Get excited, everybody. As of today, we are done with Hush, Hush forever! I hope you’ve all enjoyed it as much as we’ve hated it!
Chapter Twenty-Eight
We last left our heroes (or whatever) at the high school at night during a really bad storm that stopped Nora and Patch from driving home earlier but then suddenly wasn’t a problem anymore. Elliot has kidnapped Vee and is holding her hostage in the high school, where they call Nora and Vee’s all “Come to the high school at midnight to play hide and seek! That’s plausible!” and Elliot’s all “If you don’t come here right now, I’ll kill Vee” and Vee’s all “haha what?” (presumably). Nora and Patch drive to the school and Patch goes in to solve the problem! And then Nora waits for Patch to solve the problem, gets bored, and goes in, once again telling us every excruciating detail of the floor plan of a building she’s memorized.
At the first intersection I mentally assessed my surroundings. Turning left would lead to the band and orchestra rooms and the cafeteria. Turning right would lead to administrative offices, as well as a double staircase. I continued straight
Then why bother telling us? Can we just kill off some characters already?
Hazy gray light filtered through a skylight directly overhead as the moon broke between clouds, illuminating the features of the body I’d tripped on. Jules was on his back, his expression fixed in a blank stare.
Haha, of course. Jules, the “I really don’t give a shit about being in this novel” character, is the first to die, and, thus, get to stop being in the novel. High five, Jules! Way to commit.
The lights out in the hall powered to life, illuminating the darkness of the library. Elliot’s body lay a few feet away, his mouth parted, his skin ashen.
Elliot is dead too! Whaaaat but he’s the bad guy!
His eyes rolled my way, and he reached an arm out to me.
Wait. Either he’s not dead, or, and I can’t believe I’m making this joke and not Ariel, Elliot is now a zombie. Although, seriously, who attacked him?
“Did you think I was dead?” I could hear the gloating, icy smile in his voice. “I couldn’t pass up one last chance to play with you. Humor me. Who did you think the bad guy was? Elliot?”
Wait a second, Jules is the villain?
Jules ripped off the headlamp and ski mask. “In the flesh.”
Jules has been the main villain this whole time? What the flying fuck? Jules! What happened to being a character completely devoid of any personality and literally only ever being in the novel to be bored with the plot? What the hell, Jules?
This was a side of Jules I’ d never seen.
Yeah! It’s a side!
He’d always been so quiet, so sullen, radiating a complete lack of interest in everyone around him. He stayed in the background, drawing little attention, little suspicion. Very clever of him, I thought.
Yes. Let’s have a background character who’s had maybe seven lines in the book so far turn out to be the primary antagonist. I bet you thought that was pretty clever, Becca Fitzpatrick.
Jules takes Nora’s phone from her and breaks it in half with superhuman strength. Then he tells her about this one time he lived in France and owned horses. Then he tells her that he killed off Elliot because Elliot knew too much. Then, if you couldn’t figure it out from when he randomly started talking about that time a long time ago he lived in France (like a long time ago. In France.), he more or less explicitly tells us that’s he’s Chauncey, that guy from the introduction.
“Every year at the start of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, he takes control of my body.”
So we now know everything about the opening scene except why Chauncey/Jules gave an unidentified girl silver from his shoes, and we never do find this out in this book. Okay! Jules monologues for a long time and Nora gets a scalpel from the bio room and stabs him.
In a panic, I brought the scalpel up as hard as I could. It met his palm, slicing through skin. […] Not waiting, I plunged the scalpel down into his thigh. […]
“Valiant attempt,” he grunted. “But that won’t kill me. I’m Nephilim. I’m immortal.”
Also because you stabbed him in the leg, but, yeah, immortality’s a pretty good reason too.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Nora kicks Jules in the crotch and escapes to go find Vee, who is being kept in the eZine lab because Jules wanted to make things really obvious, I guess. Nora walks into the room that Vee is in because Jules locked every door with chains except that one that Vee didn’t leave through at any point.
