Rule Review

Rule 

Jay Crownover

December 2012

 

Opposites in every way . . . except the one that matters

Shaw Landon loved Rule Archer from the moment she laid eyes on him. Rule is everything a straight-A pre-med student like Shaw shouldn’t want—and the only person she’s never tried to please. She isn’t afraid of his scary piercings and tattoos or his wild attitude. Though she knows that Rule is wrong for her, her heart just won’t listen.

To a rebel like Rule Archer, Shaw Landon is a stuck-up, perfect princess-and his dead twin brother’s girl. She lives by other people’s rules; he makes his own. He doesn’t have time for a good girl like Shaw-even if she’s the only one who can see the person he truly is.

But a short skirt, too many birthday cocktails, and spilled secrets lead to a night neither can forget. Now, Shaw and Rule have to figure out how a girl like her and a guy like him are supposed to be together without destroying their love . . . or each other. 

  I started out reading New Adult books because it's become an extremely popular genre. I'm still very much behind on reading some of the more popular NA books to come out within the past three to five years or so. So now, I've been catching up on as many of these books as I can to see what I think about them. Some of the books I've read have been great reads that I was impressed by due to the uniqueness of it, while others were disappointing to say the least. This particular novel ends up in the latter category for me personally. I wasn't a fan of this book because it had so many elements that made me nervous about reading these books in the first place. I tried really hard to see why this book is so popular, but I just can't wrap my mind around it. 

Neither of these characters were people that I'd want to be around. The reason why I liked Boomerang was because I could see myself being friends with the main characters. People like Rule and Shaw are people that I'd definitely avoid in real life. Rule is completely unapologetic about being a manwhore. Shaw isn't much better considering the fact that she bashes the girls that he sleeps with but views unprotected sex with him as not being the worst thing in the world? Say what? One of my other pet peeves is when the main female character is viewed as the pure and perfect virgin who is surrounded by a bunch of girls who do nothing but put out. As a woman, this is completely awful to read and I can't stand slut shaming in any form, and that is exactly what Shaw does over and over again in the book. 

I'm not going to ramble on and on about this book since I think I've already made my point quite clear to say the least. In case you're not sure, my point is that this book is one that you should skip. Maybe you can overlook these things I had such huge issues with, but it wasn't something I could do. I probably could have overlooked (probably not) some of these issues if the characters were more charming, Rule specifically. He treats all girls in such a degrading manner, he even treats our pure MC pretty terribly at times. However, he never degrades her by calling her a slut or treating her the way he treats the other girls he sleeps with. Let's be honest, there's really not THAT much of a difference between Shaw and any other female character in this book. She still has plenty of flaws, and it irritates me when authors make the characters flawless through the eyes of the other characters. I'm sure you've already formed your own opinion about this book, but I thought it was time to share my own.