Book Review: Such a Rush by Jennifer Echols

Title: Such a Rush

Author: Jennifer Echols

Publisher: MTV books

Published on: July 3, 2012

Source: own copy

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.(goodreads)

My Thoughts:

I've always liked how every YA contemporary novel I read has some sort of particular subject tagged with it: swimming, tennis, football, shopping, all sorts of social issues. But I've never read anything related to flying a plane. What I like about this is that I just don't read for fun, but at the same time I learn something from it, and it adds knowledge on my part. 

I admit that I had a difficulty with reading the first few pages of Such a Rush. I didn't particularly like the main character, Leah, at first. It's not the first time I felt like this about a main character, but it is rare. I didn't like how she viewed things, and I guess I got a lot confused with the way the events were narrated. I understand where Leah is coming from- she grew up with a screwed but not totally evil mother, poor environment where she practically supported herself. And from that moment on, I started to like her. I actually admired how she managed to be grounded even if they are poor, and her classmates at school talks trash about her all the time. It's not a position I'd like myself to be in. Grayson was another character in the dark. I did not sit well with his engineered plan and blockmails, but I understood his reasons. Different people view things differently, that's where misunderstanding root from.

I know lots of readers liked, no, loved the book, and I can see why. I liked the flying plane aspect of it, but not much a fan of how things were complicated, and howmeach character had their own emotional screwed up baggage with them. Each character was too  complicated when they didn't have to be. I felt like everyone was keeping a secret fromme when they shouldn't because I'm the freaking reader here, and I deserved to know everything, if not now but somehow by the end of the book I did. But, there wasnt't any hidden secret underneath their skins, but that's how I felt.

Anyhoo, the ending was satisfying. It was impossible but not too mpossible for every important turn around point in the story happened in one week. Just a few days even. But it was understandable since everybody knew everybody for 3 1/2 years already, but this time, sparks flew, and the real drama unfolded.