Goodreads Review: Hush, Hush
Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I’ve been mulling over my review for Becca Fitzpatrick’s debut, the paranormal thrillermance Hush, Hush for about a week now. It’s difficult to talk about a book as controversial as this one without at least touching on the politics. But there’s little I can say about the politics that hasn’t already been said before, and probably better.
Yes, Nora, our heroine, is little more than the traditional victim/cheerleader in a slasher movie. She’s both bubble-headed and paranoid, and she alternately cowers and stumbles through our ramshackle plot–a story about how, after she gets a new lab partner in bio (yes, this is a new YA cliche that’s already becoming old hat), her life is repeatedly threatened by not only her hot, but creepy, partner Patch but also a bevy of other parties in her small Maine town. And though, yes, Nora has plenty of justification for resisting Patch–he’s condescending and smarmy, he threatens her repeatedly, he doesn’t even seem to like her most of the time–it does indeed seem like Nora resists Patch only so that she can later relent to him, illustrating once again (ick) how when a teenage girl says no, she really means yes.
The truth is, though, that after about a hundred pages of this sort of thing, I fear I started to become immune to it. Because, while my jaw literally dropped during an early scene where Nora is sexually harassed during her biology class by both her classmates and teacher, and while a few flies probably swarmed in after Nora goes to her teacher and protests, but is rebuffed, by the novel’s middle I just didn’t care any more what happened to Nora, good or bad. I was really just that bored.
Hush, Hush‘s biggest problem, I would say, isn’t in its quaintly outdated abhorrent sexual politics but rather in its pacing. There’s a vague cloud of “suspense” that hangs over the novel’s first two thirds, and Nora is, apparently, threatened by almost every one she encounters. But nothing happens–really, nothing. For two hundred and fifty pages–and though the reader is clued in to Patch’s supernatural origins through the cover and the prologue and the blurb, there’s really no logical connection between the nebulous dangers she faces and Patch’s identity as an angel. This means that the revelations about the book’s angelic mythology fall into place with as much grace as a sack of wet laundry. Nora sees scars on Patch’s back, thinks “angel!”, investigates fallen angels on teh Google (and if you’ve read my reviews, you know how much I hate internet research scenes; writers, knowing that kids google shit does not equal being hip to the technology of young people), and decides that Patch must be an angel. This requires some logical leaps that would never work this neatly in real life.
And then we get about fifty pages of really muddled angel mythology. It’s incredibly convoluted and all wedged into such a small space that there’s no time for the reader to digest the “rules” of angeldom. I’ll put it this way: I have a terminal graduate degree, and I won’t pretend for a second that I understood what was happening at the end of this book.
The worst bit of this, for me, was the revelation that our anti-hero Patch couldn’t feel anything, in a tactile sense. Because I’ll say this for Hush, Hush: for all that I thought Patch and Nora’s relationship was fucked up, I believed their sexual chemistry. Now I know that quite a few objections to this book have centered upon the adage that sex does not equal love, and that young adult writers shouldn’t imply that it does. And I sort of agree with this, but I think it’s an attitude that’s not entirely tied to reality. Because sex–for teens and adults–very much makes up the foundation of most romantic relationships. And it can certainly draw people together who would–or should–otherwise despise one another. So I bought that Patch lusted after Nora, and vice versa, even if it wasn’t necessarily a good match. But when Patch tells us that his feelings for Nora are chaste and entirely pure and all about love, my belief in the relationship flew right out the window. What do they have, if not sex? Not even biology class–because their sexual attraction to one another was all that was ever discussed there.
Anyway, I really consider all of this a shame because, despite the above, Becca Fitzpatrick’s stylistics are fairly solid. Her writing is readable, even if occasionally silly, even if the content is sometimes squicky. And she does setting extremely well. This foggy little Maine town is the perfect place for a thriller like this . . . if only it was a bit more, well, thrilling.
Phoebe
Phoebe is a 20-something writer who lives in New York State with her husband and cat. She is a dork, not a geek or a nerd.
Her debut novel, Starglass, will be released from Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers in Summer 2013.
13 comments
Man, I've heard nothing but bad things about this book. Not that I was ever going to read it anyway, mind you (Paranormal Romance is most definitely Not My Thing).
I'm sort of amazed it got published, given what I've been hearing about the, shall we say, unhealthy relationship between Patch (stupid name alert) and Nora. I'm the last person who's going to start arguing that YA novels need to be full of Morals and Lessons and Rainbows, but I'm still kind of surprised this got sold as a romance story.
