Hit

by Delilah S. Dawson

"Near future thriller about a teen forced to become an indentured assassin who has only three days to complete her hit list--with the added complication of her sole ally's brother being the final assignment"--

• ISBN10: 1481423398
• ISBN13: 9781481423397
• Publish Date: 14 April 2015
• Publish Status: Active
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Imprint: Simon Pulse
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[Katie King]

I just can't pretend I'm going to finish this anymore. I won't. It could've been good, but it wasn't.

Was there a point to any of this? They're just driving around murdering people. This is a day in the life of a murderer, her showering, eating, driving places, arguing with people, etc. What a snoozefest. I don't even care at this point what's going to happen with the brother.

[Amber]

Hit was not the best book I’ve read this year, which is a shame because Ms. Dawson is lovely and I was really intrigued by the concept. I mean, hitmen?! YES PLEASE. Give me alllll the hitmen. Unfortunately, I ended up having quite a few issues with this book and I didn’t really enjoy it after the first fifty or so pages.


Hit starts off well, as do a lot of books that I end up not enjoying, as it introduces Patsy, the main character, and a world where a bank has pretty much taken over the American government and is turning people into hitmen and killing many others. Like I said, the concept is awesome. I’m totally behind the evil bank/government/hitmen idea. But the execution was off.

First thing’s first [I’m the realest], I thought the timeline was silly. Patsy has five days to kill ten people, and Hit begins on her first day. She is not a hardened assassin, but nor is she particularly affecting by the way she kills people. For a book about hitmen, there was very little action, and Hit just follows Patsy as she goes from one house to another. It’s not very interesting, and I didn’t get either the badass scenes or the emotional attachment that I was expecting from this book and its main character.

Then there’s the ship. Oh my god, the ship. It’s not even a ship for me, it’s a couple of characters with little to no chemistry and a guy with tonnes of Edward Cullen vibes. First of all, Wyatt and Patsy made no sense at all as a couple. Patsy killed his father and was going to kill his brother, and all of a sudden Wyatt is travelling around with her as she goes to kill people. A) Did he not have a problem with this? B) Why didn’t he have a problem with this? C) Why? And then there’s the scene where they’re making out in the back of the van and Wyatt flings himself off of Patsy, Edward Cullen/Stefan Salvatore style, like NO I MUSTN’T TOUCH YOU. I got some violent flashbacks with that scene, let me tell you. Wyatt also calls Patsy “girl” and I really hate that pet name. *shudders*

My third and probably final problem with this book was the use of the term “spastic”. I’ve done a bit of Googling and apparently “spastic” doesn’t have such negative connotations in the US, but here in the UK it’s a derogatory term used to refer to disabled people. And I fucking hate it. Dawson is from the US so I don’t hold this against her at all, but Patsy using that word really riled me up. So. Yeah. That was fun.

In case you can’t tell, I won’t be recommending Hit to anybody. Much like Twilight, Hit is a terrible romance story thinly veiled as action-packed genre fiction. I’m disappointed, to say the least.

[shannonmiz]

This is going to be one of "those books". You know, the kind that is damn near impossible to review? Here's why: It is kind of ridiculous, and has tons of flaws, but I was still really entertained, and I don't know what to do with that.

Let's start off with the first ridiculous thing: Our main character, Patsy? Yeah, her name is Patsy Klein. Let that one sink in for a second.

I had to kind of suspend my logical side to enjoy this book, because I had one major problem from the start: Why would Valor want to kill people who owed them money? How is that going to help? Because if they are dead... they can't pay you back. Ever. At least if you keep them alive, you can garnish their wages or something? Keep them as some kind of indentured servants? I have no idea, but killing them seems like the least logical option.

But, I was able to push it to the background for most of the book, which is good. Don't worry, there were other things that made no sense to tide me over. Take Wyatt, for example. Patsy's first debtor/victim is Mr. Beard. She isn't too broken up about killing him, because he was a jerk to her mom. Well, then she stumbles into Wyatt, his son. Now, I don't know about any of you, but if someone came to my door, shot my dad, and tried to leave, we would have some serious issues. But nah, Wyatt isn't that fond of dear old (dead) dad, so why not hop in Patsy's mail truck and continue on her mission?

The story itself pulled me in though. It just did. I felt for Patsy, wondering what the hell I would do in her shoes. Yes, the whole thing seemed ridiculous, but it wasn't Patsy's idea, so I couldn't hold that against her. And she was certain (and for good reason) that Valor would absolutely have killed her and her mom had she said no. So, she's just trying to survive, while keeping some of her humanity in the process, which is basically not easy. Sure, she can reason away the murders as a "it was him or me" kind of thing, but that doesn't make it any less hard. She struggled a lot with the morality of it, and why some of the victims were so much harder to think about than others. While I felt that she usually was fairly appropriate in her actions, there were a few times that she seemed a bit removed from the killing, almost like it had become another task to complete.

But on some level, I understood that too, because I think if you needed to make it through ten recruits and/or murders, you're going to have to try to set the horror aside for a hot minute, if for no other reason than to take care of your basic human needs. I even understand Wyatt befriending her eventually, since she kind of didn't have a choice (and for some other reasons that come along later).

There were quite a few twists in the book too, which kept me interested. And, most of them were not wrapped up, so I am pretty curious to see where this will head next. Maybe there will be some greater reason behind Valor's shenanigans? I have no idea. But, I am interested enough to find out.

Bottom Line: This book is far from perfect. There are flaws, and some of them will definitely have you shaking your head. But I also cannot deny the fact that I was deeply entertained by the story, and am compelled to read the sequel to try and unravel the twists. Hey, who knows, maybe it'll all make sense in the end? A girl can dream.

*Copy Provided for Review*
This review was originally posted on It Starts at Midnight