This book.... this book. I was into it at first, but it lost me as I went along and I almost dnfed. Then it picked up a bit at the end so I finished it. But honestly I don't even know what happened for most of the story. There is so much withheld information, and hazy worldbuilding, and mysterious characters who suddenly do 180s in how they react to Shae, not to mention the whole 'am I going mad or is this some sinister illusion?' thing that was the latter 50% of the book.

The characters were flat, with the only depth provided by rapid 180s in how they reacted to and interacted with Shae and their many many layers of being 'mysterious'. The plot made literally no sense, and any sense I managed to grasp was thrown out by that ending. WTF even happened?

We have Ravenod seemingly kinder / less aloof than other bards to her. Then Ravenod cold and dismissive. Then Ravenod freaked about her crush and disappearing. Then Ravenod helping her. Then becoming aloof again. Then rapelling down a cliff??? to write 'danger' on her window. Then seeming to understand. Then swooping in and spoiling her plans at the end and disappearing.

There was so much back and forth in the story that it felt less like a madness vs illusion plot and more like a 'we have no idea wtf is going on either' plot. I won't be reading the sequel.

This was so original I really enjoyed it. I could put it down, it’s going to be so hard to wait for the next one.

Unfortunately I never connected with this story in any way. I found myself skimming a lot to get through it if I'm being completely honest. The characters all seemed one dimensional. The only one we get a sense of in any way is Shae and truly only in that whatever desire driving her in a moment was the most important thing ever and worth anything with no thought to the consequences or what happens after she gets what she wants. The rest we really didn't get to know much at all.

The worldbuilding and plot felt a bit shakey at times to me as well. We start out with the idea that this illness, the blot is ravaging places and then jump to years later when mostly it's just the memory/fear of it that is around, and by the end it rolls back in with a twist. The blot was the whole reason people lived in fear of words and writings and pretty much everything and looked to the Bards and their blessings to fix literally everything. We got a peek behind the Bard's curtains and it left me with more questions than answers. I didn't love that sometimes magic, aka the Tellings, were used to fill gaps. Like Shae magically learning how to read pretty much instantly. There was a few situations that just didn't add up that just got vaguely explained to us almost like an afterthought with no straight line of getting there.

To me it was like the author got the formula for what makes a standard YA Dystopian/Fantasy and then didn't worry about adding any unique depth or flare to it. There was an interesting idea here, I just wish more time would have been spent really filling it out.

All things combined made for a story I couldn't find anything to really root for or find myself wanting to even know more about in the end.

Dylan Farrow can write. Oh my, can she write! Hush is her beautiful and creative debut, featuring a strong female main character and intricate world building. A new YA star is born! Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with this ARC.

Let's start with the obvious: it's a celebrity YA book. The name is going to draw a fair number of curious readers (mostly adult) and you know what? It's awesome! Getting people to read has definitely been harder (thanks 2020, you jerk!) and when people are reading they want comfort reading, and a lot of readers are heading for YA.

Now, Hush isn't anything new. In fact, it feels like a factory made first installment of a YA trilogy, right down to the mc, who will be tstl for some and completely relatable for others. (One of the fascinating things about the female-centric YA is how often female readers either totally identify or don't identify at all with the main character. No halfway! I hope somebody writes a paper about it one day.) The plot is also standard, down to the "ending" that's supposed to make you scream "Noooooo, need more!" and then order book two. I have read dozens of YA novels of Hush's ilk, and I'd say it's totally average. (It will be interesting to see how well it does, especially given that Fall 2020 is now crammed full of new releases.)

I don't know what to say really. This book was confusing and the lack of character development and world building did not help. This is the first book in the series, so there should have been more focus on the world that Farrow was trying to show readers. The synopsis seemed to provide more details than the actual book which is a problem. All in all I found this one to be fairly flat. I have no intention of reading the second or third book (I assume this is probably the start of a trilogy) in this series.

Hush follows 17 year old Shae. Shae and her mother live in the land of Montane. We find out that Shae's brother died of the Blot (apparently a disease that makes veins turn blue and explode...yeah I don't know) and that since then Shae's mother has not spoken. Shae is angry at the world that she lives in and wants to do more. The Bards come to the village and Shae who apparently is somehow not cowed by the fact that the Bards just cut out a man's tongue goes up to one and asks for help. That event seems to be the catalyst the rest of the book follows. Shae goes home and finds her mother dead and then decides to seek out the Bards so that someone can help her. Look...I don't know what else to say, this book had me scratching my head. I got to the 40 percent point yesterday and started reading another book cause this one just didn't make a lot of sense.

