Crescendo (Hush, Hush, #2) in Paranormal and Fantasy in the Window Seat

Feb 27, 2013 Chani rated it did not like it

Shelves: gave-1-2-stars, reapersangelsetc

**This is a Window Seat Blog review also found: http://www.readinginthewindowseat.blo...**

I loved Hush, Hush. Full on loved it. This book? This is what I initially assumed Hush, Hush would be like when I first picked it up. Poor character quality, and luke warm execution. What the heck happened to Nora in this book? How/when did she turn into such a whiny, moronic girl? I think when she came back to life at the end of book one, she did so missing half of her brain because seriously...From the ge **This is a Window Seat Blog review also found: http://www.readinginthewindowseat.blo...**

I loved Hush, Hush. Full on loved it. This book? This is what I initially assumed Hush, Hush would be like when I first picked it up. Poor character quality, and luke warm execution. What the heck happened to Nora in this book? How/when did she turn into such a whiny, moronic girl? I think when she came back to life at the end of book one, she did so missing half of her brain because seriously...From the get go she makes stupid decisions that make next to no sense. I started thinking she was bipolar, which would be fine if that were really the case...but it wasn't. She just couldn't make up her mind. One minute she'd be thinking she wanted Patch back and she'd make up with him, and the next he'd actually be there and she'd be telling him to get away from her. The reason the two of them broke up made sense, but it was poorly executed. It felt like the author only knew that she needed to get them to split in the beginning and didn't bother taking the time to really flush out the how or the why of it. Because of that Nora came off childish and immature, and Patch was just allusive (in the not good way) and annoying. Speaking of, Nora's mom was getting on my last nerve in this book. First of all, she had no right to act like an over bearing mother when all she's ever done was work away from home. Do I get that she needs that job in order to keep the house? Yes. However, she can't yell at Nora for being a minute late for curfew EVEN THOUGH SHE"S IN THE DRIVEWAY, yet then go off for four nights straight leaving her there alone. She even sold her car. This just felt like a plot device thrown in there because honestly what mother is going to leave her daughter abandoned in an old farm house out in the middle of no where with no way of leaving? What if there was an emergency? In the first book her mom cares about her life, but you don't get the sense that she's forcing her way in or being overbearing, however in this one any time you see her she's acting like a control freak. There's a big difference between being parental and just being controlling. Trying to hook her up with Scott, a boy she hasn't seen for years? I see where Nora got her stupid, let's put it that way. Every time something important happened that she needed to tell Patch about she didn't. If she'd only told him about the weird things going on from the get go they probably could have figured the whole thing out three hundred pages earlier. Quantity does not always equal quality. I would have much rather read two hundred pages and been left wanting more than the four hundred some that now leaves me wanted to burn this book and avoid the rest like the plague. On page 133 Marcie even tells Nora there's nothing going on with Patch (this was before something was) and Nora didn't believe her. Ok, from what we know about Marcie, the girl who pointed out her dad was dead, she doesn't exactly rely on lying to do her dirty work. Nope, the girl uses the truth in order to wound people, so why would she lie now? It was dumb, and Nora wouldn't believe or listen to anyone. It made perfect sense she and Patch couldn't talk without risking the Archangels listening in on them, however, she wouldn't even listen when he'd visited her dreams. Again, it really just felt forced the entire book, and it made me hate Nora. On page 330, for instance, she judged Patch for entering peoples memories in order to glean information he needed to keep them both safe. Um, hypocrite? Throughout this ENTIRE book she sneaks into basically every characters house. How is that not invading peoples privacy? It is the exact same thing. Sometimes it's not even in order to protect herself, so much as she's curious. At least Patch had a reason for doing what he did, one that was life or death. There are tons of inconstancy's in this book, like once when Rixon calls Patch, says he'll show soon, and he never does. Nora doesn't even question why he never showed. Scott's personality doesn't make sense. One second he's into her, the next he's guilty? Then he claims to have been guilty the whole time and it was hard to be around her...Um, what? Then why were you trying to sleep with her? Must have been really hard for you. Stupid. Then there's also when she's trying to figure out the whole Black Hand thing. If the Black Hand doesn't know Scott is there, but Patch does....Hello? And she keeps flip flopping on her opinions about this. Make up your mind. Besides, if I thought even for a split second someone had killed my dad, any love I'd felt for them would be gone. She's also so sure she can move out. She's a minor. She can't go anywhere, and she's not even smart enough to realize it. The only redeeming character in this book was Vee, which is ironic because I hated her in the first one. There was still an issue with her, however, and that was that we were constantly being bombarded with the fact she likes to eat and she calls Nora babe. We get it. She likes food. That does not mean she has to be eating it, or suggesting they eat, every single scene she's in. She also does not have to repeat the word babe every other sentence. This makes it less of a personality quirk and more of a hindrance for the reader. It's sad that we needed to know she ate six donuts in one sitting. It's even more sad that that was more interesting then half the other crap going on in this book. The only good part was the ending. The last twenty or so pages it was like all of a sudden we were given back the Nora from the first book (whom I loved, by the way). The action was good and well written, it was crafty, interesting, and flowed well. It didn't feel forced, like everything that had come before it. Of course, this just adds merit to my belief that the other only really knew how she wanted it to end, and everything else was just a means to get there. I spent all day debating whether or not to give this book two stars, and not the one I've been planning on giving it this whole time, just because of the ending. Then I realized that it wasn't so much the ending not sucking that made me even debate giving it an extra star, it was the fact that it had finally ENDED. I do already have the third book in this series, and I'm seriously hopeful that it goes back to being the amazing story that Hush, Hush was, because if Silence is anything like this...Basically, I recommend reading Hush, Hush, but only if you go into it without getting your hopes up too high for this sequel.
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Mar 09, 2013 The Window Seat Blog rated it did not like it

Shelves: tempest-reviewed-on-her-goodreads, jacey-s-reading

This review can also be found at our blog The Window Seat!

