I hated the ending... because it was more of a bridge to start off the second book, and for some reason the way it happened made me feel like:
WAIT, THAT'S WHAT THEY'RE DOING?! THEY'RE ENDING IT LIKE THAT?!

but I forgive because the rest of the book was great and I really enjoyed reading it, though I don't think I will be reading the sequel anytime soon. ( )

Rush was a good read! I am not salivating with a need to fangirl, but I enjoyed the ride Eve Silver took us on!

The first thing I loved about the book was Miki Jones. She's sassy, a little messed up, and a stellar main characters. She's got a voice that's unique and had me flipping pages. Also, of course, I liked Jackson. Even though I normally get frustrated with the "I'm mysterious and will answer all of your questions in one syllable... or less" type. However, in Rush, his antics made me smile and generally curious. It helps that Miki is just as exasperated with him as we are. Also, inside he is pretty sweet. I liked learning his back story!

The gaming aspect of the novel was awesome! I am not much of a gamer but it was super, super cool to learn terms. It was creative on the author's part! I do wish I got to learn more about the aliens... hopefully in the next book!

Overall, I absolutely recommend Rush. There's action and humor and interesting characters. Also, it goes by so, so fast. The ending was like ...BAM!

4/5 stars

*Received for free in exchange for an honest review* ( )

A mix of sci-fi, gaming, teen angst, it was a good read, and beginning of another series. Miki who is recovering from an accident is pulled into a world of ghostly creatures, fighting battles with Jackson and friends, and when they come back to reality, its like a dream. ( )

Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales.

Quick & Dirty: Fun action packed story with compelling characters, an interesting plot, and a cool sci-fi setting. A great fit for gamer fans.

Opening Sentence: My head jerks up.

The Review:

Miki has to have a certain amount of control over her life or things will fall apart. Her mother died of lung cancer a few years ago and nothing has ever been the same since. Her father drinks too much and Miki has shut down inside to ward off the pain. After school one day, Miki tries to save a deaf girl from getting hit by a truck and instead she ends up getting hit. When she wakes up she figures she is dead, but it turns out she has been pulled into some kind of game.

Miki teams up with a few other teenagers and they have to fight The Drau, an alien race that is very violent and plans to take over the world. Once they have eliminated all their targets they are sent back to their normal life like nothing happened, and no matter how much time passed in the real world, they go right back to the moment they were pulled. Outside of the game they aren’t allowed to talk about it with anyone and Miki has so many questions. What is the purpose of the game? Is it real? If you die in the game do you really die? There is only one person that can answer her questions and that’s the infuriating gorgeous team leader, Jackson Tate.

Miki is a good strong character. She has had a rough few years and she is dealing with things the best way she knows how. She is very smart and put together on the exterior, but inside she is just hanging by a thread. When things start to unravel out of control, Miki doesn’t know how she is going to stay grounded. The game gives her a purpose and she feels more alive than she has in years. But who controls the game and what are their real motives. She is a very independent person with a witty attitude. I found her easy to connect with and I really liked her.

Jackson Tate is very hot and cold. One moment he will be sweet and attentive and the next he is completely ignoring you. He is gorgeous, but is a total mystery. He can be very charming when he wants to be, but he also can be a jerk. Miki finds Jackson infuriating, but she also can’t help but be very attracted to him. He has answers she desperately needs, but getting information from him is like pulling teeth. I loved Jackson. I found his character interesting and I am excited to learn more about him in the sequel.

This was a fun action packed story with a unique idea. You are pulled into the story right away and I was captivated the whole way through. The gamer setting was interesting and different. The romance was sweet and developed slowly. The cast of characters were compelling and easy to like. The plot was full of twists that surprised me and kept me interested. The ending has a terrible cliffhanger which I didn’t particularly love, but it left me dying to get my hands on the next book. Overall, this was a very entertaining read and I would highly recommend it to fans of YA Sci-fi or gamer fans.

Notable Scene:

I see then that the door’s gone and in front of me are people. No … they aren’t people. They have limbs, hair, faces, but they aren’t human. After the first glance, they don’t look remotely human. They’re pure, painful white, so bright they throw off a glare. They look like they’ve been dipped in glass, smooth and polished, but fluid. And their eyes … they’re a silvery color, like the mercury in the old thermometer that my mom used to have at the side of the front porch.

When I was ten, I knocked that thermometer off with my wooden kendo sword, shattering the glass. The little blobs of mercury went all over the porch. I was a kid. I didn’t know better. I touched them, prodding the little balls until they joined the bigger blob. My mom swooped down on me and snatched me away, telling me it was poison. It could kill me.

