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A review by rinku
Crush by Tracy Wolff

adventurous dark emotional mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
 The Crave series is such a guilty pleasure for me, and I can’t help it but enjoy it so much. The second book, Crush, was no exception to this. Objectively, there’s so much to criticise but man, sometimes even I am just enjoying a book. 

Grace awakes after the events of the first book, with no memory what has happened to her in the last month. We only know one thing: she has turned into a gargoyle and is the first one of those in centuries. After some time, she notices that she’s sharing her body with Hudson, the supposedly evil brother of Jaxon. To get him out of her head, her and her friends have to collect some MacGuffins – one of them includes some arbitrary sports event they have to win. 

I’ll have to say that the plot is weird and just absurd in some parts which is probably one of the reasons why it’s so enjoyable for me. Especially the whole Hudson thing was just so weird. He’s apparently in Grace’s body but when he talks to her, she can also see him? Is he part of her mind or is he actually there? Can he interact with the world around him? And why is no one caring about the fact that Grace is talking to herself before they know about this? The random sports event I’ve mentioned is also kinda bizarre because it’s won after just one goal. Also, I’m pretty sure that the students never go to school, even though they are at a boarding school. Nevertheless, the setting is still amazing. 

But the last 200 or so pages become randomly so great. The writing style got so much better, the plot more interesting, and there were many dramatic scenes that were written so well, like
Xavier’s death or Grace’s apparent death. Talking about Grace, her going alone to the second Lundares is definitely her defining moment, it was so amazing
. At other points, those things are lacking, especially the writing style that is so try-hard teenager-like that it’s funny again. 

When it comes to the romance, I’m not a fan of love triangles with brothers. On the one side, Grace is crushing on someone who seemingly only exists in her mind. Hudson is such a cliché love interest aka he’s annoying and flirty. But he develops so much in the course of the story, and I actually started to like him. Jaxon is on the other side and suddenly, Grace has some problems with him. I think those are caused by her gargoyle side? I wasn’t a fan of this since I used to like them. It comes to the big drama when
their fateful connection – not the biggest fan of this trope – is cut apart by a spell that the evil guys find
. It was also interesting to get to know other people from the Vega’s family, like their father Cyrus. He’s such a cliché villain but I still love him. 

Grace is still quite the stereotypical protagonist and now, she’s also the chosen one being the only gargoyle in existence. It’s also a bit annoying how she survives everything that should be deadly under normal circumstances – but I still like her. Besides Grace, the cast became quite big, especially with the team that trains together with Grace for the sport events. But I’ll have to admit that I liked them all and I also really started to like Flint. It’s furthermore nice that Grace’s old best friend is not forgotten. 

Like I’ve said, Crush is such a guilty pleasure read. It abandons some YA clichés, while going along with other ones. Because of the absurdity of the plot, you’re never sure what will happen next – which makes the book so engaging. 
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