On the blog: "Rule" book review

Shaw Landon, rich, classy, straight-A student, has been in love with Rule Archer, tatted, pierced, bad boy, since she was fourteen. Normally, the duo has a rocky relationship at best, but one drunken night leads to something much more. Now the couple must navigate through a new territory without destroying their love or each other.

“Rule” by Jay Crownover is her debut novel and the reader will definitely be able to tell. Many new writers haven't found their own voice yet and Crownover did not find hers while writing “Rule.” “Rule” is just the first novel in The Marked Men series.

The best part of “Rule” is the message it sends: Just because someone loves differently than you do does not mean that they do not love you. It is so important to recognize this because a lot of relationships fail due to miscommunication. The couple in the novel is so completely different that of course they would have trouble recognizing each others love. Crownover did a wonderful job getting that message across clearly and with elegance.

The novel was not a complete flop. I usually glance at the average rating of a book on Goodreads and it had over four stars out of five, so I wasn't worried about “Rule” being terrible. Like I said earlier, Crownover did not find her voice in this novel so it reads sort of blandly. It did not suck me in like other New Adult novels have in the past. For one, the novel is written in a dual-narrator, with Rule being one point-of-view and Shaw being the other. Shaw had a great voice and was relatable and cute and funny. Rule, on the other hand, was where Crownover had the most trouble. She was not able to grasp the male voice as seamlessly as Christina Lauren or Colleen Hoover, which is not surprising considering this is Crownover’s first novel.

The dialogue is another place where Crownover went wrong. She used the character’s interactions and conversations to spill a lot of narration that could have been executed differently because the way she had her characters talk was not natural at all. People don’t have life-changing conversations with everyone they talk to. Also, she made the characters use each others names in like every other sentence and that never happens in real life.

“Rule” is an interesting debut novel and the reader will be able to tell Crownover did her best but just did not make the cut. The idea of having the main love interest more alternative rather than clean cut is a fresh breath of air and I commend Crownover on executing the ins and outs of body modification superbly. I just hope she finds her voice later in The Marked Men series.