The Rules by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguié

Genre:  Mature YA Horror

Nancy Holder's website

Debbie Viguié's website

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Description (taken from Debbie Viguié's):

Narrated by alternating unreliable narrators, this dark thriller will have readers on the edge of their seats. No one is safe and everyone is a suspect. It’s Saw meets I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Junior Robin Brisset has no idea what she’s in for when she accepts an invitation to one of Callabrese High’s most exclusive parties. And when the trademark scavenger hunt begins, Robin must go against every rule she’s lived by to survive.

August is hosting the rich kid's party of the year.  Only thing is he's seeking vengeance from the snobby kids who contributed to his sister's death last year.  You've got the jocks: those on steroids as well as though trying to succeed on skill alone.  You've got the drama geek, the cheerleader, and the girls who want more in life.  There's also the rock band, the drug user, and the gangster involved in this party.  But one girl, Robin, finds very quickly that she doesn't sync with this in-crowd and she's crashing the party.

The party consists of a scavenger hunt, and whichever team can find all of the clues first wins.  And August's prizes are worth sabotaging other teams over.  But once the clues begin to hit a little close to home and the scavenger items become a little morbid, the teenagers realize there's a vendetta at this party.  And when people go missing, everyone begins to suspect the host.  But he's just as lost as the rest of them.  One by one, they realize someone's out for blood and the prize for the night is your life.

So you know those awful teen horror flicks that have come out in recent years that have been absolutely terrible?  Like in the fact that it makes you ashamed to admit you were ever a teenager?  Pretty much sums up this book.  While trying to keep the who-done-it mystery alive, ridiculous back stories were thrown across the pages.  And they were typically only specific to one or two characters.  So it wasn't really a story you could guess at.  Once everything's revealed in the end, you're left wondering how far back the train derailed off the tracks with this story.

Obviously, I didn't care for this story.  I think there was an attempt to make an awesome story about a novel concept: rules, but it fell short.