Title: Mr Rude & Me
Author: vintage-wifi
Grade: 70% C-
Review:
Disclaimer: Direct quotes may be used from the story in question, which do not belong to me. Excerpts are marked with stars.
Okay. This one was not my favorite, but I'm glad, at least, that I didn't start this review book off with an F.
So, "Mr Rude & Me" popped up on my Top 10 In The US feed, and it's #2 on the romance hotlist, so I figured oh boy, this'll be good. Because as everyone knows, romance books with millions of reads and a picture of a hot white guy on the front cover are always bangers. It has an impressively low number of tags considering how popular it got, so kudos to the author for that.
Anyway, let's start with the cover, title, and description. You've got a close-up of your average German male model with artfully tousled hair and some awkward font placing. I'm giving credit where it's due for the gracious lack of ridiculously ripped and sweaty half-naked dudes on the cover. Good job. The title doesn't exactly scream originality — an unlikable, womanizing male love interest that will treat the female protagonist like shiitake mushrooms before softening up (ish) and winning her over? Never seen that before! Anyway, I would give the description a mid grade. It's alright. I've seen a lot worse, and it's enough to entice cliché-lovers to read it. The only part that's particularly cringeworthy is this set of lines:
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Also... will they ever be friends?
Probably less.
But... maybe M O R E.
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I don't think I need to explain why that looks and sounds silly, but the all-caps and spaced-out emphasis on more really makes it seem worse than the description overall actually is. I would have maybe gone with: When Chelsea is inexplicably dragged into the rollercoaster of havoc that is Kyle's life, her life is completely flipped upside down. Can she stay true to herself through all the changes that come crashing down around her? Will Chelsea and Kyle ever become truly friends... or more?
The premise itself isn't my style, so that's pretty much the best I can do. Moving on; the only hook that really dragged me in was the last paragraph, which made the plot seem intriguing. I was pretty enticed by the tag "dragracing", as well. I'm sure there's tons of stories involving drag racing on Wattpad, I've just never personally read any.
It should be noted that the title reads "Under Editing". However, this book was finished in 2021, and the last update after its completion was to the first chapter, also in 2021. I'm not sure that there's been any editing since. Well, let's dive into the first chapter anyway.
Here is my first problem. (You were warned I'm picky about grammar.) I know lots of people don't care about being kinda sacrilegious because they aren't religious themselves; fine, whatever. But it IS grammatically improper to write "god" unless you are referring to multiple gods or deities (i.e. the Greek gods, for example). The concept of a single, omnipotent God is a totally different thing, and you must spell it with a capital G. Thus, "Oh my god" is improper spelling. If you are writing Percy Jackson fanfiction or a story involving polytheistic mythology or a polytheistic religion, have your characters say "Oh my gods" to your heart's content. But if you're going to say the Lord's name in vain like a naughty little sinner, do it with correct capitalization.
Oh, no, my little grammar check rant isn't over. Whoever wrote Mr Rude & Me hasn't yet discovered periods in dialogue. Here's a direct quote from Chapter 1:
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"Why do you have all these bags with you?" He asks confused and curious "Oh I'm Nicholas by the way. My friends call me Nick though"
"I'm Chelsea" I smile lightly "And the bags.. I kind of got kicked out of my dorm"
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Hhhhhhuugghhhhhhhhhh. Okay. So. After a line of dialogue, dialogue tags begin with a lowercase letter. Ex.: he asks. Secondly, commas, people. Use 'em. Not too much, Oscar Wilde and Jane Austen, but use 'em: he asks, confused and curious. Oh, yeah. Periods go at the end of sentences as well. Pretty much always, unless there's an exclamation or question mark, or a comma, in certain dialogue cases. Oh, I'm Nicholas, by the way. My friends call me Nick, though. See what a little punctuation can do? Also, ellipses are three dots. And the bags... I kind of got kicked out of my dorm.
Do people even care that much about how many bags you're carrying? They're all probably looking at their phones and minding their own business.
