Such A Rush - Jennifer Echols
It took me awhile to figure out a rating for this one. It had parts that I really really enjoyed and parts that I didn't like at all. Quite obviously the good parts won out. I was really excited to read this book, because it sounded like a book with a strong female lead who was a go-getter and fought for what she believed in. While this is exactly what Leah was, I still couldn't get over other aspects of the book. I'll get to those later. The airplanes were wonderful to read about, as well as the rough journey that everybody went through in the duration of this story. It was fantastic but not perfect.
For as long as she can remember, Leah has constantly been dragged around by her flighty mother to live in the cheap parts of town that always seemed to be near airports. Never staying for long because the money always ran out. However, now in Heaven Beach, they seemed to have settled down for a bit. Leah meanders over to the airstrip in search of a job and hence finds herself one step closer to the airplanes that she's fallen in love with. After accumulating some of the money from her job that she wasn't giving her mother towards rent, she confronts the owner of a banner advertising business and asks for just one trip in the airplane. He sees the awe in her eyes and a type of determination and offers her discounted flying lessons. Fast forward a few years and Leah is a swell enough pilot for Mr. Hall to offer her a job flying banners for his company. Unfortunately, Mr. Hall passes away and Leah figures that her chance of flying banners is gone, until the Hall twins step up and become determined to keep the business going. While her part in the company is forged with blackmail, Leah can't complain about being able to do what she loves, even if it entails some awkward and confusing moments.
I don't have many problems with the writing so much as certain bits of the story. I feel like the author did a fine job with the writing and story, but just meshed in some irking things that I didn't quite get into.
For starters, the whole fact that somehow Leah is just written off as a slut just because she lives in a trailer and can't afford multiple clothes. At first I was severely confused as to where all of this was coming from, as we didn't really get an instance as to why this was cemented in everyone's brains. Well, other than the fact apparently so many guys came onto her because of her good looks and spread untrue rumors. Maybe this is all that it really takes, but it still seemed to come out of nowhere to me. For the most part I liked how she dealt with these people, but sometimes she really gave into them and didn't tell anybody differently, which kind of diminished it all in my opinion. I dunno, that's just a personal feeling.
Next, certain things that happened in the book did not seem like everything was just taking place in a week's time. For me it felt so much longer, and I was constantly wondering when they were going to go back to school because everything else just seemed so unrealistic to me.
One thing that I absolutely loved about this book were the airplanes. All of the in-plane and flight descriptions were cool to read about and showed the the author truly did their research. Really, it was all so much fun and I'm not even that big a fan of airplanes at all. Also, Mr. Hall was wonderful and I'm sad that he had to go for the story to take some kind of turn.
The characters were perhaps the most irritating part of this book. Let me just go through all of the characters. First, we have Leah, who was a very strong female lead but always had an incredibly big chip on her shoulder. She was all hung up on being poor and called a slut, that she just gave in to all of these things and let people treat her terribly. Truthfully, I know what it's like to be poor and live in a trailer, which means absolutely nothing when it comes down to you as a person. She lets these people tell her who she's supposed to be and dresses according to their accusations(which may be the only clothes that she owns, but still) and I constantly found myself getting frustrated with her. Sure, when it came down to it, she was strong and appeared to know who she was, but she kept letting these other people drag her down instead of telling the truth and setting things straight. Sure, these people were awful to her and treated her like trash, but that didn't mean that she had to treat the people who were kind to her in the way that she did.
Otherwise, Leah was unbelievably tough and headstrong and it impressed me that she pushed so hard to fly. She was going through some really rough times, what with her flighty mother and crazy ex, if we can even call him that. I sympathized with her a lot for these things, even rooted for her in the end for planning her future life. I liked that Echols didn't make it so easy that Leah could have just moved in with Grayson. I dunno, I feel that it boosted her character in my mind for planning on doing things for herself. It was really impressive and kept her in my good books.
However, she might be the only decent character, besides Mr. Hall that came out of this book. I had serious frustrations with Grayson, Alec and Molly. The most frustrating character though, was definitely Grayson. Sure, he was handsome and an adrenaline junkie, but he also tried controlling too many people's lives, and I thought that it was a bit ridiculous. First, that of his twin brother's, as if he weren't old enough to make his own decisions, and then Leah's because she was conveniently available and easy to blackmail. I don't know who made him king of everybody's lives, but I certainly didn't like it.
And then, as he's telling Leah that she has to become involved with his brother, he keeps 'accidentally' allowing himself to kiss and touch her and the whole thing was just frustrating. I get that you're in love with her, but don't tell her to date your brother and then continue kind of having relations with her at the same time. It's confusing for you both and just doesn't work.
Then there was Alec, who didn't really seem to have much personality or development at all. I didn't really dislike him, I just didn't get him at all because were weren't given enough of him. For the main character's supposed to be love interest, you'd think that they'd play a bigger role in the story. But, alas, they don't.
Finally, Molly, oh Molly. She was all over the place and emotional and just too much for my personal taste. Leah always described her differently, so we didn't know for sure if the real her was stuck up and bitchy or understanding. Half of the things that she did just didn't make sense to me, and her reactions were always at different ends of the spectrum that I kind of gave up on trying to like her after a short time.
Overall, Such A Rush left me confused and a tad bit frustrated. The overall storyline and flight descriptions were superb, but became quickly overshadowed by the irritating characters. While the main character Leah did show some redeeming qualities and was certainly a strong individual, a lot of the other characters kind of brought her down, in my opinion.
I did enjoy the book, but not to the extent that I imagined that I would. Perhaps you'll have better luck with it?
☆☆☆/5
Recommend?: If you want a strong female lead.
If you want some wonderful flight descriptions and enjoy contemporary fiction.
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