© ✰ Janeane ✰ Copy received from Netgalley for an honest review
Blurb
Hannah
Cohen has always lived her life by a set of carefully constructed rules to
maintain the image of perfection. But now, the rules aren't helping control the chaos that is quickly taking over.
Opting
out of spending the summer in Paris with her mom, Hannah instead heads to the
mountains of North Carolina to stay with her aunt. The Blue Ridge Mountains
provide a barrier between Hannah and the rest of the world, a safe haven where
her secrets can be forgotten.
When
Hannah crosses paths with Jude Westmore, a guy who hangs a different shirt from
the tree in his front yard every day, she finds herself breaking out of the
comfort of her rules and doing things she had never dared before.
As the summer passes, Hannah and Jude grow
closer and make up their own rules for dealing with life.
But when
the secret Hannah has tried to forget is finally revealed, even the new rules
can't save her from possibly losing everything--including Jude.
Review
To get the most out of The Rules of You and me, I think it is
best to read The Boyfriend Thief .
The author/publisher do say that The Rules of You and Me is a stand alone novella, however without some of the back ground from the first novel,
some of the intricacies of the relationships between the characters will leave
you thinking “but why?”
Here we meet 17 year old Hannah, told for years who she should be. The summer before her senior year of high school, her world is falling apart.
She finds our her father life, which she thought he always had perfectly under control, is spiralling out of control. Her mother just wants the image of perfection, so takes off overseas on vacation.
Hannah decides to buck the system and spend her vacation with her aunt (who abandoned Hannah when she needed her years ago) instead of with her flakey mother.
What would a YA book be without the "troubled" boy for our heroine to fix and fall in love with. This would be Jude.
The interactions between Hannah and Jude are very well written, you can feel the pain of both characters as they learn about each other, and learn to let someone else into their life. They both have their tragedies and issues with family - the death of Jude's brother, the lack of a mother figure (seriously, as much trouble as Hannah's dad has got himself into, he is the much better parent than the self involved, selfish mother!!)
Jude's story just seemed to have a couple of unfinished/unanswered questions - he was accused of something, but we never find out more of why he was accused/what really happened? It just seemed to be roughly kind of answered and swept to the side, which was disappointing.
I really quite enjoyed this book, although the ending seemed to wrap everything up in happy ending a bit quickly for me, after all the angst and drama throughout. The mother had a complete personality transplant at the end, which after the way she had acted the whole way through the story was a bit of a let down.
Teens/YA will enjoy this book, and even though I am well past my teens, I did enjoy this book.
To
purchase The Boyfriend Thief
