The Rule of Three Review!

About the book:

Title: The Rule of Three

Author: Eric Walters

Genre & Age Group: Dystopian, post-apocalyptic, young adult

Goodreads Synopsis:

One shocking afternoon, computers around the globe shut down in a viral catastrophe. At sixteen-year-old Adam Daley’s high school, the problem first seems to be a typical electrical outage, until students discover that cell phones are down, municipal utilities are failing, and a few computer-free cars like Adam’s are the only vehicles that function. Driving home, Adam encounters a storm tide of anger and fear as the region becomes paralyzed. Soon—as resources dwindle, crises mount, and chaos descends—he will see his suburban neighborhood band together for protection. And Adam will understand that having a police captain for a mother and a retired government spy living next door are not just the facts of his life but the keys to his survival, in The Rule of Three by Eric Walters.

Source: School

How I Found Out About It: I had to read this for lit circles at school!

Review: Okay, I’m just going to go straight to the point here, I didn’t love this book. When I chose to read this book for lit circles out of several different choices, I thought that this sounded interesting, and having read and enjoyed another one of Walters’ books, Safe as Houses, I presumed that this one wouldn’t be too bad. I was dead wrong. This book was SO boring, and it seemed like it dragged on for centuries! To be honest, if I was reading this for pleasure, I probably would’ve abandoned it after reading half of it, but I am a rule follower so I just went through with it. I found it to be super repetitive and slow, and though I really liked the main character Adam, the other characters were just unlikable or two-dimensional. Adam was so brave, strong, and helpful, and just a natural born leader! If it wasn’t for him and Herb, the community would’ve been a wreck since they both knew exactly what to do, although Herb seemed to be keeping a ton of secrets from us. Even though I do know that this book has two sequels (both of which I probably don’t plan on reading😝), I didn’t like that we never got to find out what he was hiding from us! Honestly, if I do pick up the sequel(s), finding out Herb’s mysteries would be the only reason why I would. All the other characters were just dull, and we never got to have a good look of them in this book. There was a tiny smidgen of romance between Adam and Lori, but I didn’t feel like Eric Walters focused on it enough. I believe that if he did, the book would’ve been slightly more captivating. This book just seemed to be full of attacks and protections, and after the umpteenth attack😆, I thought to myself, “Okay, already, that’s enough! When will this get interesting?” My answer for that is that it didn’t. As I said before, the book just dragged on and went into WAY too much detail. Like seriously? Wasting four dear pages telling us how Adam flew his plane? Do you think readers would be amused? Despite all this, I thought that the book had a really good lesson of survival and teamwork. Adam’s community had to work together to survive the crisis of the viral catastrophe, and everyone really started to appreciate each other more by the end of the book, since they had all gone through so much together. For someone looking for a light dystopian read, I’m going to say that this is not the book for you. I would recommend Gone by Michael Grant for you because though it still isn’t the lightest of reads, it still is a little less violent and a bit more interesting. But if you are someone who likes violent, detailed, deep books, I would say give this one a try, and maybe you’ll like it more than me!

Rating: 2.5/5 Stars

Advertisement