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tesscatburton

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American Gods
Neil Gaiman
Fallen (Fallen #1)
Lauren Kate
Armed
Davie J. Toothill
Cobweb Bride (Cobweb Bride Trilogy, #1)
Vera Nazarian
Crescendo - Becca Fitzpatrick I heard that Becca Fitzpatrick had to re-write Crescendo from scratch after her editor hated the first version. So she went back to basics and ripped off Twilight again. This much is obvious, as the second book in the Hush, Hush series follows the same storyline as Twilight's second book, New Moon:- Patch and Nora break up for protection purposes.- Nora then gets all reckless.- Love triangle - yay!- Get back together.I'm ready to review this piece of crap with the help of numerous .gifs. Ready, Nostalgia Critic?We begin with a prologue flashback. Nora's dad Harrison meets with an old friend, and then the events of his death unfold. We immediately figure out that this friend he was meeting is Nora's real father. It is hinted that Patch is the one who killed Harrison, but Fitzpatrick makes it way too obvious, so I assumed from this point on that it wasn't Patch at all.Present day now and it's summer break! Nora is happy with her hot rapist/murderer of a boyfriend and is looking forward to summer school. The usual suspects are still around: annoying friend Vee, arch-enemy Marcie Miller and Patch's Irish friend Rixon (who says typically Irish phrases like "aye, now you're in trouble, lass").Patch's murderous past is now completely forgiven. Nora has no problem with the fact that Patch tried to kill her a few months ago. It's not even mentioned. Except that there's a vague reference when Patch refuses to tell Nora where he lives. Direct quote:"If you showed me, you'd have to kill me?"So we are quite happy to make jokes about this now?So we have a lovely scene where Nora and Patch are indulging in facenoms and they establish how truly in love they really are. Nora reminds us all that angels can't feel a damn thing, leading me to wonder how the hell Patch can kiss worth a damn. I mean think about it: the whole point of snogging is feeling and you can't do it properly unless you're feeling in the first place.Anyway. Within the first few chapters, everything suddenly goes mental. Nora makes a string of nonsensical and confusing decisions, showing what a true idiot she really is. Let's analyse.First of all Nora breaks up with Patch (best decision you've ever made, love). She has three reasons for this:Reason #1: She realizes that she can never grow old and have kids with Patch. Valid reason. Such a shame that she never acknowledges this reason ever again.Reason #2: Guardian angel/human relationships are forbidden, and Patch will go to hell if the Archangels find out. She wants to protect him from that. Valid reason, and this is used as the only reason for the rest of the book.Reason #3: Nora believes that Patch is not committed to this relationship as much as she is. He's being secretive and didn't reply when she told him she loved him. This is just plain fucking stupid. Let's have another quote, shall we?"You gave up becoming human for me, and this is what I get? A boyfriend who hangs out at Marcie's, but won't tell me why. A boyfriend who walks out at the first hint of a fight. Try this on for size: You're a jerk!"For the readers possessing at least half a brain, when we read this passage this is what it translates as:"My criminally dangerous boyfriend gave up the one thing he wanted most in the world: to kill me and take over my body. That means he loves me in the purest and most beautiful way a man can love a woman. But things aren't going my way at the moment. The man whose mystery is his main personality aspect, is still being mysterious. Life isn't fair. I'm breaking up with him."Fuck you, Nora Grey. Fuck you.So now we continue with this fascinating insight into Nora's fucked up mind.Nora breaks up with Patch. She then immediately regrets her decision. Immediately. She resolves to take him back the next day.Next day arrives. She doesn't see him all day. Awww. So sad. She misses him. Everything around her reminds her of him. She wants him so bad. But then...Fuck him! I'm not going to sit and cry over him! I'll show him! I'll go hang out with Scott: the hot new bad boy who is extremely dodgy that I just spent all afternoon stalking.Oh, it gets better.Patch shows up and informs her that this Scott guy is Nephilim! And we know from the first book that they are quite evil indeed! Patch strongly suggests Nora stays away from him. But Nora ain't having it. How dare he try to control her in this way?! It was utterly appalling for him to dictate who she could and could not hang out with! My psychotic ex-boyfriend has suddenly turned controlling! This in no way mirrors the time he wanted to murder me and control my body.What the fuck, Nora?Should I just let this whole "Patch-originally-wanted-to-kill-you" thing go? You certainly have! You know what? Somehow, I can't let it go. You see, there's a few little things that I am having a little trouble understanding...1) Patch tried to murder you. He does not have the mentality of other men. The intent and ability to kill is not hard-wired into everybody's brain. If your brain acts this way, you are dangerous and cannot be trusted. But hey, you love him and forgive him because for some reason he proved to you that all of his murderous intent is in the past.2) You break up with him for relatively valid reasons (apart from the commitment one). You break up with him. You break his heart, assuming he has one. Okay so