Customer Reviews

Crescendo (Hush, Hush Saga)

5 star:		(108)
4 star:		(64)
3 star:		(34)
2 star:		(19)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Review courtesy of All Things Urban Fantasy

As a rule I'm afraid sequels. Especially YA sequels. The spark of first attraction has usually burned out, the blush of first love has usually dimmed, and the mystery has usually been solved. I say usually because there are always exceptions to that rule and CRESCENDO is a big one. In fact, in many ways it's even better than Hush, Hush.

The writing is actually quite a bit better, with better pacing, better use of flashback memories, and better dialogue. The mythology of Nephilim is explored more fully, and Nora's own history and the mystery of her Dad's death are revealed in shocking, game changing detail. But the real pull in CRESCENDO is once again the alluring and poignant love story between good girl Nora and the ultimate bad boy Patch.

Patch, the fallen-turned guardian-angel, is every inch the bad boy we loved from Hush, Hush but with one important distinction. We know his motives now. He can be the same thoughtless, jealous, jerk he always was, but everything he does from spending time with Nora's arch-enemy Marcie Millar, to his increasingly cryptic and bizarre behavior, isn't as suspect as it once was. He chose Nora before, giving up his chance for humanity, his chance to experience touch, all of it, for Nora. I don't doubt him anymore. Nora, of course isn't as trusting. She sees Patch with Marcie and sees red.

And if you thought one bad boy wasn't enough, wait till you meet Scott. A childhood friend of Nora's (and by friend I mean he used to make her eat bugs) who moves back to town with his vintage mustang, brutal good looks, and a dangerous past. Scott, or as Vee calls him, Scotty the hottie, is trouble in a way Patch never was which means, in Nora's mind, he's the perfect guy to make Patch jealous. Yep, get ready for some killer fight scenes in CRESCENDO, and not just between the guys.

I don't know what it is about fallen angel mythology that resonates so much with readers, maybe it's the idea (at least in Becca's version) that they gave up everything for love that we find so appealing, or in Patch's case at least, that even as the ultimate bad boy, he can be redeemed. Whatever it is, it's working overtime in CRESCENDO. The romance is hotter, the suspense full of enough turns to make you dizzy in the hands of a lesser author, but with Becca, it's just enough to make you clutch the book tighter and thrill with each page. Until you reach the end....cliffhanger alert and it's a cruel one. All I can say is that the third book in the Hush, Hush series, Tempest, won't be published until Fall 2011. It's going to be a very long year.

Sexual Content: Kissing. References to sex. A few scenes of sensuality.

Currently, I'm trying to decide why fallen angels would build an amusement park. Is it...an evil amusement park? Although, asking such a question would then bring up what fallen angels do in their spare time, which appears to be nothing much. The answer is then why not build an amusement park? I mean, they ain't doing much else.

So here's the thing. I kind of didn't loathe Hush, Hush like I'd expected. Besides Nora's impossibly shallow personality (and no, shallowness isn't excused when the main character admits as much) and a shocking lack of sense, I found it amusing enough to take another plunge into this series. What I found was a ramshackle plot (expected, given I wasn't quite sure what was happening in Hush, Hush either) and an amazingly stupid mystery.

You know who's after Nora after you've read the prologue. If by some chance you missed the big flashing neon lights with fireworks illuminating that plane that is writing the secret antagonist's name in the freaking sky, you get another fairly obvious kick in the shins about halfway through. And then again three quarters of the way through, which happens to be when NORA should have put two and two together. However, because she's too wracked with relationship issues and busy being short-sighted and gullible, the reader is left beating the book over their own forehead while Nora is asking multitudes of questions that take huge info dumps to answer when we more or less already knew who is secretly who. For Nora this is like rocket science. Motives are a little more tricky. As far as I can tell, the supernatural elements in this series don't have a reason for anything they do at all. They just are and do and that's pretty much it.

