Review of The Rules by Stacey Kade

Look, I knew The Rules would be a long shot from the moment I laid eyes on it, but I was bored and plucked it from the obscurity of the YA stacks at my library because why not. I feel like I have fallen off the YA wagon lately; I have only read three in the past year, so I was rather starving. Stacey Kade is not a name I recognized, but the plot seemed decent enough, and even though I suspected it would be a dud, I hoped it might at least have its moments. Which … sort of?

Ariane Tucker is a human–alien hybrid living under the assumed identity of the deceased daughter of the man who broke her out of captivity at GTX, the evil corporate villain of this book. Aside from life on the lam, Ariane is your typical junior—or she would be, if she didn’t slavishly follow the eponymous Rules. Invented by her “father” to help her fly under the radar lest GTX locate her and take her back into custody, the Rules help Ariane survive but are also a serious buzzkill. Until now, Ariane has never minded them. But when Rachel “Generic Mean Girl Du Jour” Jacobs bullies Ariane’s friend and Ariane retaliates, bringing her into the orbit of Zane “You’re Not Like Other Girls” Bradshaw, sparks fly and the Rules go out the window.

Look, I don’t want to be too harsh on this book, so let’s start with some good news: this book isn’t bad; it’s just OK. It’s the kind of YA novel that, if you read enough of this vibe, is eminently predictable—yet Kade deserves credit at least for managing to hit each beat. If each of the remaining two books in this trilogy (I won’t be reading the rest) sticks the landing in the same way, this is a solid serialized story that I could see myself loving more at fifteen. Storywise, The Rules is an exemplar of a novel that has all the working parts … just none of the heart that really gets to your core.

There are two major flaws with this book, and they are connected: the characterization and the writing overall.

None of these characters, Ariane included, are remotely interesting human beings. Though there are attempts at making them round and dynamic characters, these mostly result in each person falling back into an archetype, as I mocked above. Zane Bradshaw wants to be played by High School Musical–age Zac Efron but would probably be a Disney Channel Shia LaBeouf if he’s lucky. Jenna is a spaghetti noodle of a best friend type. Ariane’s father has, like, six lines until the climax of the novel. Split between Ariane and Zane’s first-person narration, The Rules should be full of dramatic irony and a lot of tension as Zane sleuths out Ariane’s secret. At the very least, there should be some sparkage, some romantic will-they-won’t-they drama. No. It’s Snoozeville over here, and Ariane and Zane are co-mayors.

Even that by itself might still make this a worthwhile slog. But then at the start of a later chapter Kade hits us with a “I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.” Literally. Word for word. In 2014. It’s not Kade’s fault, really; one of her editors should have caught this cliché, collected it carefully, and then marched it out back for its summary execution. This darling was not killed, however, and it’s emblematic of the writing in The Rules: this might be the most YA-iest YA novel I have read in a while, as if Kade sat down and, David Eddings style, plotted out beat-for-beat what a conspiracy SF YA novel should look like.

As I said above, in and of itself that is not a bad thing (David Eddings was my hook into fantasy, and maybe Kade’s books will be some young person’s hook into SF). There’s something to be said for hitting every beat. Alas, this kind of rote storytelling doesn’t do much for me these days, nor does it make me excited to recommend this to younger readers. The Rules is too good at following its own rules, and like Ariane up until the events of this book, it is too good at flying under the radar.