Thoughts on Hush, Hush

This is going to be an extremely muddled review.

First off, I'm going to address the controversies surrounding this book. Many bloggers and reviewers and such have expressed concern because Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick's romantic interest, Patch, is a freaking scary stalker murderer. No joke: for more than half the book, Patch is stalking the protagonist, Nora. He repeatedly threatens her safety, places her in sexual situations where she feels downright terrified, and openly admits that he wants to kill her.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is our love interest.

Yeah. Really. This makes Edward Cullen's creepy behaviour look completely normal and acceptable (which it isn't). I agree with the critics of Hush, Hush and its peer novels who say that the way these twisted relationship dynamics are presented sets a terrible, awful example for teenage girls.

Many of these books basically say that if a guy follows you around, watches you sleep, makes lewd comments about you in class, it means he loves you. And that is obviously not true. If a guy ever does any of this shit to you, run and call the police.

Now that that rant is over... the real review.

Besides how disturbing I found the romance aspect of this book to be, Hush, Hush was actually readable. Unlike Beautiful Creatures, I was hooked and read this book through to the end. Ms Fitzpatrick's writing, while not necessarily good ("his eyes looked like they didn't play by the rules" and many other phrases made me either scratch my head or, in a few cases, laugh out loud), gets the job done.

The plot was full of holes, and basically relied on convenience for many events. Nora's mother's job conveniently took her out of town a lot, so that Nora had lots of opportunity to have strange boys over.

Characters... what can I say? Nora was flat, boring, and even though she was supposed to be a 4.0 GPA kind of girl, was incredibly stupid. Seriously, brain-damaged stupid. Really weak-willed and a huge pushover. Vee, the best friend, was funny at times, but usually a tired cliché. I also felt that Nora, the POV character (or maybe the author?) was constantly poking fun at the fact that Vee is a bigger girl than Nora. Nora always refers to her as "more voluptuous than me" or "a few pounds above curvy." As a not-skinny girl, I found this a bit offensive.

And Patch. Well. I would have liked it if he'd been portrayed as the villain throughout the novel, but I was really not comfortable with the fact that about three-quarters of the way through the book, he was suddenly the love interest, even though every single thing he'd done up to that point had designated him as a scary, demented psychopath.

But... despite all its shortcomings, somehow I was glued to Hush, Hush. I may read the sequel when it comes out. Btw, does anyone know what the hell the title references? It has nothing to do with the story.

I seem to be the only person in the blogosphere who didn't care much for the cover... huh.