Review: The Rules of Me

I’m going to try something a little different for this month’s review. The Rules of Me by Melanie Moyer is not a book about a transgender person, nor is Melanie transgender. No, this YA book is about Identity, growing up, and the Pain of letting go.

Disclosure: I worked with Melanie for a while at the bookstore, and I consider her a friend. That said, this review will be detached and fair, as she would demand it be.

Got that? Right.

I messaged Melanie and asked her if she had any comment to my few readers. She wrote:

“It’s a book that takes the complicated predicament of teenagerdom seriously and, I hope, takes the minds of its readers more seriously than many trendy YA novels out there.”

Okay. From the book jacket:

“Gabe keeps lists: why he’s real, reasons he’s not, and the rules that seem to dictate his strange existence. Danny says he’s her imaginary friend and that’s always been enough for the pair of them. But when she enters high school and a world of stress, turbulent emotions, and surprising first crushes, he finds himself asking questions and wanting things he never has before. His search for answers about where he comes from and why he’s here becomes critical as Danny faces a profound personal loss and they both begin to understand growing up means sacrifice and learning truths you never wanted to know.

A debut novel about growing up, getting wiser, and the sacrifices required to be who you were meant to be.”

The book is told from Gabe’s point of view, and Gabe is really neurotic. If you didn’t know if you were real, you’d be neurotic as well. However, while Gabe is your narrator and POV, Gabe isn’t the story. Danny is the story — she’s the dynamic character. Gabe becomes just a hair predictable. But that’s okay.

Danny is entering high school, and her life has been kind of sheltered. As can be guessed, her childhood is nearly gone. Gabe is pretty much the last vestige of her childhood. Enter Janine. She’s an older student, and the star of the soccer team. Danny joins the team as a goalie. Thing is, Danny isn’t used to having real life friends. (And Gabe isn’t happy about sharing.)  Like so many of us, we didn’t know how to handle people at that age. Some of us never really learn. Oh wait, as if that wasn’t enough, life throws a wicked curveball at Danny, further destroying her tidy little life.

Through it all, Gabe is there for Danny when she needs him, but Danny is calling on him less and less. The reason is that she relies on Janine more and more. However, what are these feelings that Janine engenders in Danny?

Melanie Moyer is a gifted writer, and there are some wonderful turns of phrase:

Sometimes nighttime feels like a hug, other times it’s like getting choked. (p 109)

She pressed into her cheeks and flung the tears as far away as she could into the night. Maybe that’s where stars come from. (p 207)

[inside an abandoned building] She nodded at the toy car she’d displaced. She’d given it hope of purpose again, of the possibility of being played with, of being used. The fresh tracks in the dust were alive. She’d moved stagnant history. It desperately craved steps forward in time. (p 286)

That last passage made me bawl like a baby. In the past, I’ve written about the metaphor of neglected/forgotten toys as a metaphor for the loss of my own childhood, and the imminent end of my daughter’s childhood — which is slipping away while I’m not there. (I haven’t seen Toy Story 3 for the same reason.) Moyer uses it as a not subtle metaphor as well, but better than I ever did. There are other passages that made me cry as well, but as they reveal key plot points, I won’t share them.

The few points I’ve given away do not spoil the story in any way. Obviously, since I’m writing about it here, there is an LGBT slant. Yet the core of this “coming of age” book is about identity, not just as a young adult, or a woman, but as a person who is becoming more at ease with the world around her. As Danny says to Janine “My mom told me you learn stuff you can’t read in books when you cry.” (p. 208) Danny is learning that the price of growing up is Pain, which is a lesson we all learn over and over.

The Rules of Me is a young adult book, but don’t let that scare you. There are a LOT of adult quality YA books out there. (I’m told there’s a series out there about some kid named “Harry somethingorother.”) This is a powerful debut from an author to watch. And I’d say that even if I didn’t know her.

The Rules of Me by Melanie Moyer   9780990524922

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Tags: book review, featured, Identity, opinion

Category: Product Review