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A review by saschadarlington
The Edge Rules by Melanie Hooyenga
4.0
I don’t know if there is going to be a fourth Rules book, but if there isn’t I just have to say that Melanie Hooyenga really hit it out of the park with The Edge Rules.
In the preceding two books, we met Brianna first as the top mean girl in The Slope Rules and then as the ex-best friend (still mean girl tendencies) in The Trail Rules. In The Edge Rules we come to see Brianna as a more layered person, evolving throughout the novel. At the beginning, she still shows signs of being judgmental and superior and, well, mean, but she’s becoming self-aware and wants to change. We also see that she’s truly remorseful for past behavior and that changes are not always easy.
Enter Xavier. They meet while on the “Chain Gang,” the joke name for the trash collecting community service they both need to do to complete the service hours for their arrests. Xavier is as nice as Brianna has once been mean, so she expects that it’s only going to be a matter of time until he finds out who she is, especially once she discovers the friends/acquaintances they have in common.
I think The Edge Rules worked so well for me because the scope was narrowed slightly on this novel. It didn’t try to do too much or cover too much ground. Already it was a challenge, I should suspect, to make a mean girl nice and make her believable, which she was. At the beginning, though, I wondered how Hooyenga was going to make the reader actually like Brianna because even at the start of the novel, she was difficult. Characterization is really important in The Edge Rules, and with the relationship complications, it all works.
If you’re a fan of YA sports novels, this one involves snowboarding, YA romances of opposites attract, and mean girls gone good, you will probably enjoy The Edge Rules.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
In the preceding two books, we met Brianna first as the top mean girl in The Slope Rules and then as the ex-best friend (still mean girl tendencies) in The Trail Rules. In The Edge Rules we come to see Brianna as a more layered person, evolving throughout the novel. At the beginning, she still shows signs of being judgmental and superior and, well, mean, but she’s becoming self-aware and wants to change. We also see that she’s truly remorseful for past behavior and that changes are not always easy.
Enter Xavier. They meet while on the “Chain Gang,” the joke name for the trash collecting community service they both need to do to complete the service hours for their arrests. Xavier is as nice as Brianna has once been mean, so she expects that it’s only going to be a matter of time until he finds out who she is, especially once she discovers the friends/acquaintances they have in common.
I think The Edge Rules worked so well for me because the scope was narrowed slightly on this novel. It didn’t try to do too much or cover too much ground. Already it was a challenge, I should suspect, to make a mean girl nice and make her believable, which she was. At the beginning, though, I wondered how Hooyenga was going to make the reader actually like Brianna because even at the start of the novel, she was difficult. Characterization is really important in The Edge Rules, and with the relationship complications, it all works.
If you’re a fan of YA sports novels, this one involves snowboarding, YA romances of opposites attract, and mean girls gone good, you will probably enjoy The Edge Rules.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.