I hate Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick. I hate how I need to put a comma in that title. I hate how poorly the quartet’s names fit together- Hush, Hush, Crescendo, Silence, Finale. I hate how it someone, apparently, came back thanks to TikTok. I know my bad books, and I know my angel para-ro from the 2010s. When I say Hush is the worst of them, I mean it. I know it. It is the worst of this era, every problem from every other book condensed into far too long tomes of disgusting nonsense.
When people say they liked Fallen, I kinda get it. When people say Sweet Evil is a guilty pleasure, I understand. There’s merit to trash, if you read it lightly and don’t let the vile bits seep. But when people say they like Hush, Hush, that it is still their favourite even in a guilty way, I cannot grasp that. I want to hold these people. Shake their hands. Tell them, ‘it’s okay. It’s okay. You’re not to blame, but you have to let Hush, Hush go. There is nothing redeemable here. There is no honour even to shamefully like it. Please help me kill it. Please join me.’
I’m a fast reader, but I get stopped often by life. The full quartet of Hush, Hush took me four years to get through for a reason. Finale I had to slam down fast lest I never see it done. And with the last page, the last lines, that freeing end, I felt a great weight lift off me. Never read Hush, Hush, but let me explain to you why. Let me tell you of a book that only knows hate and abuse and plot points so clearly made up on the spot the full plot summary is going to sound like gibberish. Let me kill this book where it stands, finally. Never let it live again.
Plot
At the end of the third book, Nora was forcibly given leadership over the Nephilim army via blood oath and magical blood transfusion by her secret evil father Hank, the Black Hand. The book starts with a prologue where we see this Nephil army for the first time, including a mass of black robe-wearing, hooded figures who form a mysterious upper council. The Nephil seem to worship Hank, perhaps because he seemingly left pretty much everyone in town mildly mind controlled to like him. The Nephil don’t like this random Nora girl is now in charge of them, but accept it as Hank’s will and swear her in. There’s talk of branding her, as they do all their members, but Nora’s childhood friend Scott talks them into instead abducting and branding a random angel off screen instead.
This prologue immediately stumbles into a problem it will never resolve: this goddamn army. The Nephil army is in theory what the book is about: if Nora ever stops being in charge of it, she dies, because of a blood oath she swore to a dead man. The rules of this oath are never explained and do not make much sense, and much like every other aspect of this book and series, are clearly made up on the spot and not considered for a moment. This is true of devilcraft, of prophecies, of burning feathers, of the literal gates of Hell- not one second of thought has gone into the rules, and the main purpose of any plot point is to seem dramatic but be easily beaten when the time is right.
That’s why it isn’t much of a surprise when I say the Nephil army never comes back, really. It isn’t important in the slightest. These black robed figures have a net zero impact. The leader, a woman always called Lisa Martin, is absolutely no one and nothing despite being the immortal head honcho (under Nora) of a Nephilim army. Nora does not meet with or speak to any of them over the course of the very long book, and they return for the climatic final battle because… it’s a para-ro book of the time, it has to end in a climatic final battle.
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Crow Defeats Books 