Grammar aside, the characters are a whole other piece of work. Nick needs to have his social interaction privileges taken away immediately, because he obviously spent way too long in quarantine and now he's terrorizing everyone he meets. Between "oh my word" and "I didn't know pretty girls could write" he gives off uncomfortably mixed signals. Is he a misogynist? Is he just a dork with no social skills? Maybe he was raised by his misogynistic great-grandpa. I think that would explain things nicely. The fact that Chelsea interprets this as flirting is beyond me. Nick also apparently goes around telling people that his best friend could use a new roommate BUT NOT YOU, HE WOULDN'T LIKE YOU but you know what I'll bring you to his dorm anyway even though you're a total stranger, I'm sure he won't mind hahaha... And Nick, come on, stop telling people that your best friend isn't nice. Even my best friend doesn't do that — she knows I'm not nice, she just doesn't hold up a blinking neon sign that says it everywhere she goes, for Cinderella's sake.
Chelsea, it's not very nice of you to be dissing homeless people and complaining about your best friend (maybe the author has had some bad best friend experiences, jeez). I'm just going to point out that if Este and I shared a girls-only dorm and she brought her tobacco-smoking boyfriend in and got us kicked out, I would a) not let her do that in the first place because I care about her and don't want her getting into trouble and b) would have her back regardless because she's my only friend and probably going through it. Chelsea, start setting boundaries and stop blaming other people when you let them walk all over you like that. You and your best friend need open communication because you clearly have some issues to work through. Also, no matter how desperate you are, hormonal jerkfaces are never a good idea to be crashing with. Didn't your mama teach you stranger danger?
The dialogue feels forced and the characters have little chemistry. The rich douchebag character had BETTER be the most compelling character I've ever seen because this had been done a BAJILLION times — oh, nope, his only trait is being fine as all hell. Why am I not surprised. Our first introduction to Kyle (oh no, isn't that the male equivalent of Karen?) is approximately four paragraphs of gushing over his sexiness and his first line of, "What? What is it?" Now, Chelsea goes rUdE aLeRt but, I dunno, if some rando showed up at my door while I was probably busy minding my own business in my apartment I feel like I'd find this to be a reasonable reaction? Is that just me? Anyway, Chelsea feels the need to inform us that his voice is, quote, "nice and husky". Don't get all 50 Shades of Gray on me, now, girl. I did find the little Focus, Chelsea! bit entertaining. It is a little hard to concentrate in the presence of hot people.
So then we get to see that Kyle is apparently also misogynistic, except — wait. I actually don't see the problem with him objecting to rooming with a female peer? I mean, everyone knows how that tends to go, and it's best to avoid the temptation before it gets to you. Maybe CHELSEA is just salty that HIS mom taught him stranger danger.
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Suddenly, he's not so hot anymore.
I start to squirm uncomfortably. He doesn't look impressed with how I look. Rude much?
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No, no, because first of all, not everyone needs to find you attractive, you big fat narcissist. Second, didn't you say you had a boyfriend? Calm down a little, will you? Maybe he's only into other German models. There's nothing wrong with having preferences. Imagine if every time someone didn't think I was the hottest thing since stuffed-crust pizza I was like, gasp! Jail! Jail for a thousand years! I diagnose you with Rude!
The comment Kyle makes that DOES come across as rude is more directed toward Nick than Chelsea anyway (apparently Nick is a bit of an F-boy, which is impressive considering his devastating lack of charm) but she blows up at being insulted. Kyle is clearly the smartest character here because he figures out pretty quickly that he can use the situation to his advantage. And even after being called a rude name by this TOTAL STRANGER IN HIS HOUSE, he literally does offer to let her stay. He sounds annoyed about it, but he's obviously got some humanity in him, and he tells her to drop her attitude, which is frankly pretty valid. I know there's no way this is how finding a roommate works, but hey — we've made it through the first chapter.
