Thursday, May 29, 2014

Review: Hush (Lakeview #1) by Stacey R. Campbell


SUMMARY
For small-town girl Blakely Henry, any hope of finding her biological parents died when she stopped believing in fairy tales and Disney princesses. That is, until she spots her boarding school’s new British exchange student, Max Ryder, staring at her. Why would a boy who looks like he stepped out of the pages of a magazine be looking at her? Because Max knows something Blakely doesn’t.
Following the tragic demise of one of Europe’s most beloved royal families, Max has stumbled upon information he thinks may lead to a lost royal heir, and now he is on a quest halfway around the world to see if he’s right.

Sworn to secrecy by his university professor and the headmaster of Lakeview Academy, Max is admitted into an exchange program with the sole purpose of finding out the truth. But will his personal feelings for Blakely get in the way? 

When a stolen email surfaces, Blakely and her friends’ lives are threatened, and Max starts to question what he is really after.

From the exclusive rolling lawns of Canada’s most prestigious boarding school to the University of Saint Andrews’ hallowed grounds, Blakely’s quiet, unassuming life is turned upside down. Is she really who she thinks she is? Can she survive long enough to help Max unearth the truth?



RATING



REVIEW
I am a staunch believer in not comparing one book to another. I know that sounds weird. But let's take The Hunger Games and Divergent. Are they similar? Yeah. Sure they are. While some people compare and contrast each book against its "counterpart", I don't really like to do that. I like seeing if a book can stand on it's own without that comparison and still be amazing. All of that being said, Hush is reminiscent of  The Princess Diaries. Is it the same? No ... but if you liked that series, you'll probably like this one as well. Well, it's similar to the movie ... I've never read the PD series. 

Anyhow, this was a really enjoyable novel. There are some parts about rugby that were really confusing to me because I don't know one thing about that game except it has a weird shaped ball, right? And the dudes wear those cute shirts ... yeah, that's pretty much all I know. So the rugby part might as well have been written in Chinese for all that I understood. It's not a negative but I took the time to note it while I was reading so I figured that I would bring it up now. 

While I really enjoyed Hush, I found that quite a few of the situations in the novel really felt stilted at times. I would be really enjoying a scene and then it would just end rather than playing out fully. This actually happened more times than I care to admit. The result was almost like I was a crash-test-dummy ... I'm going 90 miles an hour and excited as hell just to come to the end of the paragraph or chapter and the result was like hitting a brick wall. This could have been a 5 star book in my mind and it would have been so easy to just finish some of those scenes out. Ugh. Reader frustration. 

All of that being said, I REALLY liked the characters. I thought that they were absolutely perfect. The way they interacted with each other, the commentary, just everything was spot on. I liked them so much that I was excited to get to the end of the book because it's a series and there is another book about Blakely and Max, right? Right? RIGHT?!? No. No, there's not. Yes, there is another book but it doesn't follow Blakely and Max. After finding that out, I won't lie, I was more than a bit ticked. I felt like I had been robbed. Le sigh. Oh, well. I was thinking that this would be like The Selection and MAN. So disappointed. I refuse to read the 2nd novel in this series just out of protest. I feel like throwing a tantrum and seeing if the author would change SOMETHING and fix this problem. Proto. Pretty please.



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