Plot holes abound. Patch is mysteriously absent, playing some game of "I can't tell you my suspicions or whatever because if I did that would mean this book would be, like, maybe sixty pages and clearly that's not a novel, Nora!" So we have some run of the mill family secret mystery (again, you know what's going to happen in the prologue...it's like the most obvious prologue in the history of ever) and break up drama (angels can make out with humans, but admitting to love is apparently crossing the line) to fill the time. Most of Patch's melodrama gets swept to the side with one easy little decision at the end that leaves one wondering why that wasn't an option three hundred pages ago. But no. We need a crazy fun house chase scene and flume ride of terror (a log flume gun chase is remarkably not as griping as you might think), which was not nearly as hilarious as I wanted it to be because Nora has to go nearly die again and get saved so she can ask enough questions to hopefully patch the holes in this remarkably dull plot. Strangely, no one asks why *insert name of character here* could have just killed Marcie, because the last I checked that probably would have accomplished their goal and then we could have just skipped to book three already.

Basically, even if there's going to be some grand reveal in the third book as to why and how Nora is vaguely important, I'm thinking I'm already gone.

After reading Hush, Hush I wasn't too excited to get started on this novel. A recent discussion in our house about sequels had me jumping in quicker than I expected. We were pondering if there has ever been a sequel in movie format that was better than the first one. While we didn't come up with any movies that we thought made the cut, I was reminded of a few books in which I liked some of the later books better than the first ones. (Southern Vampire Mystery Series, His Dark Materials, House of Night...to name a few.) Crescendo plays into that list as well.

I still feel the same way as I did before about Patch, there is just not enough there to like about him. He would never stand a chance as my boyfriend, no matter why he wants to say he's doing the things he's doing. His good qualities just aren't enough to justify his bad ones. And again, the first half of the book left me feeling like nothing was happening, it was just watching a crappy relationship get crappier.

However, I liked this book better than the first one because I actually didn't foresee what was happening until right before it was revealed and that was a nice treat. I liked the addition of a not-so-lovable, but entirely complex character who felt very well fleshed out and his reasons for being not so great were entirely justified. Nora seemed to get more of a grasp on herself and not be as helpless as she once was, though she is still too reliant on her friend Vee, but I love Vee, so I didn't mind that at all, that means she gets to be in more of the story.

The ending was once again left open so that there could be a follow-up and due to the final circumstances of this book, I do want to know how it is all going to tie together and how the characters are going to come out at the end. Those that loved Hush, Hush are sure to love this one as well as all the characters left standing at the end of book 1 are back and some have bigger parts to play in this one.

"Crescendo" was everything that I did not expect it to be. In fact I think a better title for the book would have been "Decrescendo". A crescendo is a building, in musical terms, of sound. This book was so flat the entire way through that it was a fight for me to keep reading some times.

"Crescendo" picks pretty soon after "Hush, Hush" leaves off. Patch and Nora have been together for two months, but then they break up and so ensues the annoying back and forth game that is Nora's forever annoying inner battle between loving and hating patch. Nothing has changed much, except Nora no longer has a car, which I am assuming is simply to make a point, for Scott, at the conclusion of the novel. Nora's mother is still constantly out of town, Vee is as annoying as ever, but there is the addition of Scott, to whom I felt no attachment the whole novel, except to feel empathy for him.

Nora is the epitome of bad decision making. Every time she so much as suspects someone of sneezing in her direction her knee jerk reaction is immediately to break into their house. What?!?!?! What kind of seventeen year old girl does that? What kind of seventeen year old girl's "friend" encourages and accompanies her while she breaks into someones house to steal their possessions?

The book was too contrived and unbelievable to engross myself in. The dialog alone was so distractingly non-realistic that it kept pulling me out of that world and reminding me of the fact that I am reading a book. The dialog was too upbeat, rhythmic, and well....fake to me. There was one point where Nora doesn't even fully explain the situation to Vee but Vee seems to understand (and we know this is out of character for Vee as she is alarmingly naive to EVERYTHING that is going on around her!)

