Such a Rush by Jennifer Echols

Title: Such a Rush [Goodreads][Amazon]
Publisher: MTV Books
Format: ARC
Release Date: July 10, 2012
In My Opinion: Worth a try!
One Line: A poignant, emotional story about self-discovery and passion that’s perfect for young readers.

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

High school senior Leah Jones loves nothing more than flying. While she’s in the air, it’s easy to forget life with her absentee mother at the low-rent end of a South Carolina beach town. When her flight instructor, Mr. Hall, hires her to fly for his banner advertising business, she sees it as her ticket out of the trailer park. And when he dies suddenly, she’s afraid her flying career is gone forever.

But Mr. Hall’s teenage sons, golden boy Alec and adrenaline junkie Grayson, are 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.

Let me start off by saying I adore Jennifer’s writing. She’s poignant, detailed, and really knows how to steam up a scene, especially given the constraints of the YA genre. There is a very sad element that remains throughout the whole story due to Mr. Hall’s death and I really felt for Leah having to deal with a barely-there mother and a crazy reputation. There is a lot of heartache and self-discovery in Such a Rush, which makes it a perfect book for young readers.

My favorite parts of this book was anything with Grayson and Leah in it, which I felt wasn’t enough. Although I did like learning about Leah’s less-than-stellar life and how she didn’t define herself by how or where she grew up. Leah is definitely a kick-ass female lead and I loved how she never let things get to her, always striving for the best for herself and never giving up on her dreams. Grayson was a bit harder to like at first, with his attitude and all, but you eventually learn to love him and you can’t deny his sexiness, right from the start. Alec is very sweet and nice, too, but I didn’t really connect with his character.

I didn’t really care for all the talk about airplanes. Even if I’m not interested in a topic, I don’t mind learning about it and seeing the wonder if it through another person’s eyes, but I felt like Jennifer talked too much about airplanes. She would describe all the facets of planes and flying down to the most minuscule thing and I don’t think it did anything for the story. Yes, I get that Leah loves flying and all, but a bit more focus on the story and romance, less on the technical aspects of it all would’ve made me enjoy the book a lot more. I found myself skipping all the plane-related parts except when it was relevant to the story, which in my opinion, wasn’t a lot. You need to understand Leah’s passion for the flying and her relationship with the Hall family, yes, but it could’ve been done without so much talk about planes.