Such a Rush by Jennifer Echols

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Such a Rush

Such a Rush

Author: Jennifer Echols

Publisher: MTV Books

Release Date: July 10, 2012

Summary (Goodreads):

A sexy and poignant romantic tale of a young daredevil pilot caught between two brothers. 

When I was fourteen, I made a decision. If I was doomed to live in a trailer park next to an airport, I could complain about the smell of the jet fuel like my mom, I could drink myself to death over the noise like everybody else, or I could learn to fly.

Heaven Beach, South Carolina, is anything but, if you live at the low-rent end of town. All her life, Leah Jones has been the grown-up in her family, while her mother moves from boyfriend to boyfriend, letting any available money slip out of her hands. At school, they may diss Leah as trash, but she’s the one who negotiates with the landlord when the rent’s not paid. At fourteen, she’s the one who gets a job at the nearby airstrip.

But there’s one way Leah can escape reality. Saving every penny she can, she begs quiet Mr. Hall, who runs an aerial banner-advertising business at the airstrip and also offers flight lessons, to take her up just once. Leaving the trailer park far beneath her and swooping out over the sea is a rush greater than anything she’s ever experienced, and when Mr. Hall offers to give her cut-rate flight lessons, she feels ready to touch the sky.

By the time she’s a high school senior, Leah has become a good enough pilot that Mr. Hall offers her a job flying a banner plane. It seems like a dream come true . . . but turns out to be just as fleeting as any dream. Mr. Hall dies suddenly, leaving everything he owned in the hands of his teenage sons: golden boy Alec and adrenaline junkie Grayson. And they’re determined to keep the banner planes flying.

Though Leah has crushed on Grayson for years, she’s leery of getting involved in what now seems like a doomed business—until Grayson betrays her by digging up her most damning secret. Holding it over her head, he forces her to fly for secret reasons of his own, reasons involving Alec. Now Leah finds herself drawn into a battle between brothers—and the consequences could be deadly.

My Thoughts:

This story starts out with Leah, the main character talking about how she cam to be at Heaven Beach and the circumstances behind her wanting to learn how to fly.

We learn that she wants to learn to fly after living by many various airports, every where that she's lived. First, she gets a job at the nearby, little airport as a sort of jack-of-all trades. She works at this job and saves all the money she can to take at least one flying lesson. When she succeeds, she approaches Mr. Hall, the flight instructor. But, she is deterred when he hands her a parent permission slip to get signed by her mother. 

Now, we learn about her mother. Her mother has moved both herself and Leah from place to place on whim, or when she found a new boyfriend. Leah's mother is neglectful and does anything she can to get money, including selling her TVs to mooching the money off of Leah. Leah knows that if she handed her form to her mother, her mother would be angry about how Leah was spending her money. So, Leah forges her mother's signature.

When she goes back to Mr. Hall with the now 'signed' form, he takes her out on her first flying lesson and she discovers how much she really loves flying. This makes Mr. Hall and Leah grow close in a father-daughter way. Mr. Hall's sons (who live with their mother after the divorce) do not like this and though jealousy, or maybe envy, they make up a malicious lie about her. She hears it and estranges herself from them...

That is, until some deaths occur that tears Leah from her flying and brings back Mr. Hall's twin sons Alec and Grayson. Grayson, the twin that Leah feels an overwhelmingly strong attraction for. Grayson, who is blackmailing Leah into doing something-- two somethings-- for him.

I REALLY, REALLY loved this book! in my opinion, this was actually the best book that Jennifer Echols has written, to date.

I liked Leah's character. She was getting bullied at school, yet she stuck through it and didn't let the bullies know if it dented her armor or not. Though she lived in a trailer home, she was not like the stereotypical trailer park people that everybody, except her friend Molly, thought she was. She was just trying to survive through her mom's flakiness and mooching while doing something that she absolutely loved, flying airplanes.

Let's not forget about Grayson! A lot of times, I wanted to punch him in the face, or know what he was thinking at a given moment. I actually wish that this story was in alternating P-O-Vs. It would've been SO much better. Closer to the end of the novel, I started to see Grayson's true colors, though, instead of what he showed on the outside. It made me understand him so much more.

On the whole, I liked Such a Rush's plot line. It was different than all of the cliched stuff in other literature. Also, I learned a lot of facts about planes, for example, that I hadn't known before. Yay to learning something new!

So, I had to, of course, give this book a five. What else would I have given it?

5 hearts

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