Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: Rules of Play
SERIES: The Script Club Book 2
AUTHOR: Lane Hayes
NARRATOR: Alexander Cendese
PUBLISHER: Self-Published
RELEASE DATE: August 3, 2021
LENGTH: 4 hours and 48 minutes
BLURB:
The genius, the mechanic, and a new playbook…
George
My brother’s friend is hot. If you’re into flannel-wearing lumbersexual former jocks who eat donuts for dinner and still scribble to-do lists on their palms. I’m not. I’m a serious scientist in my final of grad school. Sure, I have few quirks of my own, and I’m all for having fun, but I don’t have time for Aiden’s brand of crazy.
Aiden
A few quirks? Really? I’ve always had a soft spot for George, but he’s the weirdest dude I know. He wears capes in public, brings a book everywhere he goes, and loves all thing spooky. He’s also the smartest person on the planet, and I need his help if I’m going to make a real attempt at becoming a baseball analyst. I just didn’t count on falling for my best friend’s nerdy brother. This is against the rules, isn’t it?
Rules of Play is an MM bisexual awakening story where opposites attract and shenanigans ensue!
REVIEW:
Lane Hayes delivers another winner with Rules of Play, Book Two in her The Script Club series. Positioned as the so-called “sequel” to the highly entertaining Following the Rules, the first book in the series, Rules of Play bears the burden of inevitable comparison to Following. The similarities between certain aspects of the two books’ storylines don’t help distinguish it either. For example, the bisexual awakening of one of the male leads (Simon in Following and Aiden in Rules), the genius, eccentric, yet sexually confident “nerd” (Topher in Following and George in Rules), and the “forbidden” best friend’s brother (Topher/Simon)/brother’s best friend (George/Aiden) romantic relationship. Notwithstanding all of this, Rules notably accomplishes the feat of exceeding its predecessor.
The Script Club series is dubbed a “nerd/jock” series, but there are actually a number of tropes at play here. Friends to lovers, brother’s best friend, best friend’s brother, and opposites attract, for example. The opposites attract trope is particularly intriguing in this story, particularly because George and Aiden are not as different as it may seem.
Like Simon in Following, George is a veritable genius with an exceptional mind and an enormous heart. He has excelled academically and career-wise, now a graduate student headed for NASA. While he’s got his idiosyncrasies, mainly to cope with anxiety and overwhelm, he is not (completely) socially inept (even though he has his missteps, like the situation he finds himself in with his boss, Newton), nor is he uninhibited when it comes to sex. But George has felt like a bit of an outcast at times, the “weird” kid who never fit in. This is particularly the case in contrast to Simon, his uber-successful, pro-football player brother. So while George remains confident in most circumstances, believing in himself and generally accepting of who he is, that drops at times and he folds into himself, hiding figuratively and literally (behind his ever-present cape).
Aiden, the former jock-turned-mechanic, seems so different from George, but he’s actually George’s kindred spirit. He also understands what it feels like to be an outcast, perhaps even more acutely than George. Aiden is basically ignored or degraded by his own family. His parents horribly neglected him and now he works under the thumb of his homophobic, vitriolic Uncle, who takes every opportunity to make Aiden feel like sh!t.
Because of his parents’ neglect, Aiden practically lived at Simon’s house when they were younger, so he and George have known each other forever. George has had a crush on Aiden for as long as he can remember. As kids, George endlessly tagged along with Aiden and Simon. Aiden has always felt a connection to George. He took George under his wing, becoming his de facto defender and protector, rescuing George from a host of bad situations including bullying. When Rules begins, Aiden is there again, ready and willing to rescue George from a perilous situation when George’s beloved car “Willy” breaks down on the side of the highway during rush hour … in Los Angeles.
Ms. Hayes creates some potent chemistry between Aiden and George. I felt their emotional connection much more strongly than Following’s Simon and Topher, to be honest. Aiden not only accepts George for who he is with all his quirks, but he embraces them completely, even wearing George’s cape at times (which is totes adorbs). Aiden “gets” George on an inherent level that no one else really does. George is a puzzle and I loved how Ms. Hayes showed Aiden figuring out how to put those pieces together and then build a relationship on it as more than friends.
Aiden, for his part, has always identified as straight, so the onset of his awareness that he’s attracted to George sets him on a bicurious path where he wants to explore this new facet of his identity … with George. As just friends … of course. In an obvious corollary to Aiden’s desire to figure out George, George works to figure out Aiden, this new change in how he views George, and what it means for them together.
Alexander Cendese continues to narrate Ms. Hayes’ The Script Club series, picking up here in Rules. He provides an energetic delivery that works well for the most part. It definitely supports the often frenetic, anxiety-laden, “geeky” stream of consciousness monologuing of the members of The Script Club, including Topher and George’s roommates. It also works great when he lays into snarky banter and humor, rife with sarcasm and attitude. Ironically, it works less effectively in his portrayal of the two male leads.
Mr. Cendese voices George with a mid-pitched tone with his usual high-energy pacing. However, George struck me as more of a quiet, measured speaker (as opposed to some of his nervous babbling friends), so the overall pace of his speech felt too rapid. Also, Mr. Cendese often uses a falling intonation at the end of George’s sentences and simultaneously switches to a flat, bored tone. It seems like he was aiming for erudite arrogance. However, he didn’t temper his delivery to match. Mr. Cendese’s quick speed didn’t allow enough time for him to really lay into the syllables and elongate the words. Further, the fast pace typically reads as excitement, which contradicts the lazy snootiness he was aiming for.
Surprisingly, Mr. Cendese’s voice for Aiden is roughly the same pitch as George’s, with a bit more pseudo-surfer dude/jock attitude and a bit less snobbery to it. However, it creates some discordance due to Aiden’s burly “bear” appearance which leads to an expectation of a voice in a lower register.
Mr. Cendese had a lot of “nerdy” characters to voice in Rules. Over the course of the book, they all started to blend together because of a similar nasal tone. He definitely tried to differentiate between, for example, George’s boss Newton, and George’s BFFs and roommates Topher, Asher, and Holden, but they weren’t consistently distinct enough for me to keep straight who was who without prompts from the text.
Overarchingly, Mr. Cendese is a pleasure to listen to in any audiobook and his vocal performance in Rules of Play is no exception. He’s particularly good at humor, which plays a decent-sized role in Rules, and his expressive, emotional narration consistently brings to life the stories he voices in an engaging way. With Rules of Play, he didn’t nail the voices, but he did solidly deliver the intention and feeling behind the content. As a result, I believe you will enjoy Ms. Hayes’ excellent Rules of Play to the greatest extent if you use immersion reading, pairing the book with audio. If you haven’t experienced a book that way, I highly recommend it, especially with Rules of Play.
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