great big ditch of bad luck and every worse possible scenario from different angles just kept hitting her. It also didn’t help that she was a pathetic character (blunt and straight-up...I know!), who didn’t know how to fend for herself, became sillier by the minute and what seems like consciously went out great lengths to get herself killed and always in the dark! Seriously, it just reminded me of those annoying horror films, where the characters deliberately go out into the dark wood. I mean, when someone who has just been discharged from the hospital from a serious injury on their arm, does not go out in the middle of the dark (when everyone is sound asleep in their bed) to investigate her suspicions despite being fully aware that someone is out there following her to kill her.

In terms of the romance department, safe to say that ‘Hush, Hush’ was a better treatment then ‘Crescendo’. During most of the book, Nora and Patch spend all of their time attempting to make each other jealous or spying on each other. Although, this does conjure up some sort of tension between the two, it was rather flat throughout most of the story. It actually didn’t seem like Patch, the moody, extremely handsome and quiet fallen-turned guardian angel, was trying at all in the so-called romantic parts of the story. What really annoyed me was that Nora always seemed to become weak and speechless whenever Patch came near her, which, granted most female characters in YA books are like that and it does give it the ‘umff’ feeling dealing with romance. However, I am positive no girl would go weak near the person who they used to love if they found out or even had their suspicions that they had killed one of their parents. I just don’t know why they have to be so weak! I was also annoyed at the secrets that Patch kept hiding from Nora and making it out, as if he was seeing someone else (which was kind of true), just to make Nora hate him, move on with her life and start afresh. I’m sorry, but why would you do that and except them to move on with their life if you keep popping up everywhere....even in their dreams?

I quite liked the new comer to the story, Scott and actually wanted the relationship between him and Nora to grow. But this didn’t happen and sadly, he disappeared before the readers got to know more about him.

Although I sound very cynical, there were some good aspects to the book too. I did find myself wanting to keep reading on, especially when Nora’s just about to be caught by someone when looking through their stuff (which happens about every 10 minutes).

However, I found myself like the ending of this book a lot. Becca left the readers on a very good cliff hanger. After the action packed drama a couple of pages before, everything seemed to be all good and sweet. However, because nothing makes a good ending then a cliff hanger......and let’s face it, we are talking about Nora’s never-dull life, the sweet atmosphere was quickly turned into one with anxiety. This ending made me want to carry on and read the third instalment; ‘Silence’, where hopefully all will be right and dull again in Nora’s life.

Notable quotes/passages:

Chapter 17: “ Faster and faster the images came, until they blended together in a strange collage of madness. The images seemed to lurch into reverse suddenly, travelling backward through time. All colour drained from the reel, until there was nothing but fuzzy black and white. It was then that I knew 

I’d slipped into the other realm. I was dreaming”. 

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