It didn't help that I also didn't really like the main character, Shae. She seems fairly selfish since the world that she inhabits people can be killed for doing anything that the so-called Bards deem wrong. Her pointing her friends in harm's way for deciding that she is going to investigate who killed her mother made no sense at all.

I can't say much about the other characters in this one since they were not developed at all. We have Default Male #1 and Default Male #2 or as I call it, the YA Love Triangle that by all rights must happen in each YA book these days. Please stop. I beg of you.

The writing I found to be clunky in places and the flow was not good.

Honestly the world building is nonexistent. I mean we get a prologue with Shae talking about the Blot. Then we jump forward several years and we have the Bards who demand offerings (what I am calling them) from towns/villages and if they don't get enough won't provide a "Telling" which I think just means rain. The towns/villages seem to rat on each other a lot so there's that. I maybe laughed when we find out that of course Shae is special (Mary Sue character that appears in every YA novel) and I mentally checked out at that point. I still don't get how Shae is supposedly special but that's cause I don't get the whole concept of the bards. See previous comment about lack of world building.

I have to say that there really is not anything new in this series and it honestly made me recall why I could not stand the "Divergent" series. There seems to be more focus on the ending/cliffhangers than the actual book and characters.

There just isn't a way to say this without making it abundantly obvious that I thought this was one of those times the Author's name got him a book deal, so, accepting that: Shit this is soooooo much more than I expected. I'm delighted to be wrong, in this case.

Not a bad read just didn't meet my expectations. I liked it, I didn't love it. And it was a slow read because I couldn't fully get into it. Thanks for the eARC!

Hush takes readers to a world where the written word seems to have unimaginable power.

Shae has been taught to fear the written word. That is it contraband and likely the reason for 'the blot' which claimed her brother's life. And the reason for the way her small town suffers.

After finding her mother murdered and the sheriff claiming it was an accident, she leaves her home in search of answers. What she finds is that the truth is more alarming than she considered. And that she has a power that might be able to change the world.

Overall, it was an interesting read. Although, I did find some sections had to be muddled through.

Shae of Aster lives in a world that has magic, but is otherwise falling apart. Once upon a time, magic was freer, the rains fell, people were happy and prosperous. Now people live in fear, the rains don't come so often, magic is limited to The Bards who dispense it where they feel like, the past is forgotten and other countries no longer exist. Writing is forbidden on pain of death by the Blot, a wasting disease where blood turns to ink.
Shae was prepared to live the blighted life her world presented, but then her mother was killed. Her life sorely disrupted, she goes on a journey to the capital. called High House. She finds that nothing is as it seems. She's given a quest when it turns out she has strong magic.
One thing that bothered me was, unless the copy of the book I had was damaged, right after Shae fulfills the quest, the writing switched from show to tell. It was like an outline of the action for the final chapters was placed instead of the story. Maybe it was supposed to be an epilogue, but it was a rather long one. Other than that, it was a good fantasy adventure and I liked it.

This one didn't live up to the hype for me. The magic system was potentially interesting and the writing was okay, but overall it felt much too packaged and there was nothing about this story that I haven't seen in a hundred other YA fantasy novels (most memorably Leigh Bardugo's Grisha books). If any other aspect of it--like the characters or the worldbuilding or the writing--had been really strong or fresh, that wouldn't matter as much, but they weren't. It also didn't help that the heroine wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer and I lost patience with her early on. In the end I was so uninvested that I barely managed to finish the book and probably wouldn't have if I hadn't committed to reviewing it here. I might purchase anyway because I think the celebrity status of the author and the general popularity of similar books would make it of interest to patrons, but wouldn't actively recommend to them.

I was excited to read a book that blended magic with a feminist fantasy world. The blurb for the book basically described it as a story of a girl who was brave enough to challenge everything she had been raised to believe. I suppose that ultimately is true BUT this is not a story about a girl fed up with being lied to and then having the courage to fight against a corrupt society, which is what I was expecting. It seemed that the main character did not set out to challenge society's norms - that was a mere accidental side effect of her true mission, which was simply trying to get answers to a question.

