*REVIEW* The Unwritten Rule

Synopsis:

Everyone knows the unwritten rule: You don't like your best friend's boyfriend.

Sarah has had a crush on Ryan for years. He's easy to talk to, supersmart, and totally gets her. Lately it even seems like he's paying extra attention to her. Everything would be perfect except for two things: Ryan is Brianna's boyfriend, and Brianna is Sarah's best friend.

Sarah forces herself to avoid Ryan and tries to convince herself not to like him. She feels so guilty for wanting him, and the last thing she wants is to hurt her best friend. But when she's thrown together with Ryan one night, something happens. It's wonderful...and awful.

Sarah is torn apart by guilt, but what she feels is nothing short of addiction, and she can't stop herself from wanting more...

I debated not writing a review for this book, not that I didn't enjoy reading it, but the story itself is very simplistic and predictable and I find that I don't have all that much to say about the book that the synopsis couldn't tell you.

I liked the book, but didn't love it, for a couple main reasons. First off, I think it's definitely geared towards a younger reader. Yes, I'm adult and I read YA but this book felt VERY young to me. I'm not even sure I would have loved it at 17 or 18 years old. That being said, the author wonderfully captures the emotions, feelings, and insecurities so common to adolescents during the teenage years.

Another major problem for me with this book was the characters and my inability to form an attachment to them. I found Sarah to be annoying in her overly insecure willingness to put up with unbelievable rudeness and crap from her so-called BFF. Which brings me to Brianna... I know that she is, unfortunately, a fairly good representation of many insecure, needing to put down other people, teenage girls but I really wanted to smack her for most of the book. Yes, she does not have a great homelife and it's easy to see how this has affected her but I still found it very hard to feel much sympathy for her.

I do think that the majority of my hangups about this book come from the fact that it is geared towards a younger reader. It's an accurate representation of friendship and teenage love, but being so removed from that age, and having grown so far past it, I found a lot of it to be annoying and had to contain my eye rolls. That being said, it's a quick and easy read and you do get to see the main character finally take a stand for herself. In my opinion, it just takes her way too long to get there.

My final complaint is the constant switching between present and past tense in the writing itself. I understand why the author wrote it that way, but found myself thrown off by it some and it did actually distract me from the story a few times.

A lot of this has been negative, and while I doubt I would re-read this book, I wouldn't necessarily discourage others from reading it. I just would caution readers that it is very juvenile and to expect a very predictable story about friendship, love, and intense insecurity. *XOXO*