On the other hand it apparently sold pretty well, so I guess I can't fault the publisher for trying to make some money.
Patch (stupid name alert)
The names in here were resoundingly and consistently stupid. "Patch" apparently is called so because he used to be a bar room brawler and had to be "patched up" repeatedly. Ugh. Don't they know this is the name of one of the 101 dalmatians?
On the other hand it apparently sold pretty well, so I guess I can’t fault the publisher for trying to make some money.
It's the cover. It's got to be. There are all these studies lately that covers impact sales more than anything else, and this one has a gorgeous cover. Quite a few of the books that I've disliked over the past few years have similarly beautiful covers. Makes me feel bad for the authors whose publishers don't spend that much for cover shoots on.
In a way, it's too bad this was angled as a romance. It could have been easily rewritten into a genuine, and convincing, thriller, but I guess the days of YA horror are dead. Long live paranormal romance.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing about selling it as a horror/thriller novel. Alas, paranormal romance is the flavor of the month at the moment. I also agree about the cover – the first time I saw the book I knew nothing about it, and the cover immediately got me curious. (Thankfully I read the back before seriously thinking of buying it…)
Also that link in the first paragraph is fascinating. I knew there were a lot of people discussing the problems with books like this, I just didn't know where they were doing it. I'm now gleefully going through all of the linked articles in the Livejournal post.
Great review! I've mainly just heard about the Patch related issues (blog posts like the one you linked), so it's interesting to see a critique of it that touches on its other problems. I haven't read this book yet, and pretty much don't want to at this point.
Thanks, Kaitlin! It's a shame–the beginning, though preposterous in many ways, was well-written enough that I actually started to wonder if it's possible to enjoy a book while finding its politics and themes disgusting. But then the writing fell through, absolving me of that. I'm curious as to what the word will be in the sequel–as it starts with Patch and Nora presumably together, and hopefully without all the stalkerish squick.
I love your reviews. You say it so well.
I prefer the term "paranormal romller"
another amazing review. I was hoping you'd review this book.
although I must admit there is indeed an internet research scene in my book! she's just looking up an address though. not the same. I hope.
Thanks Kirsten!
My problem with googling is one that I've pretty much only encountered with paranormal (and repeatedly, there)–chick suspects something weird is going on, googles it, and finds an article describing exactly the sort of paranormal creature she's encountered. Or, alternatively, finds basic information on that creature that she really should have already known (like when Bella discovers via the internet that vampires have pointy teeth. Thanks, google!) so that the author can illustrate how Their Paranormal Creatures are Different. It's just an Infodump where the author gets to show they're down with websearching. What you're talking about sounds much more organic and realistic.
Lol I don't get the googling thing as well. I mean, you google to find out addresses, or places, or information on say foods. But googling and figuring out someone is a vampire or an angel? Why didn't every other person who met the vampire or angel think of googling too? hahaha!
Loved this review.
Hahaha, I have Google-searching in my novel. I just remembered that part. Oh wells, I kind of like it. I don't use it for exposition, just an internal monologue facilitator. I think my Google-searching part is morally neutral.
Excellent review – I was going to do one on this book myself, but you say it all so much more eloquently, I'm not sure if I should now. One thing that I did like about the book was that the mystery kept me going, I was thinking to myself, well, Patch is the love interest here, he can't possibly be doing all these things to hurt Nora, and so I was invested in it from that angle, but then the ending really tripped me up like you said, I didn't get it.
The cover – ok, I'll admit that the cover drew me in, also I liked the idea of a fallen angel. I didn't read any reviews so I didn't know what it was about beyond that. Lesson learned.
Anyway, the thing about googling – I do have this in my book, but it's not about the MC trying to figure out what kind of creature the guy is because she already knows that – she's just doing basic research to learn as much about him as she can (my paranormal isn't a vampire or a werewolf either) so I kind of feel like it's justified. I mean what do you do these days when you want to find out about something quickly? Drive over to the library and start hunting the shelves? No, you go to the internet. So, I guess that I don't see the problem – it makes sense to me.
[...] So I decided that, rather than use a bunch of YA books that I bought and didn’t like enough to keep to get the last couple Alien Nation novels on PaperBack Swap, I’m going to give them away–one by one–in order to promote reviewing, as well as my favorite review client, Goodreads. I’m going to start with Becca Fitzpatrick’s Hush, Hush (because it was the first one I spotted on my book shelf). If you’re curious, you can find my review of Hush, Hush here. [...]