Again, I had trouble with Fitzpatrick's spacial awareness in the novel. In "Hush, Hush" after Nora's house was broken into the police were there in five minutes but in "Crescendo", however, when Nora is in trouble at her farmhouse she notes that it would take at least twenty minutes for the police to arrive. Continuity issues? Also, if the police would take twenty minutes racing to a breaking and entering report at Nora's then how does she walk to school? It just doesn't seem plausible.

Everything in this book was just so predictable and disappointing. Any time Nora went any where she inevitably pulled on a pair of "matchstick" or for a synonym "toothpick" jeans, a fitted tee, and ballet flats. Then, of course we are constantly reminded of Nora's crazily wild curly hair (we get it Becca...we've seen your picture on the book jacket).

Patch, don't even get me started on Patch. I was so thoroughly irritated with Nora's crazy assumptions and I love him...no wait I hate him emotions that I litterally would not have cared if Nora or Patch had died simply to end all the indecision. What a weak seventeen year old girl. While I don't believe fictional characters are meant to serve as role models...come on really? Where is this girls self esteem?

A lot of what I hated about this book came back to Nora being, simply stated, an unlikeable character. It's like when you're watching a horror movie and the innocent person you just know is going to die is walking through a pitch black house yelling, "Guys, is that you? This isn't funny? I'm going to bed!" Then, of course, we all know what happens next...dead in bed. I was constantly screaming at Nora in my head, "No you idiot" It was utterly frustrating.

The end, and by the end I mean the last chapter, was slightly redeeming because *spoiler alert* I had already figured out that Rixon was a bad guy. Foreshadowing was too heavy. Why else involve him to intimately with Vee and have her constantly gush over Rixon? Because he's bad...that's the way it goes. And if Nora's mother knows how much danger she is in WHY does she keep leaving her alone? Even the house fire wasn't enough to make her suspect anything? *End Spoiler aler*

The last chapter did hold one surprise for me that I did not expect, but I was angry I had to wade through so much much to get to one good revelation. Of course, I'll have to read the last book in this series, but I would have preferred if Fitzpatrick had done just two books and kept all the crap out of "Crescendo."

Genre: Paranormal YA

Thoughts:

Let's face it this is one big hit in the YA genre. Especially for the new venue of Angel books hitting the book shelves. With a cover like this and the fact that you can never go anywhere without seeing this book splattered on every blog and book site there is, expectations were high. Sadly for me, they deflated all over the place.

The plot was pretty average. The take on angels, fallen, not, and Nephiles was pretty original. However, this book tried so hard for 80 percent of the read to be mysteries that the plot went no where. When a masked attacker kept popping up I couldn't help but groan and go, "Really again, where the hell is the plot!!" Answers were not forth coming until the last 20 percent. Where everything was suddenly dumped. Sure the ending was good, it had a plot twist in there that I did not see coming right away. Sadly the fantastic ending was blown by trying to cram everything all at once. This had potential, but Fitzpatrick spent so much time trying to make it mysterious that all the plot development that should have been sprinkled throughout the book was just shoved in your face at the end.

Patch and Nora's relationship was one of the more believable ones I've read which isn't saying too much. Patch is a creepy stalker. Don't get me wrong at the beginning of this book I was ready to join the legions of Patch fans. After a while his creepy stalking dominated the pages. We get zero information about Patch until that last 20 percent I was talking about. If we could have been fed that information during the story Patch would have developed nicely. Because all of this important stuff was jammed into the ending a lot of the emotions and plot was lost.

Nora herself, was a very vague character. She felt so blank. Of course her father had died and she had one friend. It was like her only purpose was to be there for the reader to insert themselves in her place. Trust me you are going to be doing a lot of self insertion out of shear desperation to get some kind of character depth out of Nora. Which sadly means you're probably not going to be happy with some of Nora's choices or reactions. If my life is being threatened, I'm not going to act like a love sick crack head no matter what the songs say!

