Review: Black Ice by Becca Fitzpatrick

2 April, 2015 Reviews 11 comments

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Review: Black Ice by Becca FitzpatrickBlack Ice by Becca Fitzpatrick
Series: Standalone
Published by Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers on October 7th 2014
Pages: 400
Format: Hardcover
Source: Publisher
Amazon・ Good Books・Book Depository
Goodreads
one-star

Danger is hard to resist in this sexy thriller from Becca Fitzpatrick, the New York Times bestselling author of the Hush, Hush saga.

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?

Black Ice is New York Times bestselling author Becca Fitzpatrick's riveting romantic thriller set against the treacherous backdrop of the mountains of Wyoming. Falling in love should never be this dangerous.

I read Black Ice with a lot of hopes. Hopes that Fitzpatrick was writing something brave and different, a departure from Hush, Hush which was a total abomination for me. Still, I was willing to give it a fair shot. Unfortunately, it seems Fitzpatrick has a formula that she refuses to veer from and that made this book every bit as painful as Hush, Hush was. And all the temptation that maybe Fitzpatrick was doing something brave and hard was washed away with every page I turned.

Black Ice is the story about a girl who goes camping and gets kidnapped by criminals who force her to navigating the freezing terrain in order to help them escape. Things become complicated when she starts to develop feelings for one of her captors.

Fitzpatrick set this up as a Stockholm Syndrome tale and had everything at her disposal to make it great. It to make it brave and edgy and real. Instead she bowed to whimsical fantasy and romantic notions in order to twist it into something it should never have been. A love story.

tumblr_inline_nauhurKTfG1rajnyf

So let’s start with the formula that Fitzpatrick can’t seem to let go of.

1 Very Bad Boy + 1 Annoying Heroine + 1 Best friend who can die in a fire = Kat is going to kill something.

Mason kidnaps her, drags her through frozen tundra, lets his friend hold a gun to her and keeps up this charade as a villain all through the novel. But because he is occasionally kind to her and hot, Britt, our leading lady, falls for him.

Britt, is not quite as annoying as the heroine in Hush, Hush. She does some clever and brave things. This almost saves it for me. Almost. But her obsession over Calvin drove me mad. The story kept dropping history between her and Calvin which was quite boring and ultimately needless. She was a flawed heroine and that’s okay. She was probably the best thing about this novel, even if that’s not saying much.

Korbie. Korbie, rather like Vee was the most annoying character in this book and the very fact that she wasn’t in it much was her only saving grace. One more page of her and I might have bashed this book against my head several times just to numb the pain.

The ending. Let’s talk about the ending here because I know most of you aren’t planning on reading this shit, so being coy about it.

Spoilers Ahead

Mason’s not really the bad guy, see? He’s just pretending to be a hardened criminal so that he can find his sister’s killer. Who just happens to be Calvin, Britt’s ex boyfriend and Korbie’s brother. See? Britt really fell for a hero, not the bad guy. He was only pretending to kidnap her. So this makes everything about 100 times shittier. Instead of doing the brave thing and having Britt tragically need to hand in the man who kidnapped her and endangered her life, she turns summersaults to turn him into a hero. So that they can be together.

200_s

This refusal to commit to reality made the novel so much weaker and less tense. It lacked the emotional impact because it veered so far into fantasyland that I was almost ready to believe that Britt was hallucinating the end of this novel as she lay in a snowdrift dying.

If you want a book that is unapologetic in its handling of Stockholm Syndrome then I honestly suggest you skip this one and try Stolen: A Letter to My Captor by Lucy Christopher. Hauntingly beautiful and emotionally charged, it will fill the hole that Black Ice leaves behind.

Kat Kennedy

Kat Kennedy

Co-blogger at Cuddlebuggery
Kat Kennedy is a book reviewer and aspiring author in the Young Adult genre. She reviews critically but humorously and get super excited about great books. Find her on GoodReads.
Kat Kennedy

11 Responses to “Review: Black Ice by Becca Fitzpatrick”

  2. Carina Olsen
    Twitter:

    Nooo 🙁 Gorgeous review Kat. <3 But oh. I am so sorry that this book was so damn awful. Noo. Because I own a hardcover of it. And now I'm starting to regret that.. sigh. I shall read it one day. Probably. But now I'm pretty sure I won't like it either :\ Sigh. Anyway. Thank you so much for sharing your honest and awesome thoughts about it 😀
    Carina Olsen recently posted…The Amber Spyglass by Philip PullmanMy Profile

    Reply

  4. Steph

    I appreciate your honest review. Hush Hush is one of my top 5 most hated books because of all the reasons named, and there was no way in hell I was reading anything else from BF. It baffles me how this crap ends up on bestseller lists and on the shelves in Target. It’s atrocious.

    Reply

  8. Brigid
    Twitter:

    EW. Another author stupidly decides to make her MC have stockholm syndrome. I am so SICK of this. It’s a serious disease and I am tired of author’s using it without realizing they made their MC into a victim.

    Reply

  10. Frannie Pan @ Frannie in the Pages
    Twitter:

    Ahahah I’m sorry for the book but YAY, I’m not the only one who thought this book was crap! I mean, stockholm syndrome? Please. That’s so not the stockholm syndrome, it’s a picnic compared to it u.u And don’t even get me started on the characters…
    Anyway. I really want to read Stolen, I’ve headr amazing things about that book!
    Frannie Pan @ Frannie in the Pages recently posted…The Frannie Telegraph #6 (April 19th, 2015)My Profile

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Jess @ A Book Addict's Bookshelves Cancel reply

CommentLuv badge

You can add a link to follow you on twitter if you put your username in this box.
Only needs to be added once (unless you change your username). No http or @