Hello everyone!
I am back with another book review, Rules of Attraction by Simone Elkeles. I am working on finishing this series, although I've recently found out there may be a book four in the works?!
This book follows the story of Carlos Feuntes, Alex from book one's younger brother. Carlos has had some trouble with a gang in Mexico and his mother sent him to live with his brother in Colorado. After a mishap at school, Carlos is forced to find a new living arrangement, one that ends up being at Kiara Westford's house, where her parents decide to take him under their wing. Soon, their relationship develops from strongly disliking each other to well, a romantic one!
Similar to the first book in the series, I loved the Mexican elements of this book. Carlos switches from English to Spanish constantly, especially when he is angry. He talks of his life in Mexico, his mother and younger brother. Elkeles does a great job of developing Carlos's character and keeping the nuanced layers of who he is as a Mexican living in America. There were one or two times when I thought the Spanish explanations were a bit much - I know in America, Spanish is widely taught in schools and here in Canada, it is close enough to French that I could piece together what he was saying. But Elkeles usually translated anyways. I appreciated that for things like longer sentences and harder to 'translate' parts, but when it's something like "amor" meaning love, I think I could figure that one out.
I liked that the romance in this book was fairly slow to start. I knew it was enevitable, so I didn't find it too insta-lovey. Carlos is kind of a jerk, although he gets better as the book goes on. But Kiara isn't immune to his jerkiness. She sees him for who he is, but she is also able to see through that jerk façade. I'm a sucker for a good enemies to lovers story and in this regard, Elkeles did not disappoint!
I think in terms of the series so far, this book wasn't the best. I think that honour is still reserved for book one. I will say, though, it was a great book. And if nothing else, it was worth it to see the Alex and Brittany moments down the road. And Elkeles always kills it with the epilogue, this one was 26 years later and was just too much.
Overall, a good continuation of the series and it helped make me more excited for book three!