Review: "The Secret Rules of Romance" by Leah Heart

The Secret Rules of Romance by Leah Heart
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I wanted to like Leah Heart's "The Secret Rules of Romance" so much more than I actually did. My biggest problem was that I didn't like the book's female lead character, Ally, very much. It irritated me how desperate she was to find a man, as if getting married was the only thing that could possibly give her life meaning. She changed her entire personality and bent over backwards to try and be the perfect girlfriend for her ex, Brody, just to get him to propose, and I'm not sure it was actually because she loved him. It seemed more like having a ring on her finger was a status symbol to her. When they broke up early in the story, she didn't seem upset by the end of the relationship so much as the fact that she would have to try and find another man she could convince to marry her.

Aside from Ally's obsession with getting married, I was irritated by her frequently immature behavior and poor decisions. It was impossible for me to believe that Ally could be "excelling at her real career" (location 1769; 31% of the Kindle edition) when she was out until dawn almost every weeknight partying and hooking up with random guys and then showing up hungover to work the next morning. In fact, at one point her colleague (and future love interest) Tristan had to save Ally from blowing an important meeting because she was so hungover! She also had a habit of hiding in the bathroom and playing Candy Crush when she didn't feel like working. Between those examples and her fight with her friend Dee in the middle of the office, I don't know how Ally managed to stay employed until the end of the book. (Probably the answer is that this book is a work of fiction; Ally's behavior never would have been tolerated in a real workplace.)

Regarding Ally's relationship with Tristan, I honestly could not understand why he was so attracted to her given that he was supposedly looking for a mature partner, and Ally's behavior was so often immature. In addition, Ally turned into a completely psycho, jealous, insecure girlfriend less than 12 hours after they officially got together, plus she started nagging him about getting married after only two months. Tristan treated Ally like a queen, and when he dumped her, I kind of wanted to cheer because he deserved so much better. I probably should have just quit reading the book at that point, but I hoped that Ally would finally learn her lesson and grow up. Unfortunately, that never really happened, and I found her to be just as unlikable at the end of the book as she was in the beginning.

The reason that I'm giving this book two stars instead of only one is that there were some genuinely funny parts of the story, such as Ally's shopping trip to Forever 21 and a few of her bad dates at the beginning of part 2. Sadly, the book's humor was not enough to overcome an unlikable main character for me, so I am unable to recommend it. It was generally well-written, however, so I would give another one of the author's books a chance in the future.

*Review copy provided by the author via BookSirens. All opinions expressed are my own.

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