Review: Black Ice – Becca Fitzpatrick Becca Fitzpatrick

Becca Fitzpatrick - Black Ice (Published by Simon and Schuster, October 2014)

4.5/5

"Brit Pheiffer has trained to backpack the Teton Range, but she isn't prepared when her ex-boyfriend, who still haunts her every thought, wants to join her. Before Britt can explore her feelings for Calvin, an unexpected blizzard forces her to seek shelter in a remote cabin, accepting the hospitality of its two very handsome occupants;but these men are fugitives, and they take her hostage. 

Britt is forced to guide the men off the mountain, and knows she must stay alive long enough for Calvin to find her. The task is made even more complicated when Britt finds chilling evidence of a series of murders that have taken place there and in uncovering this, she may become the killer's next target.

But nothing is as it seems, and everyone is keeping secrets, including Mason, one of her kidnappers. His kindness is confusing Britt. Is he an enemy? Or an ally?" Goodreads

As an avid Becca Fitzpatrick fan, I pre-ordered this novel before I even knew what it was about or had read the synopsis. I had faith that she wouldn’t let me down and oh boy was I right to trust her. If I could, I’d rate this 5/5, however it doesn’t quite top my favourite book Hush, Hush also by the lovely Fitzpatrick so I’ve gone with a 4.5/5—okay, so I cheated by giving it a half, but I really did like it a lot!

The style of the book was a lot like the Hush, Hush series with the same font being used (something that I really like because it doesn’t overwhelm you) but apart from that, this was where the similarities stopped. One of the prominent features of the book that I liked was the lengths of the paragraphs. They were short—sometimes a page or two long, some spanning up to fifteen pages—but this made it so much easier to read. As I was so gripped with the book, despite when I was yawning my head off, I still persuaded myself that one more chapter was acceptable which often turned into three or four because I just could. Not. Put. It. Down. Fitzpatrick sure knows how to keep her chapters short, her action exciting and her readers immersed!

***SPOILERY***

Moving onto the story, I found it refreshing reading about new characters than the ones I had grown to love over the past five years, even if I was sad to leave them behind. Meeting Britt Pfeiffer was a breath of fresh air in some ways. (Bear in mind, I’m going to keep referencing the Hush, Hush series here!) Britt was more of a feisty and self-aware character compared to Nora from Hush, Hush. Although there were some points where I found myself in Nora’s head again overthinking things when it came to boys, it was interesting and pleasant to see Fitzpatrick jump into someone else’s head for a change. Having said this, I did find that Korbie was a lot like Vee which in a way was a bit samey. The companion is slightly helpless and the protagonist is keeping some things from the companion and who fades in and out of the story. There: samey.

I was surprised by just how quickly the story was ramped up. After I read a little about the novel, I knew that Britt and Korbie were going to be held hostage after their car broke down in the mountains but I didn’t realise just how quickly the hostage situation was going to come about. In novels, you work up to that climax throughout and then resolve it within the last few chapters, but Fitzpatrick took a different approach on it entirely. Due to this different approach, I was very interested as to where she’d take the rest of the novel as by the fourth and fifth chapters, both the girls had gone inside the cabin and by then you knew they were going to be held hostage because the guys (Mase, the Ace and Shaun) were very shifty.

Of course there had to be a love triangle. Kind of. Fitzpatrick is as partial to writing kissing scenes as I am to reading them. However, I felt that this was dealt with in a subtle manor. Right from the get-go you’re introduced to the two love interests who meet at the gas station; Calvin who is Korbie’s older brother and Britt’s ex-boyfriend, and this mysterious guy who turns out to be (one of) Britt’s kidnappers Mason also known as Jude Van Sant. It’s a love triangle in that there’s a girl stuck in the middle between an attractive kidnapper who doesn’t actually turn out to be the bad guy she thought he was but actually a quite muscled twenty-something year old, but there’s also her ex-boyfriend who she still thinks is a bit of a jerk but who she is still madly in love with and convinces herself that this weekend away to the mountains where he will be, will bring them back together. That kind of love triangle. Not so much they’re fighting over her but that she falls for someone she didn’t think she would, and before she realises how terrible Calvin has been to her, is still madly in love with him. Still, Fitzpatrick does know how to write them, I’ll give her that.

Regarding Calvin and the ending, I saw it coming the minute he shot Shaun (the other kidnapper). Okay, so I didn’t see that he had killed those girls and why, but I knew there was something dodgy about him. Very shifty. If that was done intentionally to spark the reader’s interest at the ending then I hand it to Fitzpatrick, however, if this was meant to be a subtle hint at Calvin’s masochistic side, then I think it could have been handled differently. Either way, it served its purpose because having Calvin kill the three girls because he didn’t get into Stanford and they did, you definitely wouldn’t have thought it was him. I do have to comment, though, that I do think it was very… out of the blue. Maybe more background or explanation is needed on that one. Toward the end when he attempted and failed suicide when the police were outside leading him to being brain damaged, again, was a bit far-fetched. It was very much swept under the carpet, too. One minute she’s holding her hands up after Jude’s ran off, the next minute she’s given us a very brief synopsis of what’s happened since we’ve been gone and then suddenly it’s the epilogue and we’re at college searching for Jude with her two new best friends. Whoa, there.

Knowing what I know now about the entire novel, it’d be fun to go back and read it again. I absolutely flew! through this novel so there would be no problems in reading it again. It’s been a good—dare I say it—year since I read a book that I literally couldn't put down. I would definitely recommend this to any Fitzpatrick fan! I’m an avid reader of paranormal young adult fiction so this was a nice taste of something different which I found that I loved more than I thought I would. A great book to read in the winter snuggled up next to a log fire with a steaming cup of hot chocolate.