Review: Such a Rush by Jennifer Echols

  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 Review:

Such a Rush was a great story with a unique topic that I haven't seen before in the books I've read - flying.  This is the first book that I have read about an 18 year old pilot.  I enjoyed the story and the characters and the writing.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD

Leah is a great main character.  She's been dealt many challenges in her life, yet she's managed to make the best of things.  After living next to airports in trailer parks through her childhood, at 14, she decides she is going to become a pilot and learn to fly at the nearby airport.  Mr. Hall, the owner of a banner-flying company, teaches Leah how to fly.  She forges her mother's name on a paper to show she has permission to take lessons.  Little does she know how that will come back to haunt her four years later.  Four years later, Leah is a certified pilot with an upcoming job for Hall Aviation, but then Mr. Hall.  His son, Grayson, decides to keep the business open, and he blackmails Leah to get her to work for her.

The two twin brothers in this book are both interesting characters.  They are Grayson and Alec Hall, and they often seem like opposites of each other.  Grayson is manipulative, but he's the one that Leah has crushed on for years.  He blackmails Leah into not only working for him, but also into dating his brother, Alec.  He won't tell her why she has to date Alec, though the reason becomes clear later in the book.  It also becomes obvious later that Grayson likes Leah, yet he won't let her stop pretending to like Alec.  Alec is the other brother, and he's a nice guy, but Leah is never romantically interested in him.  She pretends to like him to please Grayson, but she dreads the moments when he'll kiss her.

Another interesting character and relationship in this story is the friendship between Leah and Molly.  Sometimes Molly says a few things that aren't that nice about Leah, but it is obvious that she doesn't mean these things.  She and Leah begin to grow farther apart in the book as Molly gets angry at Leah.  Once the reader finds out something about Molly and Alec, it is easy to understand why Molly was mad.  Leah and Molly fight over this, and there is a great scene in the end when they reconcile.

If you like YA contemporary, read this book.

Katie