Bottom Line: The only thing this book really had going on was the sensational cover. The plot was average, and the good parts crammed into an ending that ruined the experience. Patch, the little hottie, was too much of a creepy stalker. Even the when juicy info is finally dished out it's too late to get the appropriate character build-up. Out of sheer curiosity I'll buy the next book when it comes out in paperback.

Sexual Content:

Kisses and some sexual innuendos.

Rating: 2/5- Average/disappointing, library check-out

I realize I am one of the minority that did not like Hush, Hush. I had a real problem with the fact the hot guy wanted to KILL the pretty girl, and I couldn't really move beyond that. We see a lot of jerks in young adult fiction these days. Some are tolerable. A lot are not. For me, their motivations really matter. There are a lot of the "I'm a jerk because I love you and I'm trying to keep you away from me for your safety." Was Patch one of those? Nope. He really did WANT to kill Nora. When did creepy obsessive become hot? Yes, Patch redeemed himself at the end, and that's what made me like him more in Crescendo. But Nora? Wow. She won my title for 2009's TSTL heroine, and it looks like she's going to repeat again this year.

What happened to Nora in Crescendo? She turns into a total SHREW. She's jealous, vindictive, insecure, angsty, and "woe is me" for way too much of Crescendo. Again, she makes STUPID, STUPID choices, many of these designed to get back at Patch. Even her reasons for breaking up with Patch made no sense. When she instigated their big break up scene a few pages after making Patch swear to love her forever, I just decided I could never understand her. I get the whole "I love you so I'm breaking up with you to keep you safe" which is pretty much Book #2 of the majority of paranormal series these days, but this break up just didn't make sense to me. Nora just came off as a jealous, psychotic, paranoid, untrusting girlfriend. Patch even tells Nora's she's crazy and that he "must be crazy for putting up with it"--I wanted to cheer that someone was finally calling Nora on it. Wow. Nora is a train wreck this whole book.

Patch, on the other hand, I liked loads better in Crescendo than in Hush, Hush. Sure, he had that whole mysterious seduction/obsession thing going on in Hush, Hush which some girls seem to go crazy for (not me), but he wasn't trying to kill Nora in Crescendo, which I liked. However, his whole not telling Nora what's going on was a really lame plot device. Pretty much 3/4 of this book could have been solved if he'd just told Nora the reasons for his actions. He had his chances in Nora's dreams, but he just wanted to make out with her instead. And what was he thinking setting up Vee with Rixon??? If you've read the book, you know what I'm talking about. Seriously, Patch.

I know I'm one of the few who didn't like Hush, Hush and Crescendo, but I like my heroines to limit the STUPID, DANGERIOUS choices. Some mistakes and a little irrationality along the way are fine and needed, but Nora, who's supposedly intelligent?, just can't stop putting herself in death's path. And doing it again. She's the pin-up girl for TSTL. And the two stars? That's for the highly addictive quality of these books. I admit--I read Hush, Hush and Crescendo in one sitting each. I couldn't put them down. But can Nora please acquire a sense of self-preservation before Book #3?

Becca Fitzpatrick's Crescendo, the follow up to last years breakout hit Hush, Hush, hits a high note. The story starts with Nora and Patch's relationship in that wonderfully beautiful bliss that is first love. But secrets and jealously put everything in jeopardy. Soon Nora and Patch's relationship along with his guardianship hits splitsville. And it couldn't have come at a worst time, because someone is trying to kill Nora.

Nora's rivalry with the local mean girl Marcie heats up as she goes after Patch. Rixon and Vee are dating, which leaves Nora feeling lonelier than ever. It doesn't help that she's being haunted and seems to see or hear her dead father at every turn. An old and very hot acquaintance Scott is back in town testing Patch's hold over Nora's heart, and it doesn't help that he just happens to be Nephilim. But there's something not right about him and Nora wants to find out what's so shady about his past. Everyone seems to have a secret. Nora's determined to find the answers. Her inner Nancy Drew emerges, as she manages to break in and search just about everyone's home. Meanwhile the truths about Nora's father and his murder are revealed.

