Such a Rush

It’s been a year or so since the last time I read a Jennifer Echols novel. Let’s just say that experience was not pleasant. Her last book-Love Story was just wrong. Like it was written by someone else. This one makes up for that mistake.

Every book Jennifer E. wrote was about some kind of profession. Going Too Far(my favorite) was about police officers, Forget You was about swimmers, Love Story about upcoming authors and finally this one was about pilots. The author really did her work and I felt like she knows about planes.

Now to the story. Leah has had such a tough life I wanted to hug her so many times. She lives with her mother in a trailer park. She was practically on her own since she was ten because all her mother cared are her boyfriends. She started paying the bills when she was 14 years old working at the private airport. People from school don’t like her because they think she is white trash. They think she sleeps around with guys. So she puts on this “tough girl” act, like she doesn’t care about anything. I can relate to her because people tend to misjudge me because I wear strange clothes most of the time and have green or blue hair. It’s hard not to care what other people say and think about you. After her boss dies the airport is left to Mr. Hall’s teenage sons. Leah has had a crush on Grayson for years but he is rood to her and blackmails her in dating his brother. Can she do it even though she likes Grayson? She needs the job so she could move out of the trailer and one day hope to become a commercial pilot.

I know it seems like there is a dreaded love triangle in this book but I assure you, that is not the case. It was pretty clear from the start who is the love interest. Leah has grown up so much throughout the novel and she shows us that everything is possible, you just can’t quit on your dreams.

Ok confession time. This is my first Jennifer Echols book, *GASP* but there needs to be an understanding that I didn't really get into YA until about two years ago. I had read in middle school, but it wasn't until the end of high school that I redeveloped a love. Even then it wasn't until a few semesters into college that I got super serious about it. So please, my dear readers, please forgive me. Anyways, I can say that I understand what the hype was all about. I'm surprised the book stayed in my hands... I thought it was going to take me away.

Leah is what she considers "trailer park trash" and her mother is the epitome of "bad mom" and there is no present father. Despite her circumstances, or maybe because of, Leah decides that she wants to learn to fly. All of their trailer parks in the many moves have been right next to the airport. Leah finds a love in flying that many of us will never experience. Mr. Hall, owner of Hall Aviation, agrees to start giving her flying lessons. Eventually, she kind of becomes the daughter he never had. He helps her get her commercial pilot license *which is really a big deal* and he is on his way to help her reach the next level. Sadly, he passes away. His son, the always-into-trouble Grayson, comes home to agree to run the business with the help of his twin brother Alec. Sadly, their problems are great and Leah is dragged into them. Flying is all she's ever wanted to do, but the twins might just take that away too.

Anyways, that might be an extreme summary, but I'd say it's pretty accurate. So let's start with Leah. The girl is super tough on the outside, but her life has had a huge impact on her. If I was her, I'd probably be a bit bitter too. Still, with Mr. Hall's reigning influence over her life, Leah is a person full of strong character. He kept her from making some very stupid mistakes because he gave her something to live for. I really admired that man, and in turn Leah for sticking with it. She had a passion that I rarely see among teens. That passion made her very likable. Her best friend Molly was a riot. She was always into something too.

Ok so the boys. The Hall twins. Smokey the Bear needs to keep his eyes out for these two. SMOKING!!! Alec was a total sweetheart and a "pretty" boy. Grayson pretty much forces Leah to "date" his twin. That part of the book is definitely interesting, if not incredibly frustrating. Why frustrating?? Because Grayson and Leah are definitely into each other. The tension when they were around each other? Yeah it lead to some things. That's why I would recommend this book to older girls. I wouldn't leave it with my middle schoolers. Also Grayson tended to run hot and cold. One minute he was being a total sweetheart and taking care of Leah when she obviously couldn't do it. The other, he was being a class-a jerk. Talk about wanting to hit yourself in the head with the book....

My absolute favorite part of the book? The airplanes. I have the secret dream of taking flying lessons. Ms. Echols really did her research. She used a lot of plane jargon in an "even an idiot could understand this" type of way. I learned a lot, and I seriously wanted to go out and fly. I had to remind myself that I really knew nothing about flying a plane. But the time in the air in the book was probably my favorite part. I loved the idea of flying.

Review originally posted at: http://framed-in-words.blogspot.co.nz/

Contemporary novels really aren't my thing. I don't mind reading a few once in a while, but the whole everyday drama kind of bores me. High School drama especially. But I wanted to have a go at reading Such a Rush as there had been some high praises about it and also the author seemed to have written nice books before. It was actually a pretty good contemporary YA novel. I didn't completely enjoy it, but I still liked it enough. It's probably not something I will re-read, but I finished it and felt like it was a book worth reading.

This book talked about a girl (Leah) who lived in trailer parks next to airports all her life, moving around with her "white trash mother" (quote from book). She had to fend for herself and when she was fourteen, she decided that if she was going to have something she wanted in live for once she was going to learn to fly. She became a talented pilot. However, when she was eighteen and could take flying as a pilot as a proper job, her teacher and employer died suddenly, leaving his buiness for his twin sons. The girl then got blackmailed to work for one of the sons and there developed a story between her and the two brothers.