This is the story of a girl, Shae, who lives in abject poverty and in the shadow of her brother's death by the Blot, a disease which is rumored to be caused by reading/writing, which is forbidden in this society. When her mother is killed, Shae seeks answers from her village's constable. When she is told that her mother was not murdered but rather died due to a landslide, Shae is angered as she knows that is not how her mother died. Her anger leads her to seek out the Bards, who are the keepers of the realm, and who she hopes will help her discover who killed her mom.

The world building in this one is ok, but nowhere near full enough for my liking. I just didn't feel like I had enough information to truly understand the world or the magic in this one. The basic premise is that words have power, both written and spoken, but Shae can also use the magic by embroidering and sometimes just thinking with intention, so clearly there is a bit more to the magic scheme which was not fleshed out enough. Also, this book was noted to be a feminist fantasy, but honestly, Shae's character is not very well developed and the majority of the women she has contact with in this book are not women one would look up to or befriend, aside from a servant girl who looks out for Shae but only because a man asked her to.

That is not to say that this is not a good story, as it was. It just was not necessarily as well put together as I would prefer for a first book in a series. I am not sure if there was enough in this to make me feel invested in continuing with the next book.

I had high hopes for this one. I thought the concept sounded amazing. While I thought it was decent, I was hoping for more. I wanted more world building, and more character development. That being said, I'm still intrigued to see where this goes.

I was honestly convinced that the autor, Dylan Farrow, was a man. However, when I was about two chapters into the book I realised that it felt like reading a woman’s writing. Then I Googled it. Apparently I should’ve known who Dylan Farrow was, since she’s also an actress. And definitely female.

I enjoyed Hush quite a lot. The premise felt fresh and new, and I loved the idea of words being dangerous. They are, of course, but in this case they were almost a disease. This was woven into the plot beautifully.

The story itself was very good and adventurous as well, though I wish there would have been more elaborate explanations at time. Things just moved too fast and were too easy at some points.

I’ve already put part two of the series on my TBR, so I think that says quite a lot.

This book has a fun premise and interesting characters, but it left me wanting more depth and insight into how things worked in this world. Even though the protagonist is 17 and she is interacting with adults, I felt like the writing was geared more for preteen/young teens. I also feel like there has been a recent glut of feminist teen dystopian novels and this one borrows too many old tropes (protagonist's boyfriend proposes to give her a fulfilling female life of wife and mother) and doesn't do much to really add anything new or push boundaries. So while I'm loving having so many options with strong female leads, it takes more than just that to have a fully satisfying novel.

I think this was an amazing concept for a YA fantasy novel. A deadly illness known as the “Indigo Death”, or more commonly, the “Blot“ is ravaging the land of Montane. In the small village of Aster lives Shae and her mother, though they’re barely scraping by. Following the deaths of her brother and father, Shae and her mother have been turned into community outcasts, all from fear of this mysterious plague. After another tragedy strikes her family, Shae realizes she has nothing left to lose, and she sets off on her own to seek out answers.

Not much is known about the Blot. Reading and all other written forms of language have been banned, as well as some specific words and phrases, such as ‘murder’. Once she decides to leave her village, Shae attempts to track down the Bards, a group of magic-wielders who have the power to alter reality at will. Their magic is not elaborated on much beyond that, and that’s honestly one of the things I struggled most with in this book. There’s really no explanation of the magic system at play. Some people can speak magic, but there’s no specific instruction on how they can do this. Apparently you can also *sew* your ‘Tellings’ into existence, but there’s only one example of this.

I don’t know, there was a lot of interesting ideas here. I think the author could benefit from some time spent learning more about story or narrative construction. There’s not much build-up, even if the ‘tension’ is there. Farrow’s writing is a lot of ‘this happened, then this happened and oh yeah this happened a while ago but I’m just telling you about it now’. I was missing elaboration. I wanted the world she created to feel palpable, but it all came off so flat.

The dialogue was also pretty basic and a lot of the characterizations were stereotypical. My guess is that she just hasn’t read that many fantasy books, especially YA fantasy, and is unfamiliar with the tropes of the genre. I‘m left with so many questions. What were those ‘training’ sessions about? How does the labyrinth work? How is this country governed? As tempting as it can be in this genre, you can’t just answer every question with ‘because magic’!

