Holiday Gift Guide: Silence by Becca Fitzpatrick

It’s encouraging to me as a human to see the large numbers of really good authors of young adult and children’s books getting a lot of attention and drawing ever-increasing armies of new readers.

I’d be hard pressed this holiday to choose a single must-have book to buy in the place where a Twilight or a Harry Potter book used to go. Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games books are contenders, of course. As is anything by Christopher Paolini and it’s certainly much too soon to cross Stephenie Meyer off any list of books aimed at this age group. But Becca Fitzpatrick, three novels into Hush, Hush, a very interesting series, is certainly something like a contender.

This might be especially true because that third book, Silence (Simon & Schuster), is easily the best book Fitzpatrick has written. No vampires here and no magical boys: Angels and archangels pepper Fitzpatrick’s books. It’s difficult to tell much without offering up a spoiler or two, so suffice it to say that there is both romance and danger aplenty in Fitzpatrick’s books and possibly a bit more darkness than light. If you’ve not been following the series, Silence is a strong enough book that it really does stand alone.

So is this the single must-have book for YA readers this season? Probably not but, from I’d certainly stack it with the best of those. ◊

Monica Stark is a contributing editor to January Magazine. She currently makes her home on a liveaboard boat somewhere in the North Pacific.