The Edge Rules

Melanie Hooyenga

Left Handed Mitten Publications

October 26, 2018

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Blurb: Being a bully isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Sixteen-year old Brianna had everything she wanted: money to ski all over the world, underlings to do her bidding, and parents who gave her every freedom—as long as she played by their rules. But when she’s busted shoplifting and assigned to the Chain Gang, she ditches her shallow ways and realizes being herself is easier than manipulating people.

Forced to partner with kids she’d never dream of befriending, including Xavier, a boy who makes her pulse go into hyperdrive, Brianna vows to be a better person. Breaking Old Brianna’s habits isn’t easy, but her infatuation with Xavier—someone her parents would never approve of—motivates her to keep trying.

Even when he convinces her to trade her swanky skis for a beat-up snowboard.

Brianna lets go of her need to control everything and finally starts to feel free—until her past threatens to jeopardize her first real chance at love. She discovers balancing on the edge is as challenging in life as it is in snowboarding, and when a new friend is in trouble, Brianna must decide between the superficial things that used to be her world and putting her friend’s safety before herself.

 Buy Links: Amazon

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SASCHA DARLINGTON’S REVIEW

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.

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rating: 

4 out of 5 butterflies

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-EXCERPT-

Mystery Boy looks up and meets my eyes. His are so dark they’re almost black and for a second I forget where we are. “It’s an honor system.”

My pulse speeds up. “Honor among thieves?” I say the words without thinking, and I immediately wish I could take them back. For all I know I’m the only thief here.

But he smiles, a tiny curl of the side of his mouth. “Something like that.”

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AUTHOR BIO:

Multi-award winning young adult author Melanie Hooyenga first started writing as a teenager and finds she still relates best to that age group. She has lived in Washington DC, Chicago, and Mexico, but has finally settled down in her home state of Michigan. When not at her day job as a Communications Director at a nonprofit, you can find Melanie attempting to wrangle her Miniature Schnauzer Owen and playing every sport imaginable with her husband Jeremy.

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