Such a Rush - Jennifer Echols

Pages: 325

Publisher: MTV Books

Release Date: 18^th December 2012

Edition: US paperback, purchased copy

Other Titles by this Author: Major Crush, The Boys Next Door, Going Too Far, The Ex Games, Forget You, Love Story, The One That I Want

A sexy and poignant romantic tale of a young daredevil 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 everyone else, or I could learn to fly.

For Leah Jones, reality is life in a rundown trailer park with an irresponsible mother. But there’s one escape. With an after-school job at the local airstrip, she manages to afford cut-rate flight lessons. At the controls of a small plane, she leaves the trailer park far below, swooping out over the seas in the ultimate rush.

By her senior year of high school, Leah’s dreams come true: she snags a job for an aerial-banner advertising business. Then the owner dies, leaving everything in the hands of his teenage sons: golden boy Alec and adrenaline junkie Grayson. Though Leah has crushed on Grayson for years, she tries to stay clear of the apparently doomed business – until Grayson digs up her most damning secret. Holding it over Leah’s head, he forces her to fly for secret reasons of his own, reasons involving Alec. She’s been drawn into a battle between brothers – and the consequences could be deadly.

There’s just something endlessly involving about Jennifer Echols’ romantic dramas and I devour each one of them. Such a Rush is one of her best yet.

Life in an American trailer park is a totally foreign concept to me; we don't really having anything nearly equivalent to that over here, the closest being travellers that get pushed on every few months. Even with that, I still felt I knew what it would be like because of the assumptions you make about trailer parks and the people that live in them. In the case of Leah, that definitely wasn’t true, but with lots of the people living around her, my stereotyping really wasn’t far off.

I did think that Leah was a ‘typical trailer park’ girl at first, but I quickly realised that although she was brought up in one, she couldn’t be farther from it in most circumstances. She got herself a job as soon as she could, saved her money, worked to achieve her dream and pulled herself above her surroundings. Leah isn’t completely clean-cut though – her roots were very visible in moments of Such a Rush. She isn’t the girl she or anyone else thought she was.

The setting of the airport was unusual and fantastic – I loved it. Learning to fly isn’t something that I’ve ever considered a possibility, but now I really, really want to learn. It’s thrilling, dangerous, so freeing and a brilliant career to embark on. Of course there was the added bonus of Grayson and Alec, the gorgeous Hall brothers. I was instantly taken with bad-boy Grayson and the spark he had with Leah crackled through the pages.

Such a Rush has Jennifer Echols’ trademark high stakes, drama and steamy romance and I loved it. I can't wait for the fantastic sounding Dirty Little Secret when it’s released this summer.

For my 2013 YA Contemporary Challenge

Sophie