Okay, so we get to meet the best friend, Kat, and... why is everyone in this story a raging whore? Don't y'all have degrees to be working towards? Why do you have so much time on your hands? But I digress. Kat refuses to take responsibility, blaming her boyfriend because he's apparently like a rabid dog she can't keep on a leash (my goodness, girl, get yourself a better man!). They kind of make up, hooray. Then we find out that it turns out Kyle is a notorious rich bad boy who is — you guessed it — also a whore. Because he's totally loaded, it kind of speaks to the kindness in his shriveled little heart that he let Chelsea room with him, because he clearly doesn't need help to pay the rent. Ooh! It's been five minutes, so it's time to describe Kyle's hotness again! (I'm not even complaining about this part. Maybe I need to start describing my attractive male characters more often in my stories.) Then Kyle drinks milk straight out of the carton and everyone in the comments section hates it. Guess what, suckers? I don't drink milk, but I do drink juice straight out of the carton, and no one's going to stop me. Besides, it's literally HIS HOUSE. Justice for drinking milk out of the carton.
The next person we meet is the boyfriend, and there are some serious indicators that he might be cheating with the best friend or at least with someone. My critique of this is that it's rather predictable and painfully obvious. Wouldn't it be convenient if the protagonist discovered this and was emotionally wrecked and freshly single, free to lean on her roommate Sexyface Von German?
I'm now on Chapter 3, and I really do have to say that there's some writing potential here. It's not unsalvagable. The protagonist's reactions to things make... some semblance of sense, the plot isn't the most far-fetched I've ever seen, and the writing style itself just needs a really good editor and maybe a good reading of a grammar guidebook. The real issue is that there's no real originality here. These situations are that which we've seen hundreds of times, and there doesn't seem to be anything new to offer. For all those writers out there struggling to seem original: I know that these days you can only reinvent the wheel, but put your own spin on it! You can still be creative within the framework of existing tropes and genres. Let me tell you. I have three WIPs all with the premise of "teens with powers have to learn to control them". How are they all different? Well, one explores survival and humanity's ability to adapt in new and dangerous situations, along with the idea that people you pass by every day but don't really care about could be the only people left to help you when the world ends. Another delves deep into corporate and governmental corruption, the dangers of playing God, the results of getting too obsessed with experimental science, and the exploitation of children. The last one is about society's failure to accept anything out of the norm, and explores love and relationships when one is barred by the fact that he is a danger to himself and others. See how they're all parallel universes of the same concept, but are uniquely different from each other in their own ways? And am I the first to give teenagers powers they don't know how to use? Of course not. But I'm playing around with new themes and new characters with each of them.
Now I'm going to go ahead and address the dialogue problem, because it's a real drawback of this story. The dialogue is dry. It feels flat. There's no witty banter, no sass, no snappiness to any of it. Friends talk to each other like coworkers, and Chelsea barely stands up for herself when Kyle gives her attitude for no apparent reason. I know I mostly write in the fantasy and sci-fi genres, but interesting things still have to happen in regular YA fiction. Here, I'm going to compare dialogue from Mr Rude & Me to dialogue from my WIP Lost Destinies.
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"Hey, Kat" I call for her attention because she was too busy with the cashier. "Do you think we could give Winnie a ride?"
"Who's Winnie?"
I point to the girl behind me "Her. She lives at Cottage Hill"
Kat shrugs "Okay"
We finish paying and take our plastic bags to Kat's car before all entering
"So, Winnie, do you know Kyle?" Kat asks driving away. I swear all she can talk about is Kyle. You would swear she's single.
"Yeah we're quite close. He doesn't speak much though" She trails off as an after thought.
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That's an excerpt from Chapter 3. Afterthought should be one word, but I'm here to assess the dialogue. Personally? I'm bored. I'm not invested in these characters. They don't have anything meaningful, funny, or clever to say. Okay, now for comparison, here's a brief scene in Lost Destinies Chapter 7 (for context, Claude has been made to dress in drag as a disguise). I took out a really long paragraph describing stuff you guys don't really need for the sake of the exercise.
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He turned to Ramona, dramatically tossing his hair. "How do I look?"
"Like a moose in lipstick," she said without looking up from the spellbook page she'd been rereading over and over.
"But, like, a sexy moose?"
Ramona flashed a condescending smile. "I'm sure girls dig a man in a pencil skirt."
Claude returned the mocking grin. "I'm sure dudes love ducks."
"Get a room," Minerva said, [...]
