This book review was supposed to have a clever title, but the writer is lame.

By Amber D.

The book starts off with Matthew, the main character, saying that he's going to write a letter in order to tell his younger sister Emmy about everything that has happened in their family. The letter begins with the first moment that Matthew saw Murdoch, a man at the grocery store who stood up for a kid who was being abused by his father.

Matthew and his sister Callie, are both struck by this simple gesture because they live with an abusive and unpredictable mother, Nikki.When they get home, Matthew starts looking for Murdoch. Eventually, Callie discovers his address, but Nikki snatches it away and goes to ask Murdoch out on a date. He agrees and the kids start seeing lots of Murdoch around.Although Murdoch is an awesome surrogate dad—he watches movies with the kids and takes them on picnics—his relationship with Nikki starts to suffer when he realizes that she's unstable.

One day, Nikki drops off the kids for a long weekend without warning, and Murdoch has to look after them for four days while she goes off to party. He breaks up with her, and the kids watch as Nikki goes crazy and unstoppable.

One day after school, the kids noticed that Emmy and Nikki goes goes missing so they make an Amber alert looking for them. Three days after Emmy disappears, Matthew gets a phone call in the middle of the night. Emmy is crying and tells him to come and get her from the Port of Boston, where Nikki has taken her. When Matthew gets there, he finds Emmy alone in a trailer and completely sloshed. Apparently, Nikki's been feeding her little daughter lots of alcohol. At the very end, Matthew ends his letter and says that he's never going to give it to Emmy. After writing it all out, he realized that it's just a way for him to work through his own issues.

This is the first novel I have read from Nancy Werlin and it was amazing. I recommend it for anybody because it's a great book all round. Rules of survival covers all aspects of a family sticking together when a tragedy is happening.

Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin, 2006, 259 pages