The Rules of Survival, a story about surviving depraved abuse. Okay, let's go.

I found myself gagging at parts in this book, not because it's gory or awful in the typical horror way, but because I lived similar experiences. Family dinners too fancy for kids and being hit over not appreciating Paella at thirteen(or other things like that), only wanting cereal, and being "ungrateful" when fancy food they took hours to make was brought out.

The mother sounds very unhinged. Nikki does sudden "fun" things which often amount to dangling babies upside down or driving into traffic. These things are very showing for a mentally unstable parent who needs help. At other times she displays NPD aka Narcissistic Personality Disorder. One guy turning her down or saying she's bad has led her to dedicate the entire book to torturing him with letters, phone calls, and car stalking. That's straight-up narcissistic obsession mixed with something else.

Nikki attacks and belittles anyone who pokes at the truth, and in such, when more people poke, she comes undone and does a lot of awful things.

Semi spoilers below.

The narrator is Matthew, he is writing a letter to his sister who throughout the book he implies has been kidnapped and never seen again. By the end we have him grab her and bring her home so that hang-up feels really misleading. Like without rereading one gets the illusion that Matthew is mailing a letter to Emmy who is missing somehow, or metaphorically calling out to his sister who is gone.
Matthew begins the book at around twelve and thirteen and we follow him to eighteen. He cannot see his mother most days but stays to protect his sisters. He sees himself as responsible for all of them, and the one acting to avoid further injuries happening.

Their lives are par for the course of children born to a highly abusive parent. There is fear, there is resentment, there is tension, and there is rebellions. They always seem to end up back at square one but plotting.

One thing that surprised me is they get help at all. A fellow abused kid helps them, their spineless father helps them, and even their aunt who they know has been beaten into submission helps them. It feels like so much helps comes so suddenly that it's weird. Abused kids rarely get any help, the family normally sees it as "a mother's right to raise her kids how she sees fit" and lets it continue.

I found the book solid up until the end.

As I said, this book is one massive letter being written to Emmy, Matthew's baby sister. But by the end, despite dedicating it to her, Matthew decides somehow the letter was all about himself. He decides to never send the letter which he marked as "Emmy never has to read this if she doesn't want to" because somehow the few times it was about him mean the letter is only about him.

While I adore this book has a study guide and wants to help abused kids, I also feel like the ending came suddenly and doesn't quite work. While I accept Matthew is obsessed with Murdoch, that doesn't mean a letter for Emmy isn't for her. I can only hope that in canonical writing or headcanon of the author, he did give it to her one day. This book could have ended on something like[rough]: I shut the envelope with my demons, Nikki's demons, Murdoch's demons, and added a stamp. It was going to Emmy. If she read or didn't read it, I wouldn't care. The story was out there now, and time would tell.

This is one of my favorite abuse-addressing books and I really really enjoyed it, but the author felt like they were trudging and struggling towards the end.

A good read, worthwhile and meaningful to abuse survivors, but you might get sickened by the realistic NPD abuse the parent does unto their child. ( )

I loved this book its heart tugging. and on occasion very sad I love that Murdoch is the savior of these kids and then at the end when you find out why he helped wow Just wow. ( )

Advance copy. ( )

The Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin is the story of a teenage boy who is desperately trying to save himself and his younger sisters from his very disturbed and dangerous mother. This is an intense and riveting story that I couldn’t put down, I was in turns horrified and disgusted that this mother of three was able to get away with how she treated her children. Her sister reveals at one point that Nikki, the mother, was an extremely difficult child who was always lying and having tantrums which makes me believe she had a lifelong mental problem that was never diagnosed.

This is a heartbreaking story as Matthew relates how their mother’s abusive behavior was overlooked by many as she never beat them or sexually molested them. Instead the children had to deal with her manic behavior, mood swings, and reckless endangerment. This is a portrait of a family in crisis that certainly stirs the emotions.

The Rules For Survival is told in the form of a letter that an older Matthew writes to his youngest sister, Emmy, but it is also a way for him to look back on events that shaped his life and help him to both heal and understand who he is. Although this book is labelled as YA, the story is powerful and haunting as it deals with a very adult subject matter. The author totally pinpoints the impact that an untreated mental illness can have. ( )

A really difficult read made easier by excellent writing. A sobering reminder that abuse doesn't just take the form of physical attack. ( )