"Alright, everyone, go ahead and take blackmail pictures," Claude declared, gesturing to his new getup. Penny clapped her hands.
"Fantastic idea! Where's the scoping camera?"
"Someone rearranged all the stuff that I had neatly organized looking for a shrinking artifact," Lindsay chided with a pointed glance at Bear, who threw up his hands as if to say what are you looking at me for?
Penny narrowed her eyes at Claude. "You get off easy this time." He silently thanked his lucky stars.
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I'm not here to hype up my own story, but I am trying to prove a point. Maybe it's not the best or most thought-provoking dialogue, but it's designed to keep the reader engaged. These characters are all friends, but they also have to deal with each other every day, so they're always making snappy comments and teasing one another. They have chemistry with one another, and for every witty line, someone else immediately has a retort. It keeps things light and humorous, and when I have to stare at my own writing until my eyeballs burn for proofreading and editing my second draft, I don't get bored. I'd also like to add that when a new character is introduced, their personality should show through right away. What does Winnie have to offer that's new and interesting?
It should be noted that the conversation above from Mr Rude & Me continues with Chelsea rehashing something about Kyle that we already know, and then the girls just sit there and complain about Kyle. I'm no fourth-wave feminist, but I'm pretty sure this story hasn't passed the Bechdel test yet. The female characters are always talking about the male characters, even when they aren't in the room. They don't talk about school or their future careers, their hobbies, their interests. If your story contains just as many major male characters as female ones, then it makes sense for them to be involved in conversations. But I can't recall ever writing a bunch of scenes where characters continuously talk about one person that isn't in the room, and please, ladies — it isn't hard for women to talk about something other than hot boys and annoying boys. All of Kyle's not-girlfriends are saltily described as busty, whiny, and idiotic, because you can't have large breasts and also act like a normal human being, of course! No, but seriously, Lisa deserved better. She shouldn't be sleeping around, but she has every right to be ticked off about the way Kyle treated her and the fact that he didn't tell her there was another girl at his place. Just because Chelsea is jealous that she's a double-D doesn't mean she gets to temporarily excuse Kyle's douche-y behavior toward her.
It's a shame, too, because Chelsea is relatively likable. She's pretty sweet to her friends and does generally try to be friendly with everyone, and she has a bit of an endearingly dorky side, so with deeper development, she could be a really cool protagonist to follow around. She just isn't getting a lot of characterization, and it doesn't do her any favors. Frankly, Kyle is the most entertaining character by a mile. His lines comes out of the blue and are so mean for no reason I find him to be absolute hilarious. He has zero patience but, hey. We all have flaws.
BRO HUG THINGIE? PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME READ THAT PHRASE WITH MY OWN TWO EYEBALLS EVER AGAIN.
Oh, my. The number of red flags that suggest Noah is cheating shoots up when Chelsea rambles an oversharing monologue about how they haven't yet done the dirty. Please... I don't know if other writers do this, but I just want y'all to know that most readers could not care less whether the protagonist is a virgin. There are just SO many other things that matter more. For that matter, in-universe it really shouldn't be that important. Chelsea needs to GET A JOB and focus on her studies and stop worrying about having sex before marriage.
Then Chelsea shouts "noooooo" at her mom... hhhhdhdhhdhdhdhh.
I digress.
No, Chelsea, a scar on his eyebrow doesn't make him 'dangerous'. I have scars, okay? Acne scars, and scars on my knees from faceplanting into gravel at high speed as a child. This literally does not mean anything. Unless he earned the scar doing something metal, like... he's part of a secret underground fight ring or something, people just have scars. Crazy, I know. Seriously, this isn't a dig at the author, other people do this too; I'm just so clueless as to why an eyebrow scar is cool and edgy. Maybe he's just a Charlie Puth fan and jumped on the shaved-eyebrow bandwagon. Is this just a me problem? If any of y'all are turned on by jacked-up eyebrows, holler in the comments.
Gah, Chelsea is trying too hard to sound like a bad girl when she's clearly a lovable little dork. The good girl × bad boy cliché is a little overdone, but alright, I guess. Oh, yeah, and Chelsea-Anne canNOT possibly sound exotic coming out of anyone's mouth. This is set in the United States, yes? A country settled by the British. Thus, British names are just American names.
