Book Review: Silence by Becca Fitzpatrick.

Product details:
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Books
Hardcover, 438 pages.
Release date: October 4th 2011.
Rating: 2½ out of 5.
Ages: 14+
Series: Hush, Hush #3
Other books in series: Hush, Hush, Crescendo
Source: Received from publisher for review.

The noise between Patch and Nora is gone. They've overcome the secrets riddled in Patch's dark past...bridged two irreconcilable worlds...faced heart-wrenching tests of betrayal, loyalty and trust...and all for a love that will transcend the boundary between heaven and earth. Armed with nothing but their absolute faith in one another, Patch and Nora enter a desperate fight...moreThe noise between Patch and Nora is gone. They've overcome the secrets riddled in Patch's dark past...bridged two irreconcilable worlds...faced heart-wrenching tests of betrayal, loyalty and trust...and all for a love that will transcend the boundary between heaven and earth. Armed with nothing but their absolute faith in one another, Patch and Nora enter a desperate fight to stop a villain who holds the power to shatter everything they've worked for—and their love—forever.

 Please note: This review may contain spoilers for previous books in the series.

Fast-Paced and exciting with multiple plot twists and a crazy cliffhanger ending that left me wanting more, Becca Fitzpatrick’s Crescendo was a firm favourite of mine in 2010, and because of this, I had very high expectations for the third in the Hush, Hush sequence, Silence, which I had believed would be the series finale. Of course, it’s not. Shortly before the release of Silence, a fourth addition to the series was announced. I’m mentioning this because, along with a lot of other readers I was all set for epic final showdowns, more action, more suspense, more plot twists, and more romance than ever before in this book. But since it’s not the series finale, Silence doesn’t really have any of that. For me Silence was sometimes slow moving, slightly disappointing and often frustrating read that lacked the intensity of its predecessors.

I’ve already mentioned the almighty cliffhanger that occurred in the final pages of Crescendo. It left me wide-eyed in disbelief and I wanted more. I know some of you hated it. I loved it, but no matter how much we disagree on the inclusion of that particular cliffhanger, I think we’ll all agree that we wanted Silence to pick right up where Crescendo left off. It doesn’t. We wanted to find out what happened next. We don’t. Instead the plot picks up three months on from the events of that fateful night. In that time, Nora has been missing, but as we join the action she is making her way back home. Patch is nowhere to be seen, a fact that Nora doesn’t question, because she doesn’t remember him. She has no recollection of Patch or of anything else that has happened in the time since they first met.  The doctors say its amnesia, but we know that there are far more sinister means at work, and it’s up to Nora to unlock the secrets that are hidden deep inside her mind.

Here’s my major problem with the direction taken by Fitzpatrick in Silence. Nora doesn’t remember anything that’s happened since she first met Patch, but we do. As readers, we are always ten steps ahead of her in this book. This makes for frustrating reading, because Nora takes her sweet time in remembering certain things, her hot fallen angel boyfriend being one of the most important of those things.

 For me, Patch brings the same magic to the Hush, Hush series that Edward brought to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, and when Patch isn’t around everything is a little duller, a little less exciting, especially since, just like Bella Swan before her, Nora is not the most likeable character at times. Remember when Edward disappeared from the pages of New Moon? Didn’t you skip ahead to see when he returned? I had a similar urge here to skip ahead and find out when Patch would show up. He simply doesn’t appear in Silence often enough. When he does though, he has all the best lines, and he is as divine as ever. In fact, he is hotter than ever before, so why so little of him?

While Patch isn’t in Nora’s life like he was before, Scott makes reappearance and is here presented as a laid back, playful and flirtatious guy. In other words, nothing like the Scott I remember from Crescendo. As Scott isn’t a character that made any great impression on me in Crescendo I could be wrong in this assumption, but he seemed like a completely different character from the sullen, secretive guy in the previous book. Marcie Millar wasn’t her same old self in this book either, and her snarky mean girl attitude and constant bitchiness was something I actually missed from this book.  In Crescendo Marcie was a character I loved to hate, but in Silence she’s just forgettable.

In conclusion, I can’t help but think that Silence suffered due to the addition of another book to this series.  It is plot-weak at times especially when you consider that a large chunk of the book consists of Nora remembering what happened in previous books. Considering that I already knew what Nora had forgotten, that element of the story did not work for me at all. I wanted action, and I wanted Patch. I really wanted to love Silence. While this one is my least favourite book in the series, it’s not all bad. It contains some hot Patch scenes that are hotter than ever before, and it does at least set the scene for that epic final showdown I have been waiting for. Hopefully the next book will contain a whole lot more of Patch, because this series just isn’t the same when he’s not around.