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Most of my friends have heard me tell the tragic tale of horrible sequel to Faerie Wars. That was a long time ago, back in 9th grade, but it's stuck with me to this day. Probably because horrible sequels are just epic pits of disappoint for readers. After reading something so amazing, the reader immediately scrambles for the sequel, just to feel that rush again. When they find out that the sequel wa This review can also be found at our blog The Window Seat!

http://readinginthewindowseat.blogspo...

Most of my friends have heard me tell the tragic tale of horrible sequel to Faerie Wars. That was a long time ago, back in 9th grade, but it's stuck with me to this day. Probably because horrible sequels are just epic pits of disappoint for readers. After reading something so amazing, the reader immediately scrambles for the sequel, just to feel that rush again. When they find out that the sequel was a bad trip, the author's first work now just seems like tease, and one is hardly motivated to follow through on the third installment. These emotions were highly involved when I read the sequel to Faeries Wars: The Purple Emperor. Never did I think I would pick up another sequel that would grant me such disappointment. Becca Fitzpatrick, tragically, proved me wrong.

I picked this up having already heard terrible things about it (refer back to my colleague's review from a few weeks ago). Still, I wanted to go into it with an optimistic view, so I did, I gave the benefit of the doubt, and as usual Fitzpatrick wowed me with her first person persepctive in it's first two chapters...then...suddenly, it's as if someone else decided to pick up the pen and just go off on a wild goose chase for the rest of the book.

In fact, I became seriously convinced that rather than fallen angels possessing people in this book, I thought that the Plastics from Mean Girls decided to possess Nora. One minute, she's Karen Smith, just stumbling through the dialogue and falling for psychological tactics that Nora from book one would NEVER have fallen for. Case and point: when Scott uses reverse psychology on her so she'll go to the insane Battle of the Bands. I mean, she even talks about how she took a psych course...you'd think that would have helped. But no. Additionally there are just so many times that you watch her stumble into these situations that put her and her friends at risk. Then, suddenly she'd turn into the nosy Gretchen Wieners, who finds it necessary to snoop on EVERYONE, and in being so, also finds it ok to break into every characers' household, though of course Patch visiting her dreams is just SO not cool. Then, my favorite, Nora morphs into the Regina George; in this form, she's being a conniving witch, seen at dinner when the Parnells come over and her overbearing mother tries pimping her out to Scott. Nora from the last book would NEVER been so mean putting him on the spot about his past. Even though I didn't know much about Scott at this point, I wanted to seriously reach through the pages and smack her for being so mean to him. With the rest of her time, Nora deems it necessary to scream at Patch whenever he shows up, crying when he's not there, but then shrieking that she doesn't want him to be her guardian angel five seconds later. The amazing heroine that I had sucha girl crush on in the first book is pretty much gone for the majority of the novel. Vee, her obnoxious bestie from the last novel, was actually the good friend in this, and on top of that you get to see Nora criticizing her for her eating habits, and just comes off as arrogant when she talks about food. I mean, come on, adding strawberries to your cereal isn't being "conscientious about" what you eat? (p. 128) In the last book, all I wanted to do was get more into Nora's head. In this book, I would have wanted anyone but her.

In addition to the main character being more than sub par, I thought most of the people on the character roster were just poorly done. If anyone remembers Polonious from Hamlet then you could compare his presence to that of Scott Parnell's mother: absolutely infuriating. And not in the good way at all. Her obnoxious personality could have been pulled off in the way that I would have loved to hate, but like many of the characters in this book, Fitzpatrick lacked grace when drawing out the characters' personalities. They were all just blunt, basic personalities that just grated me for the majority of the book. At the beginning of chapter thirteen, Fitzpatrick surprised me even further; I could not believe that she has Nora consider suicide. Moreover, she didn't want to do it to make things right; only to make the archangels feel bad. It further showed that this was not Nora Grey from Hush, Hush, and was just appalling to read that someone who was such a strong character even consider that an option.

Additionally, I just could not follow what was going on in this book. Not that it was even that complex, it's just that it either involved Nora needing to break into someone's house, or that she was yelling at Patch again. It all became monotonous. When actual key details did pop up, I didn't realize I missed them because I had become so accustomed to just jumping from place to place. It didn't help that the Nora that I adored in the last book finally decided to pop back into existence the last thirty or so pages, because by that point I just wanted to finish the book and though I was told that everything got wrapped up by that point, I really had a hard time sitting back and appreciating the final pages, as I was so intent on putting this book down. .I apologize for being a little heated in this review, but seeing that many of reviews from the first book compared to the second go from 5 to 1 is a good indication that the author just needed Patch and Nora to be apart for a good portion of the book, with little thought into how she was going to pull it all off. I've heard from some people that the third book is better, but I think I'm going to need a break for a while before continuing on. ...more

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May 14, 2014 Wonka Whyatt rated it it was amazing

It was a thrilling sequel. I love paranormal romance, which I thought was great. I loved who the bad guy was, I loved how the climax happened, I loved how everything worked together. So I give it a overall round of applause

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