Crescendo is filled with heartache and angst, secrets, lies, and loads of betrayals. Nora's life is turning out to be more soap opera than sitcom, which will leave you longing for the next installment. Pick it up and you won't want to put it down.

I was excited for this book. I love the cover (isn't it pretty?!) and I'm a sucker for a shouldn't-be-happening romance. Especially with someone like Patch, who is the ultimate good bad guy. I even yelped for joy when my friend said I could borrow her ARC. I was pumped. I read it as soon as I got home and the next morning. I was slightly disappointed. It's really hard to admit that because I was that excited. (It's also hard to admit because I know people are going to be REALLY angry that I'm writing this.)

Before all of you yell at me, let me try to explain without being spoiler-y. The reason I liked Hush, Hush was because of the mystery of Patch and Nora. And then, the cute-ness. It's the reason I kept reading because, despite the annoying friends and her mother, they were the story. I had to know what happened.

Crescendo started out great for me. I loved the intriguing prologue, and the first 2-3 chapters, which were plopped full and exploding of Nora and Patch-iness. And then, things changed. They dissolved and left a bad taste in my mouth of a Patch-less Nora. I kept reading, waiting for things to get better but they kept getting worse and worse, drifting farther from what I wanted it to be. Further from the story thing that kept me reading in Hush, Hush.

Vee was more prominent in the story, which only added to the negative. In the first one, I didn't mind Vee but here she was so annoying. Sometimes, she was the comedic relief but more often she came as off one of those people that you don't want to hang out with. Nora wasn't blameless. She was a user in this book, only with Vee because Patch wasn't around and she seemed like she only tolerated her, not like she was actually her friend. I hate that but I digress.

Things were predictable for me. There weren't any twists that I didn't see coming except the ending. The new character was lackluster and unimportant. I questioned his existence. By the time things got good again, there were only 20 pages left and I was spent from the forced reading the book. The ending was so good though--despite the cliffhanger. The good ending leaves hope that the final book will be better.

Final thoughts on the book: While I was disappointed in the book, if you are a Hush, Hush fan then you should read it because it's likely that you will like it. I will read the final book and hope as I do that everything gets wrapped up well. And, for lots of Patch-iness.

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What I loved about Hush, Hush was that the romance wasn't the main focus of the book. Yes, the romance is a major aspect of the story but there is also the mystery of who is after Nora. The mystery, the suspense, the constant mind games Nora was being thrown was what made me enjoy the book. I found the characters to be entertaining and fun to read and Nora didn't annoy me as many female characters seem to do in paranormal YA. When I finished Hush, Hush I couldn't wait to read Crescendo.

Its unfortunate that I did not enjoy Crescendo nearly as much as I did its predecessor. There was still mystery, and danger, and Vee who had made herself onto the bad best friend's list in the later half of Hush, Hush redeemed herself in Crescendo (an unexplained 180 but I'll take it). Vee was funny, dependable and someone I wouldn't mind spending time with which made it all the more easier for me to not like Nora. I found Nora to be needy, "too stupid to live" and just basically irritating and because Nora was the narrator for the story she really ruined the book for me. Patch was basically a complete mystery for most of this book he has secrets that he can't share with Nora which makes her suspect the worse and accuse him of the worse which I could not understand because Patch, despite having his secrets, was always there for Nora, constantly pulling her out of the trouble she deliberately puts herself in.

There were parts of this book that were really hard to read because I just wanted to yell at Nora for her actions and thoughts and if it wasn't for her being so irritating I would have really enjoyed this book. We learn a lot more about angel and nephillim dynamics, there is more character development when it comes to side characters like Rixon and Marcie Millar and as I got more answers there were a lot more questions for me to ask.

The ending, there were parts I saw coming and others I didn't, I enjoyed the action and the twist and its because of the ending that I will be reading the next book in the series.

I just recently finished reading this on Kindle.Which was my first read on a Kindle when I hit a 100%,I was like nooo! It is a cliff hanger!Crescendo is a more thrilling read then Hush Hush.I am sooo looking forward to the story continuing!