Understand that this is NOT my usual genre. I tend to stay away from high school, popularity-esque novels. They’ve never been my cup of tea. But, Rebel Belle was floating around the booktube world and getting rave reviews from everyone who touched it. So I thought. Whatever, lets give this book a try.
Rebel Belle to me is best described as a cross between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Clueless.
Meet Harper Price. She’s that girl you knew in high school who somehow managed to balance an insane amount of extra curriculars, keep an impressive average and date the school’s best looking guy. She’s smart, she’s bubbly and she’s just managing to keep everything together. The first thing that really stood out to me about Harper was how likeable she was. She cared about her friends, her school and her family. She’s involved in everything to a fault, my favourite example being her mother once caught her up past 3am making banners for a dance. After that night she sneak works in her closet.
Harper’s life is not perfect. Enter David. If Harper is like Cher from Clueless, David is your generic hipster guy. He writes biting pieces for the school newspaper in which he targets Harper and her corrupt administration (it’s too cliche-y) he wears ridiculous clothes (a tweed jacket) and he has a map of Middle Earth on his bedroom wall (me too buddy). Harper and David’s relationship is antagonistic at first. So you know what that means people. By the end of this book they’re going to be madly in love. What can I say, here at Death of the Author we’re well versed in romantic subplot lingo.
But I have to say, Harper and David’s slow road to romance was probably one of the best parts of the book. It was well paced and never felt forced. Some of their scenes were just downright adorable. I felt my heart melt a little bit. Shhhh don’t tell anyone.
What really surprised me was that Harper was already in a relationship at the beginning of the novel and how that develops over the course of the book. When we meet Harper, she’s dating Ryan, aka the best looking guy at school. Their relationship is on the rocks though. Not because of anything they’ve done, just because of the natural progression of things. I really like how this side plot plays out and how Harper approaches it. Her fading relationship represents her changing as a person, the person she thinks she should be to the person that she actually is.
But who is Harper?
The main part of this book deals with Harper gaining super powers and becoming what is called a Paladin. She is fated to defend the Oracle, who happens to be David (that’s why they get to spend all the time together). While Harper is trying to protect David from a super shady organization that wants to kill him she needs to balance the rest of her busy life, cotillion is coming up and you know, regular high school things. So like I said before: think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (specifically the first two season), that’s the vibe this book has.
Overall I really liked Rebel Belle, it was a fun quick read that kept me entertained, and with the way it ended… I really need to pick up the sequel. So I’ll be doing that in the near future.
Favourite Videos
As I mentioned in my review, it was the Booktube community that convinced me to read this book. So here are some of the videos I watched that helped sway me.