Nora gets Vee out of the room, hears Jules, and they split up, and Nora gets trapped in the gym. Then Patch shows up, Jules explains his pretty good reasons for hating Patch again, and threatens to shoot Nora. So Patch possesses Nora’s body and punches Jules, because apparently he can do that now.
I won’t be able to stay inside you much longer, Patch spoke to my thoughts. It’s not Cheshvan and I’m not allowed.
Then Patch and Jules both fight to get into Nora’s mind and Nora tries to climb a ladder but can’t because she doesn’t know what’s real, so she’s stuck on the ladder and Jules is about to kill her, and all her regrets flash before her eyes!
Finding [Patch] was like finding someone I didn’t know I was searching for. He’d come into my life too late, and now was leaving too soon.
Okay, technically he isn’t leaving your life so much as you’re dying and everybody and everything is, but whatevs.
Jules laughter carried like a cold whisper. “It makes no difference to me whether I shoot you or you fall to your death.”
“It does make a difference,” I said, my voice small but confident. “You and I share the same blood.” I lifted my hand precariously, showing him my birthmark. “I’m your descendant. If I sacrifice my blood, Patch will become human and you’ll die. It’s written in the The Book of Enoch.”
Well, Nora’s never read The Book of Enoch and we’ve never learned anything about the Nephil dying if his offspring dies or sacrifices herself or anything like that. Maybe Nora’s bluffing.
I threw myself off the rafter.
Or, um… goddammit.
Chapter Thirty
Nora wakes up not dead.
“When you jumped, the sacrifice killed Jules. Technically, when you came back, he should have too. But since he didn’t have a soul, he had nothing to revive his body.”
None of these rules existed before the last chapter, but sure.
“I came back?” […]
“I didn’t accept your sacrifice. I turned it down.”
Whaaaaaaaaat but that means
“Are you saying you gave up a human body for me?”
He lifted my bandaged hand. Underneath all the gauze, my knuckles throbbed from punching Jules. Patch kissed each finger, taking his time, keeping his eyes glued to mine. “What good is a body if I can’t have you?”
Anyway, Nora is conveniently out of trouble because the police think Jules’s death was a suicide.
“Well,” I said at last, “if the police are ruling it a suicide, I guess that’s what happened. After all, this is modern-day America. We have the benefit of forensics.”
Apparently that’s a sentence that’s supposed to mean something. In conclusion, Vee’s alive, Elliot’s alive, and Patch is an angel again.
“You can’t see my wings,” he said. “They’re made of spiritual matter.”
Also he’s Nora’s guardian angel now.
“I get my very own guardian angel? What, exactly, is your job description?”
“Guard your body.” His smile tipped higher. “I take my job seriously, which means I’m going to need to get acquainted with the subject matter on a personal level.”
Aaaaaaaand we’re done here.
There are more of these books???????? How??? Why??
caeryjyr
In the next book Nora fires Patch as her guardia angel, he becomes Marcie’s (anorexic pig) instead, an equivalent of Jacob appears, and they still don’t have sex!!!
Congratulations on finishing (:
OH SWEET JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL THAT WAS AWFUL. THAT ENDING. WHY. WHAT WAS THE FUCKING POINT OF THAT?!
I haven’t mentioned this before, but I was completely unable to follow the structure of this book. Even with your brilliant summaries, I still found myself surprised–and very frequently so–by inconsequential details that seem to have popped out of nowhere. Nora has a birthmark? And did this birthmark of hers mysteriously pop up in the latter half of the book, or what? Because when I started seeing mentions of that birthmark, I could only scratch my head and ask, “Whuuuuuuuuuuuut???”
Really, if this is supposed to be a “New York Times bestseller”, give me Oe Kenzaburo any day. I’d rather reread “The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away”, and that story was meant to be fucking confusing. But this pile of drivel, which is supposed to be light entertainment, makes Oe’s short stories look perfectly linear and logical. AWSOGWGiEON