Review: Such a Rush by Jennifer Echols

Oh Echols, I am officially a fan of your romances. I like the class issues, southern settings, and tough girls dealing with some hard situations coming into their own. I crushed Such a Rush.

When I was fourteen, I made a decision. If I was doomed to live in a trailer park next to an airport, I could complain about the smell of the jet fuel like my mom, I could drink myself to death over the noise like everybody else, or I could learn to fly.
Heaven Beach, South Carolina, is anything but, if you live at the low-rent end of town. All her life, Leah Jones has been the grown-up in her family, while her mother moves from boyfriend to boyfriend, letting any available money slip out of her hands. At school, they may diss Leah as trash, but she’s the one who negotiates with the landlord when the rent’s not paid. At fourteen, she’s the one who gets a job at the nearby airstrip.

But there’s one way Leah can escape reality. Saving every penny she can, she begs quiet Mr. Hall, who runs an aerial banner-advertising business at the airstrip and also offers flight lessons, to take her up just once. Leaving the trailer park far beneath her and swooping out over the sea is a rush greater than anything she’s ever experienced, and when Mr. Hall offers to give her cut-rate flight lessons, she feels ready to touch the sky.

By the time she’s a high school senior, Leah has become a good enough pilot that Mr. Hall offers her a job flying a banner plane. It seems like a dream come true . . . but turns out to be just as fleeting as any dream. Mr. Hall dies suddenly, leaving everything he owned in the hands of his teenage sons: golden boy Alec and adrenaline junkie Grayson. And they’re determined to keep the banner planes flying. Though Leah has crushed on Grayson for years, she’s leery of getting involved in what now seems like a doomed business—until Grayson betrays her by digging up her most damning secret. Holding it over her head, he forces her to fly for secret reasons of his own, reasons involving Alec. Now Leah finds herself drawn into a battle between brothers—and the consequences could be deadly (GoodReads).

(My ride in the sky- the plane, the view!)

Originality: 6. This time on the wrong side of the tracks in the beach town, a different POV from Sarah Dessen's beloved beach town books.  Plus points for all the cool stuff was all the pilot facts. Loved it! My friend has his pilot license and has taken me up before in a little prop plane-So amazing !

Absurdity: 4. How does Leah not know she's a babe!? Come on.
Level of Romance: 9. I mean, the tagline says "A sexy and poignant romantic tale of a young daredevil pilot caught between two brothers." Yum. 
Level of Harry Potterness: This book appears at first to be a full on beach read but with enough of an investigation of tough times and what it means to a teenage girl trying to find her way that it escapes the fluff category. Overall, a great balance.