Review: RUSH by Eve Silver (*****)

Title: RUSH
Author: Eve Silver
Series: The Game
Book #: 1
Pages: 361
Reading Level: YA
Book Rating: 
Goodreads Rating: 3.88
Published: June 11th, 2013

So what’s the game now? This, or the life I used to know?

When Miki Jones is pulled from her life, pulled through time and space into some kind of game—her carefully controlled life spirals into chaos. In the game, she and a team of other teens are sent on missions to eliminate the Drau, terrifying and beautiful alien creatures. There are no practice runs, no training, and no way out. Miki has only the guidance of secretive but maddeningly attractive team leader Jackson Tate, who says the game isn’t really a game, that what Miki and her new teammates do now determines their survival, and the survival of every other person on this planet. She laughs. He doesn’t. And then the game takes a deadly and terrifying turn.

Taschima's POV:

After the ending you could have heard me screaming "YOU CANNOT DO THIS TO ME! YOU JUST CAN'T!" over and over again. All my neighbors must have thought I was crazy. Maybe I am, but the cliffhanger ending was just too much for my poor soul. Rush was, dare I say it, an exhilarating ride (Did you think I was going to say something else? Gotcha). It has tons of action, a quick pace, and a tantalizing cover. What more can a girl ask for?

"Then I hear it again. The screaming. But it's far away, growing fainter. It fades until I hear only the sound of my own heartbeat, growing ever slower. Slower.Slower.Stay still. Let it pass, the boy says in my head.Sounds like a plan.I wait for the next heartbeat, but it doesn't come."

While it felt way too short, and perhaps the story was a little rushed (did it again!), I felt like in the wide scope of things RUSH brings something to the YA market that we hadn't seen before. It isn't the monsters, those may be familiar, or even the romance (good girl falls for mysterious boy? Been there, done that!), that make RUSH an interesting and captivating book but rather it is the new concept of a parallel world we go once we die in order to fight in this otherworldly war that looks and feels a lot like if you had been thrown neck deep into one of your favorite, and obviously terrifying, first player shooter (video game). It is also the characters. What makes me give a book 5 bright and shiny stars? It's all about the characters (and some witty banter).

Miki is a bit of a control freak, down to earth girl who recognizes the world for that it is. I liked her, she is very cool and smart.

"I wish I could. I wish I thought it mattered. My friends all get so excited about things like movies and dances and shopping; they feel things so intensely. I go through the motions and bluff extremely well, but I'm not like them. I haven't been for almost two years. And that kills me. I just want to be... normal again."

She is also a little sad, but the kind of sad you can sympathize with. Other characters I enjoyed reading about are Jackson, our mysterious main guy who has a secret terrible enough that it may very well screw his chances with our MC, Luka (there was sort of kind of a triangle love connection between these three but I wasn't exactly buying it, did Luka actually like Miki or was he just feeling protective? Flip a coin) the boy wonder who is nice and protective of our MC, her best friend Carly who is seriously the worst best friend I've seen in a while (with friends like her NO ONE needs enemies), and the extra player of the game which we got to know only on a limited basis. Overall I felt like I connected with our ass kicking heroine, but I felt the love connection between her and Jackson might have been a little rushed. I can see where "I have the hots for you" might come into place, but not love. Not yet anyways.

The concept of the novel was well executed and actually extremely cool. I felt like this was a book boys and girls could enjoy, if the boys are willing to skip (or read?) over the gooey parts and get to the ass kicking. Although sometimes I felt like I was reading "Gaming for Dummies" because of all the explanations of gaming concepts that quite honestly would have been better left alone. If someone doesn't get those concepts in this time and age, well, something is wrong. And if ever in doubt "Google" is a click away.

The ending... well I think I covered that part extremely thoroughly with the gif up top but just to clarify... It was AGONY! OH GOD, WHY! Stupid, stupid cliffhangers! WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME! You can't just end a book like that! It shatters people's sanity up to the point where they are mumbling like idiots in front of the mirror!! It was the kind of ending that makes you want to find the author's address and pay a personal visit just so they can answer a few questions, to hell with the possible definite restraining order!

So yeah, RUSH? It's pretty good, definitely a must read.