Review: Hush Collection (amazon)

 

It is New Years Eve and I am trying to reach my 100 book goal before midnight which is in less than 3 hours. I have had this collection on my kindle since it released in 2020 and it is finally time to read it. They are short stories and as a fan of short stories some of the time, I thought this one was ok. When I started reading it, I was picturing a fantasy world at war. Then it became a guessing game of which war after I learned it was not a fantasy world. I thought it would be World War 2 when the soldiers were mentioned. Then the main character Leah said that she saw bombings on tv and then I thought of Vietnam or the Irag war. 

Learning what was actually going on with these characters and how they were brought up, made me feel real bad about the way the father treated them and how mentally ill he was. 

The second title in the Hush collection and it was a 2 star for me. It is set in Nigeria and the main character Tresure is an Instagram influencer.. or that is what she wants to be. She is a fake wanna be who is an actual house girl for the rich folks of Nigeria and she is wearing their clothes and jewelry and pretending to be rich. 

The only followers she is attracting are men and one of them who is known in the story only by his instagram handle becomes obsessed. He is illiterate and has to have his 11year old neighbor help him reply and send messages to her. He is constantly checking her page and one day she is not careful and the location of the house is tagged in her photo. 

He decides to go see her and ask her daddy for marriage. He is so stupid and can't put two and two together when he sees her in simple clothes and no pictures of her on the walls as he gets into the house. 

This was a story that just rubbed me the wrong way and what I hate in the real world. People in developing countries who don't know any better and think they can get their way with violence and steal and that what they see online is real.

Third in the collection and it got a three star. I usually stay away from books with the cheating element because being cheated on especially through text is very triggering to me. The main character is a wife who has been accused of "spying" on her husband before and he was cheating and talking to a woman that he worked with. 

He is once again talking to this woman after working with her once again and he has a second phone, a burner phone. The wife is reading through the texts and seeing that he is really a imcompetent fool who can't read between the lines. The woman he is texting only text back simple sentences and one word replies, and he shows his age where he texts a full novel. It was really digusting. 

The wife decided to get her own burner and pretend to be the woman and things excalate from there. The second thing that I didn't like was that the #metoo movement was constantly being brought up and it was irrelevant to the story. 

I did enjoy the ending because the guy got what he deserved and I would like to have another short story about the art business that was involved.

My 100th read for 2024 and it is the 5th installment in the Hush collection. I skipped the 4th book because it was the longest in the collection and I was on a time crunch. But that will be the next review after this one. So far, this installment is my favorite. I gave it 4 stars. 

It is about an actress named Lyla who is on the red carpet at a movie premiere and her phone is blowing up. She gets approached by Scotland Yard to inform her that her eight year olf daughter has gone missing. She flies back home and it is 5 days later where things happen. Her husband Nolan is approached by his bodyguard and told about a psychic that can help find Fidelity. 

The parents go to the psychic and Lyla is immediately wary because the guy starts spewing things that terrify and hit close to the truth with Lyla. We find out what really happend the year that Lyla disappeared from Hollywood and things take a turn. I was satisfied with this ending and this is one of the few short stories that I do not need any more of the story because it was perfect.

Another 4 star read in this collection. This is the longest and honestly, I wanted it to be longer. I really enjoyed it but there was one thing that really didn't mix well and that was one of the plot points. This book starts off with a guy being kidnapped by someone called the gravedigger. He then leaves clues to the location of the person. The clues are limericks and they are easy to solve. 

I just did not like the name gravedigger and the limerick clues together because it was beyond stupid.

 After the second kidnapped victim is found, the rest of the story is focused from the POV of an old journalist who is about to retire because everything is going online and all blog content. He is researching and following leads on the kidnap victims and following up on witnesses. He obviously gets to close and gets whacked. I will leave the rest of the plot un announced because I have spoiled enough. 

The last story in the Hush Collection and I gave it a three. This was another long one coming in at 61 pages. It did not have any breaks or chapters. It was a continuous story and it was very dragged out. 

It is about a guy who has girl problems and he tried to unalive himself because she did not want to be with him anymore and he was becoming abusive. The story takes place a year after the event and he is trying to get his life together and stop thinking about Anisa. He is stalking her instagram which is not allowed because of her restraining order. She has moved on and cut off all contact with everyone. 

Will is becoming more and more paranoid that something has happened to her and he notices that all of her old pictures are being recycled. He meets up with a former friend named Emily and they start looking closer at the pictures and decide to go look for her to see if she is realy ok. 

They go to his family home in the country and it is the place where Will's sister died of an accidental drowning. The funny thing is that everyone used to say that Anisa was the spitting image of Will's sister and that maybe he killed her, but he was so young.

The ending was totally predictable and it makes me wonder if Will actually had something to do with Claire's death and why would Anisa suddenly like Will's instagram picture at the end if she cut off contact with everyone. Also, what happened to Emily totally gives away the answers to every single thing.