Dead Rules, by Randy Russell

Till death

Jana Webster and Michael Haynes were in love. They were destined to be together forever.

Do

But Jana's destiny was fatally flawed. And now she's in Dead School, where Mars Dreamcote lurks in the back of the classroom, with his beguiling blue eyes, mysterious smile, and irresistibly warm touch.

Us

Michael and Jana were incomplete without each other. There was no room for Mars in Jana's life--or death--story. Jana was sure Michael would rush to her side soon.

Part

But things aren't going according to Jana's plan. So Jana decides to do whatever it takes to make her dreams come true--no matter what rules she has to break.

Jane loves Michael. Jana is dead. The only way for Jana and Michael to ever be together again is if he dies. So Jana is going to kill Michael. And then they can be together forever. Helping Jana is bad boy Mars. Mars can't look away from newly dead Jana and likes her so much that he reluctantly helps her on her idiotic quest for true love. In other words, Mars has terrible taste in women. Jana is willing to break all the rules of Dead School to be together with Michael again. But does Michael want to join her? Does Michael even miss her?

This book was, in one word, creepy. It's a book about where teenagers go after they die, and it's not a pleasant place. The concept is original and is based on the idea that a teenager hasn't lived long enough to be placed in heaven or hell and needs a little more time to develop as a person. The gloominess of Dead School was fitting, as it is a school for dead teenagers, but I thought it was a little too gloomy for the story set in it. Don't get me wrong-the story was plenty gloomy, but what little humor there was fell flat because everything else about the book was so depressing and instead of being comic relief, the jokes were just sad. And the personal death stories-don't get me started on how horrid those were

One major thing that bothered me about the whole concept of Dead School were the rules. Sliders are students in Dead School who are on their way down. One becomes a Slider if they die while doing something "bad". What I hated about that was that if a good person does one thing wrong and dies while doing it then they are doomed to go to the fiery pits. Unless they undo their wrong, that is, but that's almost impossible for most of the Sliders so it's practically irrelevant. The worst part of this is that some of the Sliders are better people than Risers (the kids going in the right direction).

Jana is evil. In case you couldn't tell from the summary, she is selfish and doesn't understand what love is. To be fair, Michael doesn't get the concept of love either, but Jana is almost as horrible as Michael with her desire to kill him. While reading Dead Rules I desperately wanted to bang Jana on the head with the book and tell her that if she really loves Michael she'd set him free. But Jana doesn't care about anyone but herself so that wouldn't have achieved anything. She doesn't deserve Mars. She and Michael were perfect for each other. Both are horrible and frankly, they deserve each other.

3.0 stars