We get Kyle virgin-shaming and acting like a total jerk and then some girls acting like total jerks because they've got big boobs and them's the rules. Everyone in this book is kinda sexist; even the women.
The sleepover with Kat is pretty cute, but the dialogue is just... so weird in this book.
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"How do I look?" She grins when she sees me.
I can't help but grin back "So yummy"
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I would literally never say that to my best friend, I'm sorry. I am not Justin Bieber. I'll tell her when she looks hot, but who says it like that I am slowly losing brain cells —
I'm actually pretty excited about the drag racing part, I won't lie. The number of times they say "illegal" in this chapter is probably more than in all of Lost Destinies so far, which is a story about a band of robbers, mind you. Kyle continues to say the most interesting lines, and now he's mysterious because he's a raceway driver, which is a lot cooler than having an eyebrow scar. The descriptions aren't the best, but this is probably the most entertaining chapter I've read yet. The comments seem to hate Nathan but I think he and Kat are pretty cute, actually. Holy crap, how many N names do we need in this story? I've got a problem with A names in one of my stories, but it's an applyfic so it is SO not my fault.
You know what's kinda sad? Nick is one of the nicest characters and has managed to avoid saying anything sexist since Chapter 1, but guess what? He's being a whore again!
The Legend of Zorro shows up and we get the word tseks but I think it's supposed to be tsk. I don't know why he's called Zorro, because he's Kyle's brother, which means he's also presumably a German model. Imagine being like, "Yes, these are my two white sons, Kyle and ZORRO." Sorry, but that did make me laugh a little. Maybe Zorro is a nickname.
Update: his real name is Zach.
The funniest thing that has happened in this whole book is Chelsea screaming that she wants a McFlurry and Kyle gives in and actually gets her one jdjdjdjdkdkdjdkkdkdkr I am DECEASED.
So there's a hangover and Chelsea has a fight with her boyfriend and FINALLY STANDS UP FOR HERSELF, I'm so proud. Kyle has no idea how to console emotional women (me too, bro, me too).
Angeline, one of Kyle's not-girlfriends, is actually lovely, and man — some of the side characters seem more intriguing than the main character at times. Anyway, I've read through the first eight chapters and I'm not a huge fan of this book, so I'm going to go ahead and wrap things up. If you're intrigued by the plot of this one, there are eighty-four chapters, so go check it out. Personally, I think it's pretty cliché and not for me, but I will concede that it gets better or at least more tolerable as it goes on.
The biggest problem is that the characters all have some element that makes them seem interesting at face value, but they end up feeling a little two-dimensional. Characters are real people, and they need to be given attention so they can show their many traits. In real life, sometimes personality traits conflict or change depending on certain situations, because people aren't NPCs. Women, and everyone, for that matter, have more things to talk about than just who they have and haven't slept with. It's difficult to get into stories where everyone is kind of an idiot, a jerk, or both.
As I understand it, this is this author's first Wattpad story, and I applaud them for having the guts to publish it and go through with writing the whole thing. I don't think this story should have millions of reads. I think they should have gotten feedback from real people, studied, and improved their writing after making the first draft. For those of you trying to make a writing career out of Wattpad, don't forget that generally if people don't like it they simply won't read it. Commenters tend to be pretty supportive of a story they've stuck with, but that doesn't always help you. I'm glad that lots of people have read this person's story and liked it, even though I didn't. And if you're interested, go take a look at it. It's nice to have people like your work. It means you have potential. But remember that you can always improve, and should.
I don't think this is even remotely the worst story I've read on Wattpad. I have seen much. Much. Worse. I think it is a very mediocre first draft, and has a long way to go. The characters have potential. The plot has parts where it manages to be a little creative. There's the start of something there, and with hard work and a lot of research and editing, there might be a good book in here somewhere. Because of this, I do not particularly recommend Mr Rude & Me, but I give it a passing score: this one gets to scrape by with a C.
Keep writing, folks, and have a good one.