Rules For Being A Girl By: Candace Bushnell & Katie Cotugno

Rules For Being A Girl
Author: Candace Bushnell & Katie Cotugno
Publisher: Harper Teen
Published: April 2020
Format: ARC Paperback
Pages: 304
Rating: 3.5/5
Summary:
It starts before you can even remember: You learn the rules for being a girl. . . .

Marin has always been good at navigating these unspoken guidelines. A star student and editor of the school paper, she dreams of getting into Brown University. Marin’s future seems bright―and her young, charismatic English teacher, Mr. Beckett, is always quick to admire her writing and talk books with her.

But when “Bex” takes things too far and comes on to Marin, she’s shocked and horrified. Had she somehow led him on? Was it her fault?

When Marin works up the courage to tell the administration what happened, no one believes her. She’s forced to face Bex in class every day. Except now, he has an ax to grind.


But Marin isn’t about to back down. She uses the school newspaper to fight back and she starts a feminist book club at school. She finds allies in the most unexpected people, like “slutty” Gray Kendall, who she’d always dismissed as just another lacrosse bro. As things heat up at school and in her personal life, Marin must figure out how to take back the power and write her own rules.


Review:
First, I would like to thank HCC Frenzy for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review. Boy did I want to love this one with all the hype around it... but I just couldn't.

I had such high hopes for this book, and I'll admit that I was pretty let down. I feel like this book COULD have been extremely powerful in so many ways, but I felt like there was just way too much going on that it just didn't shine to me. I also felt like the actual incident was kind of thrown there and Marin's reaction was not what I expected.

Marin changes throughout the book but I feel like a lot of it was more eye opening to all the wrong things that were going on in her school. I do feel like she developed, but it wasn't until more towards the end that I felt like she actually stood up for herself and got people talking about things that happen on a daily basis.

Can we talk about her family and Gray though? I felt like they were absolutely AMAZING and so extremely supportive, but I felt like Marin was just way too inside her own head to notice that there actually were people around her that wanted to help so much! I mean Gray alone, I would have loved to have a guy like this in my high school because he was just everything you wanted and more... #Swoon! Whereas her best friend... wasn't the best friend that you would expect until the end.

I felt like it was a pretty well paced book, and I definitely was interested to read more about what was going to happen, because damn there were just way too many things wrong in her world. I loved how things became more exposed within the school system, and that Marin was able to find a core group of people to help her realize that her school was pretty shitty including her administration. 

It also helped her find her voice even if it was a long time to get there. I understand that when things like this happen, people are too scared to talk about it and do anything, yet it's obviously necessary of a topic to be discussed.

Overall this was a good and important read. Personally I felt like it just fell where it could've shined. I do think this is a book that should be read for teens, because it will open their eyes to things happening in their own school, but also for adults because this topic is an extremely heavy one. I just didn't really enjoy it as much as I wanted it to, and felt like it could have been stronger in my opinion

That's all for my review, I hope you enjoyed it, and I do recommend checking it out.

So until the next time, Keep Reading!

Your Graduated Bookworm!! :)