Joshua Hollis is a character in the Private series.
Info[]
Joshua, often called Josh, is a blond-curled Easton student who is known to be quiet and is also an artist who possesses keys to the frequented art cemetery. Often he is described to have paint under his nails and on his clothes. He soon becomes Reed's primary romantic interest. The two begin dating during Reed's first year at the school. However, Josh often shows his distaste towards the Billings Girls, and sometimes quarrels with Reed about her ties to Billings House.
In The Books[]
Reed's primary source of temptation, Josh Hollis, is the blond-curled, green-eyed roommate of Thomas Pearson in Private. Though Reed's contact with Josh is minimal in the first book when she is still interested in Thomas, at the beginning of Invitation Only Josh appears to be grim upon seeing Reed with Walt Whittaker, and by the middle of the Invitation Only his attraction to Reed is confirmed.
He becomes Reed's boyfriend in Untouchable, when at the same time, the Billings Girls try to convince Reed that Josh is the guilty party in the murder of his best friend and roommate, Thomas Pearson. In nature, Josh proves to be a caring and sensitive boyfriend to Reed; he finds ways to distract her from the pressures of Thomas's murder and the scrutiny of the students, and when in his company Reed finds herself relaxed and content. Josh, like Thomas, cannot understand why Reed spends time with the Billings Girls and why she's so desperate to please them; this drives them apart in Untouchable, though they soon reconcile. At the end of the second book, Thomas's dead corpse is found in a field near Easton, and in Untouchable authorities begin to question students about the murder. Noelle, Ariana, and Kiran attempt to convince Reed that Josh has all the right motives and all the evidence points to him. The evidence eventually turns against him at the end of Untouchable, when Noelle and the others call the police and have Josh arrested.
In Confessions Reed goes to the local police station where Josh is held and learns from Josh that Thomas's brother, Blake, had an ongoing relationship with the school secretary, Ms. Lewis-Hanneman. Josh reveals that he had seen Lewis-Hanneman and Blake together at Easton on the night that Thomas disappeared, and they could, therefore, testify in court on his behalf. Reed enlists Dash McCafferty's help to try to convince both Lewis-Hanneman and Blake to testify and have Josh freed, but the task proves to be difficult when Lewis-Hanneman states that by testifying she would have to reveal her relationship with Blake, and risk losing her job at Easton and ruining her marriage. She soon acquiesces, however, when she learns Blake is missing and Josh is freed. He returns, accompanied by his parents, to Easton later in Confessions and resumes his relationship with Reed, where he also introduces her to his parents - Susan and Alan Hollis. In Untouchable Josh reveals that he suffers from a mood disorder, which requires him to take various medications each day. This controls his mood swings, but also causes him to have the wrong reactions to certain situations (for example, Reed notes that when Thomas's corpse was found, Josh seemed oddly calm instead of devastated, as he should have been).
Reed becomes jealous at the beginning of Inner Circle when she notes that Josh has been spending time with Cheyenne Martin, Reed's new nemesis, and that Cheyenne is openly flirty toward Josh. Josh reassures Reed that there is nothing between him and Cheyenne, but toward the middle of the novel Reed catches Josh and Cheyenne as they are about to sleep together. Distraught, Reed slaps Cheyenne across the face and tearfully breaks up with Josh, who appears to be disoriented. The next morning, Josh manages to catch up with Reed, who is furious with him; he tells her that he had had a seizure the night before and just returned from the hospital, and that he could hardly remember what he was doing when he was with Cheyenne. He says that he suspects someone had drugged him by slipping something into his case of medications; he recalls seeing an odd blue pill with spots on it among his other pills, but had taken all the medicines in one gulp without thinking anything of it. Josh swears to Reed that he loves her and that he would never cheat on her, and begs her to believe him. He suspects that that unknown pill was what drugged him and made him unaware of what he was doing with Cheyenne. Reed is reluctant to believe him, even though it is obvious that Josh is still in pain from the seizure, and refuses to get back together with him. At the end of the novel, Cheyenne is found dead in her room after being expelled from Easton. Reed notices that there are pills matching Josh's description on the floor near Cheyenne's body, and concludes that these are the very pills that Cheyenne used to first drug Josh and then kill herself. In the flurry over Cheyenne's suicide, Josh concernedly asks an emotional Reed if she is alright; she in turn apologizes for not believing him, and the two of them patch things up.
Josh breaks up with Reed in Legacy when he finds her with Dash. Then he starts to date Ivy Slade. In the beginning of Paradise Lost, he tells Reed that he loves her and that he was going to keep her posted on Ivy's recovery. But he never called, texted, or e-mailed. At the end of Suspicion, Reed runs into him with his arm around Ivy. In Scandal, he gets into a fight with Graham Hathaway and kisses Reed after telling her he loves her and not Ivy. At the end of Scandal, he and Reed are a couple again. However, halfway through Vanished Reed is forced to break up with Josh, because someone is holding Noelle hostage and is giving Reed tasks to win her life back. Josh is appalled at first, but then later realizes that is was the kidnappers doing and gets back together with Reed.