I learnt a lot about flying and planes through reading this. I had never really shown much of an interest in aeroplanes before, and never thought about what someone would need to do to become a pilot. Maybe once upon a time when I was younger, I wanted to learn to fly, but I would never be able to become a pilot anyway as I don't have perfect 20/20 vision. It was interesting reading about the pilot trainings (I finding out the trainings are actually very expensive) and about how to actually fly a plane. When the main characters, especially Leah, the central character, got a rush as they fly their plane, I felt the rush too. When they saw the amazing view from the top of the sky and enjoy their freedom in the air, I felt that too. And that was what I loved most about this book. I seemed to experience those particular experience (flying experiences) with the characters. The author even included some episodes about crash-landing planes! Not awesome to experience, but pretty cool to read about.

Perhaps it's because the huge difference between the main character Leah and me, I never really felt close to her as a character. I also don't quite feel comfortable with some of the events and experiences of the characters (especially Leah) in this book. Like the book had put it, "we live in different worlds". Her life story is so different from mine, and maybe I would have understood her better if I knew someone in real life who was like her. But I don't. So it was hard for me to picture and understand Leah's life, always moving, living in trailer parks without a real home, having to care for herself and even paying rent and food because no one cares for her. It would have been a hard life. I'm not going to try to say I understand her life now, because I don't. I do know that even though she had a hard life, she hated sympathy and be the charity case. She had a back bone and she took control of her own life, making it the best she could. I admire that. I also admire the fact that even though her unemployed single mother (her mother had her when she was fifteen) was a very bad influence on her, she vowed not to be like her mother and have a good life herself. She never scooped low like other girls living in trailer parks. Because how poor she was, she always got bullied, but she also stood up for herself and had control over situations. She was tough. I respected that. Leah was an independent and likable character, but I truly can't compare myself with her and some of her actions/interactions.

Grayson and Alec, who were the twin brothers, were both puzzling characters. I really didn't get Grayson and Leah's relationship. And I can't say more because it would ruin parts of the book for those who want to read it. Let's just say it's rather bizzare for my mind, but maybe not for some. Alec and Grayson were so different, yet sometimes they think about the same things and act the same. I'm not sorry when I say that neither of them are who I would like to have as my boyfriend. Maybe Leah liked them, or one of them, but again, they are not really people I'm used to.

At the start of the book, the writing of the book seemed to drag on a bit. It's not so much the plot that dragged, the plot actually moved at a good pace, but at the beginning the author described somethings too long. She also wrote a bit too much about Leah's reactions towards things or her thoughts (it's written in first-person). The way she wrote, particularly at the start, seemed to distance the actual events took place from the readers. At first, it felt like I'm looking at all of what's happening from far away. This changed as we read on. The reader became more involved in the story and the dragging disappeared. I was actually very happy with the ending. For once, yay! I liked the way the book ended, and I liked how the characters matured and changed over the course of the book.

Not just factual things, this book also taught me and showed a lot about lost and forgiveness, as well as moving on with life. Some of the topics in there were quite heavy, but there was always some light relief, the rush and high of flying, as well as genuine love. The author described those themes very well and it was a pleasure to read and learn about these things. The ways the characters dealt with their grief and problems were also things that I could learn from, and for some of them, warnings to the reader. I liked how that out of all the pressure and trouble, true love can still be found, that love can and will last through the hardest of all things.

All in all, this is a book worth reading. It's a good stand-alone book and I haven't read one of those in ages. It's rather emotional and can be heavy at times. But through reading it, you can perhaps learn something new and have a better understanding of some people's lives. The writing was a good quality. I may not have connected very much with the characters in this book due to different dispositions, but it was an enjoyable, different and unique read. If you like contemporary, you should definitely give it a go, if not it's still worth putting on your TBR list and have a read when you have time.

Let me start off by saying I adore Jennifer’s writing. She’s poignant, detailed, and really knows how to steam up a scene, especially given the constraints of the YA genre. There is a very sad element that remains throughout the whole story due to Mr. Hall’s death and I really felt for Leah having to deal with a barely-there mother and a crazy reputation. There is a lot of heartache and self-discovery in Such a Rush, which makes it a perfect book for young readers.

My favorite parts of this book was anything with Grayson and Leah in it, which I felt wasn’t enough. Although I did like learning about Leah’s less-than-stellar life and how she didn’t define herself by how or where she grew up. Leah is definitely a kick-ass female lead and I loved how she never let things get to her, always striving for the best for herself and never giving up on her dreams. Grayson was a bit harder to like at first, with his attitude and all, but you eventually learn to love him and you can’t deny his sexiness, right from the start. Alec is very sweet and nice, too, but I didn’t really connect with his character.

I didn’t really care for all the talk about airplanes. Even if I’m not interested in a topic, I don’t mind learning about it and seeing the wonder if it through another person’s eyes, but I felt like Jennifer talked too much about airplanes. She would describe all the facets of planes and flying down to the most minuscule thing and I don’t think it did anything for the story. Yes, I get that Leah loves flying and all, but a bit more focus on the story and romance, less on the technical aspects of it all would’ve made me enjoy the book a lot more. I found myself skipping all the plane-related parts except when it was relevant to the story, which in my opinion, wasn’t a lot. You need to understand Leah’s passion for the flying and her relationship with the Hall family, yes, but it could’ve been done without so much talk about planes.