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The Novel

  • Alternative Character Interpretation: A good many people see Patch as an abuser who breaks down Nora's will and mentally and spiritually rapes her with his hallucinations and when he possesses her at the end. Similarly, there are a lot of people that argue that Nora's love for Patch is just a form of Stockholm Syndrome.
  • Damsel Scrappy: Nora Grey, the heroine of Hush, Hush. Over the course of three books, she repeatedly walks into dangerous situations without telling anyone else where she's going (so no hope of a rescue if a plan goes wrong), no weapons of any kind, and usually no actual planned course of action beyond "I'll break into that place and wing it". The author seemed to be trying to channel Nancy Drew, but failed to give Nora any competency. Really, Nora's stupidity could be summed up near the end of the first book when she willingly walks into an empty school and plays into the bad guy's hands, even though (A) she knows she's being lured into a trap, (B) her super-powered, invincible boyfriend is already rescuing the hostage being used as bait for Nora, and (C) the bad guy doesn't even know said boyfriend is on the case, meaning that if Nora had stayed put, the entire climax probably would never have happened. And then, when she's in the school, she gives up and says that she hopes her boyfriend will rescue her. Even though he has no idea she is inside because he told her to wait outside for him.
  • Esoteric Happy Ending: The book has a great happy ending, if you ignore the fact that part of Nora's house was burned down, there's a Clingy Jealous Girl of a fallen angel after her, and that she is blissfully dating the guy who spent the book stalking her, sexually harassing her, and outright attempting to murder her.
  • Fridge Horror:
    • Nora is a human albeit descended from a Nephilim and Patch is an angel. They're in a relationship together. If they had a child, said child would also be a Nephilim. In the books, Nephilim are hunted down by fallen angels and forced to take an oath that makes them immortal and lets the angels possess them for two weeks every year. And in Crescendo, we see fallen angels are willing to do that to Nephilim younger than sixteen. By forcing it with a gun.
    • We also see that between only having two weeks in a year when they can experience physical sensations and a desire to conceive Nephilim to get back at the angels in heaven, fallen angels enjoy possessing their Nephilim vessels to have sex. According to Jules, Nephilim are completely conscious for this.
  • Ho Yay:
    • Nora's description of Dabria in Silence is questionable at best.
    • In Crescendo, Nora ends up in a Cat Fight with Marcie, during which point Marcie straddles Nora while she's on the floor. Following this, Vee licks Nora's arm (she'd spilled Cherry Coke on it) and comments that Nora tastes delicious. Erm...
  • Jerkass Woobie: Marcie. Yes she's a bitch to Nora, but Nora and Vee constantly mock her for daring to have an active sex life and only be interested in casual dating. At one point, she's clearly horrified at the thought that Nora stole and read her diary (while Nora didn't read it, she did steal it to do so, and with Vee wanting to publish it in the school paper, no less!) Later, we find out that she's so resentful towards Nora because Nora's mom seemed to be having an affair with her dad, and Nora was Marcie's illegitimate sister. In the third book, she tries to help out her dad, only to be broken when she learns just how corrupt he actually is. In the fourth book, she's clearly upset by how he's disappeared and most likely dead and no one else knows about it. It's revealed that she was manipulated by Dante, out of jealousy that her father chose Nora as his successor over her. Oh, and we find out that this is because Marcie is allegedly weak and sickly and was lucky to even survive birth. Because of this, she dies while in her late teens. Only seven people attend her funeral, including her mother. And Vee is of the opinion that she deserved this.
  • Narm: Patch's name. It sounds more like something you'd name a pet and doesn't exactly suit the whole 'bad boy fallen angel' characterization.
  • Rooting for the Empire: In the series, the archangels are written as being extremely unfair, because they threaten to throw Patch into Hell if he pursues a relationship with Nora. The trouble is, Patch is written as an arrogant idiot who spends his days gambling and groping Nora, not showing the slightest inclination to actually do his job. As a result, the archangels come across as trying to get Patch to shoulder some responsibility. Add in the fact that Patch spent almost all of the first book stalking and assaulting Nora and the idea of him facing serious punishment sounds rather nice.
    • Later in the series, while the Nephilim aren't entirely evil, they still are portrayed as being cruel for doing things like locking an angel in a cage and keeping a fallen angel captive for practice at possessing people. It's hard to feel bad for either type of angels though, given how the archangels are (A) incredibly incompetent and (B) flat-out consider the Nephilim to be "unnatural" for no actual given reason and thus are fine with leaving them to be enslaved, and how every fallen angel ever introduced has been shown keeping Nephilim as slaves.
  • Strangled by the Red String:
    • Patch and Nora, full stop. Nora is warned by people who care about her to stay away from him, because he's clearly not a good person in any way, shape, or form. Patch stalks Nora, intentionally scares her, sexually harasses her, mind rapes her, and possesses her body. On top of that, his original plan was to murder her in cold blood, which he flat out tells her — and, when she asks if he's going to do it, he admits that it's "tempting". Not in the dubiously-understandable Edward Cullen resisting-physical-temptation way, either. Patch is tempted to murder Nora simply because he feels like it. Nora even says, more than once, that she sees absolutely nothing good about Patch. Wait, why does she fall in love with him again?
    • Vee gets this when she hooks up with Rixon in Crescendo. The two are hardly shown together and for all Vee fawns over him as the "perfect" boyfriend, there's precious little on them actually having anything in common. Fridge Logic also sets in when Vee repeatedly states that she thinks that Patch is a jerk and a potential murderer but isn't the least bit concerned about the fact that he introduced her to Rixon (and that Rixon is Patch's best and possibly only friend). Not to mention the fact that Vee seems quite certain that he's a "boyscout", despite the fact that he more or less lives in a very nasty bar and is not exactly shy about dropping crude innuendos towards Nora. That could be chalked up to Vee being a Horrible Judge of Character, except that Nora also thinks that Rixon is "cool" and sees no problem with them dating, even though she knows that Rixon is a fallen angel who possesses a Nephilim for two weeks out of every year for sex (with said Nephilim being conscious for it all). The fact that Patch hooked Rixon up with Vee as a response to suspecting that Rixon was murderous just raises even more eyebrows.
  • The Woobie:
    • Nora, in the early parts of the book when she clearly doesn't want anything to do with Patch.
    • The Nephilim in general. They have no control over their parentage and half of the time they have no idea they're Nephilim at all. But if a fallen angel finds them, they're forced via Mind Rape to put themselves for an eternity into said fallen angel's service. They then get their bodies stolen for two weeks out of every year, during which time they're forced into an And I Must Scream situation while the fallen angel uses them for various things, including sex.
    • Scott. He ended up in serious debt from gambling and only got out after Hank Miller kidnapped him, tied him to a table, and forced him to join the Black Hand. He and his mom moved back to their old town just to escape, and it's shown that he's failing his classes because he's been skipping school to work out, so he can defend himself if Hank ever finds him again. We also see that he blames himself for Nora's father's death. At one point, he has to run away from home and is living in a cave, unable to tell his mother where he is. He later rejoins the Black Hand, even though he's still traumatized, just to protect Nora. Oh, and he's killed in the final fight.

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