Wattpad Pet Peeves

Bending the Rules (MEGA RANT)

TW: eating disorders

Book: Bending the Rules (The Rules, #1)

Author: Reanne Kennedy

Reads: 1.4m

Synopsis: Brenna and Shea are rival hockey players, and Shea can't stand that Brenna is a girl playing in the boys' league. When Shea makes a bet with one his teammates to try and date Brenna and get her banned from the league (because dating is against the rules), Shea realizes that he actually likes Brenna, and he learns to be more respectful of women and he turns his perspective around. Meanwhile, he and Brenna work together to overthrow the bet.

This is my least favorite Wattpad book EVER, but I still have to give it some concessions:

The writing is competent. I'm sure you know what that means by now (Reanne Kennedy can spell).

Shea is a detailed character. I actually think he's a really good example of a tragic hero, and he develops well throughout the story.

The enemies-to-lovers arc is executed pretty well, in my opinion. Enemies-to-lovers is such a popular romance, especially on Wattpad, but the problem a lot of authors have is pacing. I find that many authors tend to rush the romance, and as a reader you get confused because the characters suddenly don't dislike each other anymore. However, I think Reanne Kennedy does a good job bringing Shea and Brenna together.

This book taught me a lot about Canadian culture. Obviously, I'm referring to hockey, but there are other aspects of Canadian culture, such as Tim Hortons, and the way Kennedy describes Kelowna that make the setting so vivid.

Rant:

The chapters are too long. It's just so unsatisfying to see that little scroller bar thingy move so slowly. I don't like to have to stop reading in the middle of a chapter, and what if I'm in a time crunch?

Throughout reading, I noticed that Kennedy had some very strong political opinions. Now, there's nothing wrong with being opinionated, but authors need to be more careful about not letting their personal opinions bleed into their writing. The story is about feminism, so obviously, discourse about feminism in the story is warranted, but the biggest mistake that Kennedy makes is constantly breaking the flow of scenes to rant about her political opinions. I can kind of give her the benefit of the doubt when Brenna's the one ranting, because Brenna is a very opinionated character, but when the chapter is in Shea's point of view, and suddenly there's this giant block of text ranting about the "patriarchy", it makes no sense because it's not appropriate for Shea's character.

Brenna is the ultimate Mary Sue, and as a feminist, I don't like her because she's overly negative and only sees the worst in men. She's super self-righteous and impossible to root for, and it makes no sense why the other characters practically worship her. Even when Shea makes strides in feminism and becomes more respectful of Brenna, she constantly tells him that he's still not good enough and needs to try harder, over and over again. If I were Shea, I would just give up on trying to date her because she's just so impossible to reach common ground with.

There was this one scene in particular where the friends are playfully teasing one male character for having a feminine middle name, and self-righteous Brenna has to step up and say "Hey! You guys are so sexist and homophobic and misogynistic and [insert other buzzwords]", and somehow, instead of being annoyed that Brenna is being a total buzzkill, the friends are like, "yeah, she's right", and Brenna wins the day again. I don't care that Brenna is liberally minded, but when she pulls stuff like that, it peeves me off so much.

I know hockey isn't a very diverse sport, and one of the goals of this story is to make hockey more accessible to girls, but why did Kennedy have to introduce two token-diverse characters right near the end of the story? I'm talking about Jayden and Nick. Jayden is a decently prominent character throughout the story, as he acts as a mediator between the two rival hockey teams. During the falling action of the story, Kennedy reveals that Jayden is bisexual and has a bit of a crush on Shea. There's nothing wrong with his character, but placing the revelation so late in the story makes it feel kind of pointless. It would've been nicer to know that earlier on so that Brenna and Jayden could relate to each other's diversity throughout the meat of the story. Then there's Nick. If I remember correctly, Nick is revealed to be Black in like, the last chapter of the story. That's ridiculous! Nick being a Black hockey player is a HUGE deal, since hockey is such a white-male dominated sport! Even though Nick's character isn't that important to the plot, if we'd known he was a minority in the beginning of the story, it would've added so much more color to his and Brenna's friendship. Missed opportunities...

The whole bet plot line regarding Connor's bet can be solved by simply talking to an adult (in fact, that's literally what the characters do in the end), which makes it feel really pointless, as if the characters are dilly-dallying the whole time instead of actually making progress in the plot.

The subplot with Brenna's eating disorder could've used some work. Throughout the story, Brenna is incredibly disciplined with her eating habits, and she seems to have this fear of junk food. She also exercises constantly, which at the beginning of the story appears to be a way to release stress. Now, those things being the key signs of her eating disorder is perfectly reasonable. In fact, when we get closer to the revelation, Kennedy even adds that Shea notices how Brenna is skinnier. My problem is that when Brenna is in the emergency room being diagnosed with orthorexia (an eating disorder characterized by an obsession with being healthy), suddenly her mother pipes up, and is like, "Yeah, Brenna, you've been checking food labels a lot recently", and she mentions all these other details having to do with the eating disorder that weren't even mentioned in the story. Kennedy had something good going with that plot line, but then she tainted it by doing that.

Then there's the thing about Brenna's uncle being her hockey coach. After the gang overthrow Connor's bet, there's this big revelation that the coach of Brenna's team is actually her estranged uncle, and the uncle KNEW that Brenna was his niece, but of course Brenna didn't know that. Wouldn't that be some form of nepotism? Let me know if you agree in the comments.

A problem I have with many of the stories I've ranted about is that with the amount of flaws they have, I don't think they deserve all of the awards and publicity they get, but Bending the Rules takes this to a whole new level. Sure, the writing is competent and the plot is decently fleshed out, but all of the flaws I mentioned earlier made this book an absolute headache to read. And what I noticed was that Reanne Kennedy has all of these brand deals, paid chapters, TTS, and even a playlist to go along with each chapter, but with how frustrating this book is to read, I really don't think it deserves all that.

I might hate Bending the Rules, but I must admit that it's good for Wattpad standards. What do you guys think?