I want to give Dylan time to grow as a writer. Like I said, there were a lot of good ideas. The way that Shae can’t distinguish between reality and delusions was done really well. As a reader I was questioning my own perceptions of what I was reading. I think I would like to see more of that kind of thing going forward, not a half-baked romance with some guy who has the personality of wet cardboard. Usually I wouldn’t continue reading a series I didn’t absolutely love right away, but there is something compelling here. Maybe it’s how compulsively readable the story is, I don’t know, but either way I will definitely be back for book 2.

While I found Hush to have an interesting magic system I found a lot more of the story to be predictable.

The magic system was by far the most interesting part of the story. I really liked the idea of the blot (an ink disease) and a written magic system. However, the tropes in the book are cliche and overused, which dampened the story even more for me.

Overall, the book wasn't a bad read, but by no means something that really stuck out to me.

"This is a story about the importance of holding fast to one's own voice and sense of justice in a climate where it's easy-- normal even-- to be gaslit and deceived, not just by a single predator or even a loved one, but by entire institutions, even the ones we have entrusted to keep us safe. Hush is about that bravery and that risk. It's about the need for something concrete to hold onto in a time of illusions, distortion, and loss. It is a story about the power of words and truth."

This comes from the author's acknowledgements. I'm sharing it because she sums it up more beautifully than I ever could.

Hush follows Shae as she grapples with strange occurrences where her needlework shifts reality in its image. She and her mother have been town pariahs since The Blot, a disease thought to be spread by the written word alone, killed Shae's younger brother. Shae comes home one day to find her mother murdered with a dagger through the heart. The whole town and even her closest friends are intent on gaslighting Shae, saying her mother died in a landslide. This only feeds Shae's self-narrative of growing madness, but she heads out into the unknown to seek justice. She will continue to question herself, but she will come into her power and find the truth along the way.

Hush has clear and unique world-building without being overwhelming. As a protagonist, Shae is determined even in the face of her own self-doubt, a condition I think many women can relate to. The social critique is clear and insightful without being a treatise-- it melds with the magical story seamlessly.

I highly recommend this one, out next month on 10/6. Thanks to Netgalley, Wednesday Books, and Dylan Farrow for the eARC.

Words hold more magic and power than life itself in this fast-paced read, which introduces an intriguing theme and world.

Written words and ink can kill and are forbidden in Shae's world. Considering she lost her own brother to the plague ink brought, this is something she'll never question. But sometimes words hold magic in the spoken form too. When the Bards come to town, their Tellings can bring the blessings so desperately needed, but their price is a tithe that the town can't afford. Shae herself is sure, after her brother's death, that she might be cursed thanks to the plague too, and seeks out the Bards for help. Instead, she finds her mother dead on the floor, stabbed with a golden dagger. But despite promises of finding the murderer, the town tries to shove the death under the rug. Shae refuses to ignore her mother's death and decides to take matters into her own hands. But when she travels out to find the Bards and, hopefully, the murderer, she runs into more than she would have ever dreamed.

First off, I had no clue this was written by a well-known personality, one of Mia Farrow's children. Which in this case is probably good because it definitely didn't effect how I saw the book.

This is a very interestingly woven theme and surmise. The readers meets Shae in a small, rustic, farming town, where people work hard, food is scarce and life is tough. The author spends a few chapters letting the reader get to know Shae and her situation. It's hard not to like Shae and root for her as her desire for truth, difficult past, and shunned status make her easy to sympathize. The writing flows very well in these first chapters, introduces friends, secrets and heart-ache. The first encounter with the Bards offers a wonderful touch of mystery and magic and nods at what is to come. These chapters drew me in and had me excited to read the rest.

The rest, however, isn't as tight.

The writing is honestly well done and the author definitely has talent, but the story didn't always take the time to give characters enough depth to care about them and often made decision jumps, which made me wonder what in the world had just happened. It's as if too much was pushing through too fast, and there were even a couple moments which confused. Yet, I didn't want to put this one down, either, because it is an interesting tale with so many tense moments and intrigue. But the further along the story goes, the more stumbles hurt the flow. Especially the ending left me with a 'huh?' as a character from early on suddenly reappears to 'help', which I have no clue why. It just happened as if it had to for whatever comes in the next book. And that is too bad because I could have loved this read and desperately wanted to.

Described as "feminist fantasy" this book boasts an exciting plot. The world building and magic system was intriguing but would have benefited from being a bit more developed. The characters were complex but relatable; every character added an element to the story and helped drive the plot. Engaging from start to finish, an intriguing read. Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to review this ARC.