maybe you then regretted your actions. You spoke in anger; you didn't fully mean it. You want to talk to him the next day, set things straight. But what happens. You don't see him, so everything is now his fault?! Has it occurred to you that he may want some space given that you just fucking dumped him?!3) Now you want to make him jealous by hanging out with another douchebag. And you get mad at him when he attempts to protect you. Are you fucking serious?So the rest of the book is split between all of the couple crap and the actual plot which is a) quite decent, despite the unnecessary complexities and b) more than can be said for New Moon.Nora is haunted with visions of her dad. She finally starts admitting that she suffered a lot when her dad died (where the hell was this in book 1??). She is also randomly kidnapped but manages to escape. When these things happen, she immediately forgets about them and moves on to the more important things in her life: is Patch going out with Marcie Miller??At one point Patch shows up in Nora's dream and they start having dream sex (at one point Nora's "heart flip-flops with desire", it's all very exciting). Then she touches his back where his wings are and sees a random memory (cuz yeah that happens). She sees Marcie kiss Patch and he lets her!So there's more chapters of bullshit. Nora gets a letter with a ring inside telling her someone called the Black Hand killed her dad. Nora steals Marcie's diary (seriously, it's like something out of The Babysitter's Club). Patch wants to run away with Nora. Nora kisses Scott. Patch beats Scott up.Now it gets dumb again.Scottish/Irish Rixon tells Nora that Patch is still her assigned guardian angel, despite all evidence to the contrary. She doesn't want a guardian angel (even though her life is in danger). Rixon tells her the only way to renounce her right to a guardian is to swear a blood oath (only a few pages after she was discussing blood oaths with Vee! Foreshadowing fail!). But then the question arises: what if the person out to get her is Patch? Huh. Good question! It's entirely possible, he's a criminal, we've covered this. But Nora decides that "suspecting Patch [is] ridiculous at this point", seeing as he didn't kill her when he had the chance to. Sweet kid.Then Rixon tells her that Patch is in fact the Black Hand! Nora doesn't want to believe it, but her logic is telling her that it makes sense. She confronts him and Patch doesn't deny it. She then proceeds to snivel at him, asking him how he could hold her and kiss her after what he did to her dad. No flying rage. No terror. The bitch just snivels at him until he leaves.There's some more plot points now, but I'm going to leave them to one side because they are brought up again at the end anyway. What is really important to cover is Nora's stupid brain again.Nora wants to stay away from Patch until she can find a way of letting the Archangels know that he killed her dad. She is ashamed that she fell in love with a killer (fucking finally). However there is some stuff that doesn't quite make sense. There is a chance Patch may be innocent, so she goes investigating.She gets information from Scott. She goes to what she thinks is Patch's flat and finds a whole bunch of rings that bear the mark of the Black Hand. So now there is no doubt in her mind. Patch is clearly the Black Hand. Then she finds a bomb in the flat and narrowly escapes death as it detonates.She then goes home and ponders some more about Patch being the Black Hand, as she still doesn't quite believe it despite having concluded only pages ago that Patch is the Black Hand.Wait, wait, wait. Back up.You found a bomb. You were in an explosion. You almost died. And you just go home and think about Patch?!Are you okay? Where's the fuzz? Isn't your hearing impaired? Are you shaken up at all? Did anyone in the building die? Do you even care?You know what? I don't even care any more. We've reached the big climax. The big reveal. Are you ready?Turns out the big bad guy is Rixon. He explains fucking everything to Nora because of course he does. Do you want to know? Fine.*Deep breath*Fallen angel Rixon wants to become human, just like Patch did. We know that in order for a fallen angel to become human, he must kill his Nephil vassal (a half-angel/half-human evil immortal who can be possessed by one angel for two weeks a year). The only way to kill a Nephil is to kill a female descendant. Rixon's vassal is Marcie Millar's dad Hank, who is also Nora's biological dad. So by killing Nora, Rixon can be human. Rixon killed Nora's adoptive dad Harrison because he got in the way. But he's not the Black Hand. We find out after that the Black Hand is actually Hank and he leads a big cult of Nephil who want to rise up against the angels who forcibly posses their bodies every year.Understand?*exhale*So Patch saves the day (we don't really know how because Nora pussies out and faints). Rixon is gone (to hell), as is Scott. I didn't bother to explain Scott's storyline because it ended up being a bit irrelevant. Patch has now gone rogue, and only has a matter of time before the Archangels catch him and send him to hell. So he wants to spend his remaining time with Nora. They start facenomming again but uh-oh! Hank appears, and he wants to know if Nora was the one who killed Chauncey in book one. Yeah, that's a plot point to, but it's clearly not relevant until the next book.REVIEW OVER!I leave you with a screenshot of the kind of person who enjoys shit like this, and the news that I will not be picking up the next book any time soon. Probably not ever.