Aneel reviewed The rules by Ellen Fein
Review of 'The rules' on 'Goodreads'
1 star
The basic idea is that you play hard to get. This weeds out the potential husbands who aren't devoted enough, and at the same time encourages the ones who run the gauntlet to treat you as something special because you're hard to attain.
Less instructive than I'd hoped. I was hoping to find some ideas about reversing it, so I'd stop attracting the people who are looking to settle down, but it's so extreme that those reversals would only work on people who are following The Rules. Other people wouldn't pick up on the cues.
Also tiresome, repetitive, and obnoxiously dogmatic.
Funny to read just after re-reading The Passion. It's hard to imagine more opposed books, one embracing the idea of being swept away and the futility of trying to hold on, the other preaching the denial of pleasure in the search for blissful matrimony.