Rush (The Game #1) - Eve Silver [Review]

This review may contain spoilers.

Rush by Eve Silver

Title: Rush

Author: Eve Silver

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

Series: The Game #1

Release Date: June 11th 2013

Pages: 361

Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

Blurb:

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.

Review:

I was really excited to read this book. The synopsis sounded amazing, I mean aliens, games, missions.. what's not to love? Unfortunately the book wasn't as amazing.

Miki thinks she died while trying save a girl's life. Instead she wakes up in the Game. She has to terminate the Drau, evil aliens who are trying to destroy the Earth, together with childhood friend Luka and cryptic Jackson. She soon finds out it's not a game, but a real life or death battle. And of course during these games she falls in love with Jackson, who keeps trying to tell her he's not the good guy. 

The Game concept was pretty awesome. The termination of the aliens was designed as a video game, complete with points and endurance levels. It was thought out well and the science behind it was nice. The players had a reality, their real lives and a virtual reality, in which they killed aliens. Most of the book the game was a mystery to the readers, due to Jackson's crypticness, only at the end we got some answers. The players had access to some nice high-tech weapons and the scenes in the game were fast-paced and action packed, I really did like those.

The book to me was ruined because of the characters and most of all the romance.

I really disliked the character of Jackson Tate, that is the main part why I didn't like the romance. He was one of those standard arrogant bad boys (with no reason to be bad, he just likes to be infuriating). Always mysterious, always cryptic and secretive, always having major mood swings. But of course he was incredibly hot and Miki just couldn't resist his charm. He kept giving her the 'I'm not a good guy' speech, I got a Twilight deja-vu there. Miki kept drawing conclusions about Jackson, about what he thought and meant with his comments, like he really cared about her when he said something cryptic and smartass. Of course later it turned out he actually did like her, the predictable 'bad boy finally falls in love and turns good - scenario'. Ugh. And it wasn't exactly instalove, but when they suddenly exchanged 'I love you's' at the end that seemed a bit out of the blue. Why can't the girl not fall in love with the irritating bad boy for a change?

I didn't know what part Luka played in the romance (or actually in the story at all). At first he seemed to be interested in Miki, or at least she concluded that from the 'hostile staring contest' between Jackson and Luka (she thought pretty high of herself). I was bracing myself for a love triangle, but later it turns out he had a crush on Miki's BFF Carly, who by the way is the worst friend ever and seemed to get mad about everything. Luka appeared to be one of the main characters in the beginning, but soon he started to move to the background and we didn't really see him until the end of the book. A pity, because he was the only character that was actually likable in the book.

The protagonist Miki was not really likable. What irritated me most was that she kept seeing hidden things in other people's talking and behaviour. First that both Luka and Jackson liked her, then that Jackson actually cared for her, etcetera etcetera. And she kept telling everyone she was pretty badass with her black belt in Kendo, but she apart from making sarcastic comments and thinking aggressive thoughts she wasn't really a heroine. Only at the end she starts showing some fighting skills, but before that Jackson had to do everything for her.

The book had a pretty big cliffhanger at the end, but I'm not sure I'm interested in reading the second book.

Conclusion

This book would have been much better if the writer had focused sci-fi/game stuff and less on the romance. Many YA books these days seem to have a similar problem, focusing more on the crappy romance instead of the awesome real plot. I will still give the book 3 stars, since I liked the action and the sci-fi stuff.

Stars: 3 out of 5