I stare at the things in front of me: the Drau. I can’t look away.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remember Jackson talking about Medusa. Don’t look at their eyes.

Their mercury eyes.

They’re poison.

They will kill me.

FTC Advisory: Katherine Tegen Books/Harper Collins provided me with a copy of Rush. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review. ( )

Title: Rush (The Game #1)
Author: Eve Silver
Release Date: June 11, 2013
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Source: Edelweiss DRC
Genre(s): YA Fiction, YA Science Fiction, Alien Invasion, Video Games

Rating: ★★★☆☆
Review Spoilers: Moderate
GoodReads | Amazon

I’ve been meaning to get to this book for a while now but because I wound up in the hospital dying earlier this month I’m sorely behind on my June 2013 release reviews. I first found out about this book when I had a chance encounter with the author on Twitter regarding hotel reservations and San Diego Comic Con. So when I was approved for a copy over at Edelweiss I was pretty excited to see what Rush had to offer. Rush is Eve Silver’s first YA novel but she’s published over a dozen other novels for adults including a couple paranormal romance series for adults and a bad ass looking dystopian series called the Northern Wastes about a lady ice trucker.

In the author’s own words, Rush has:

Which is a fairly accurate description of this book in just ten words.

Rush follows a teenage girl named Miki Jones whose life is completely upended by ‘The Game.’ They say no good deed goes unpunished and Miki’s decision to jump in front of a truck to save the life of a deaf child definitely earns her a very particular type of punishment. Instead of dying, Miki finds herself in a lobby preparing for a mission with a handful of other teenagers – two of whom she recoginzes from school. There is no time for any real explanation or training. One minute she’s on the street in her hometown walking home and the next she’s whisked away to fight aliens invading the planet.

All she’s told is to stay back and not let her ‘con’ – or life bar – turn from green to red. Red and you’re dead. If you survive the mission, you’re healed and get to go back to your life in the real world. Die in the game and you die for real. Reality retcons back to when you should have died. Every moment you live after you join the game is almost unreal; it’s almost like borrowed time. And if you fail? Well. There goes humanity. These missions aren’t just about Miki and her team mates but the survival of the planet as a whole.

Watching Miki try to adapt to this new part of her life is actually really interesting. But it’s also equally frustrating at times. All Miki – and the reader – wants are answers. Which the book is very hesitant to offer. Even having finished it I’m not entirely sure whether or not the game is real or not. I have a really had time understanding what’s going on and how the world building in this story actually works. Some things just don’t make sense. And unlike Miki I don’t have the attractive and enigmatic Jackson Tate or the equally alluring Luka to harass for information.

What I did like, though, was how Miki’s friends sort reacted to her change in moods and the fact that she was hanging out with guys sort of blowing off her friends. Unintentionally, of course. It just happens that Miki and two of her team mates from the Game all live in the same time. That was pretty realistic – girls can just be bitches when you start hanging out with guys they’d like to bang. The book has some very striking moments of painfully realistic high school life and then it shifts into basically live-action Halo. Which is actually really interesting and the premise is fantastic. I just have a lot of questions that continue to go unanswered.

That said, maybe the next two books in the trilogy – first Push and then Crash – will help explain some of the issues I had with the world building. This book tried but they sort of heavily packed the end of the book with information and exposition that probably should have come a bit earlier. Hopefully we’ll see a bit more character development, too. I liked the characters – from Miki to her friend Carly and to the other team mates we got to see sporadically in the game. But a lot of them deserved a bit more screen time and development. And a lot of the relationships seemed a bit flat. Really the only one that got any real traction was Miki and Carly’s and, well. Carly isn’t nearly as important in the grander scheme of things – at least not now. I have my suspicions that Carly might be something other than she seems…

But I won’t spoil the book with my hypotheses!

I really liked Rush and I think the idea of teenagers being pulled into a war with aliens in a video game styled way is pretty cool. I’m a gamer. I can dig it. I like that video games, gamers, and just the culture in general are getting a lot more notice these days. We’ve had a lot of really great books come out about video games and gaming. Rush manages to be one of them without really being a video game book per se. It’s a nice addition to the budding genre. And the book will keep you on edge waiting throughout all of the ‘down time’ for the next time Miki and her friends find themselves ripped out of their real lives by some unseen force. The action keeps you interested and keeps you waiting more.

Check out Rush now and keep an eye out for Push in 2014. ( )