Crescendo: A Book Review

Genre: Fantasy/Romance

Reading Level: Ages 13 and up

Summary: Nora Grey's life is still far from perfect. Surviving an attempt on her life wasn't pleasant, but at least she got a guardian angel out of it: a mysterious, magnetic, gorgeous guardian angel. But, despite his role in her life, Patch has been acting anything but angelic. He's more elusive than ever and even worse, he's started spending time with Nora's arch-enemy, Marcie Millar.

Nora would have hardly noticed Scott Parnell, an old family friend who has moved back to town, if Patch hadnt been acting so distant. Even with Scott's totally infuriating attitude Nora finds herself drawn to him - despite her lingering feeling that he's hiding something.

Haunted by images of her murdered father, and questioning whether her nephilim bloodline has anything to do with his death, Nora puts herself increasingly in dangerous situations as she desperatly searches for answers. But maybe some things are better left buried, because the truth could destroy everything - and everyone - she trusts.

My Review:

"Holy Deja vu Batman!"

Only a couple pages into this book, and already they've pulled a New Moon. Yes, that's right, Nora and her ever loving guardian Angel Patch break up, over many silly, and half baked thrown together plot points. I love the fact Archangels have no problem with fallen angels having their way with humans and never interfere but an angel finding true pure love will result in a one way ticket to hell. Right there is some awesome logic. Cue the angst fest. Cue two side characters that the main ones use to make each other jealous. The only good thing about this is Nora's not yelling about a hole in her chest. The bad news? She starts doing stuff to put herself in danger so she can see her guardian angel. She starts rambling senselessly about her love/hate for Patch. oh someone please kill her now...anyone...anyone...Victoria?

"Jacob? Where are you?"

Oh there you are! What? Your name is Scott now? Okay if you say so. You've got a secret? I wonder what it could be?

"I see dead people."

Nora is haunted by ghostly images of her father, unfortunately this ghostly image seems to be trying to kill her. This seems to be the main plot of the story, along with who the mysterious "BLACK HAND" is, but Becca just sprinkled bits and pieces of it through the story between Nora's whining so I couldn't be sure. Really, I forgot what the plot was after a while. Then it would show up again and I'd be confused from the absence. The action bits were nicely written but they were so few and far that between it hampered my enjoyment of them.

"Nancy Drew would weep"

at Nora's horrible detective skills. She always gets caught snooping. Also, she #1. Jumps to conclusion after conclusion and automatically sees them as fact #2. Runs off to find someone without even knowing what they look like and #3. uses google to find a secret organizations. If it's really secret, odds are it won't pop up on google. You can only use that search engine for so many things. Nora, why must you be so hard headed?

"Put 'em together and what have you got?"

Every character in this book was just one big contradiction after another. They can't make their minds up about anything. To kill or not to kill? To break up or not to break up? To tell the secret or not to tell? Poor Vee, Nora's supposed best friend became a victim of insults, and even cruel emotional abuse that they probably won't even address as she conveniently disappears near the end of the book. Even Patch who was one of the highlight of the last book because he was completely and unabashedly jerky was so darn wimpy and annoying in this book. To make up for that Becca adds a new character named Scott that's supposed to be "enigmatic", a word here meaning "another major jerk". We're not supposed to know his secret, but we so do. As for the twist and turns and ending? Lackluster. I giggled. In fact truthfully the whole book was practically a rehash of the last one but with a different villain. We also don't get to find out anything new about the world of angels/fallen angels/nephilim.There were many things that didn't make sense, but I can't put them here because they'd spoil things for the brave few that still want to go through this series. All I'm saying is prepare for disappointment, confusion, and typo's. Even though it's called Crescendo, this one is definitely more Hush, Hush.

Content: language, name calling, violence, and sensuality.

Rating: 2 stars out of 5

Recommend: if you desperately need to know what happens to Nora and Patch. Otherwise, flee~! Flee for the sake of precious time spent reading better books.