The Rules for Hearts: A Family Drama

The Rules for Hearts: A Family Drama
Sara Ryan
Viking: New York, 2007
222 pp., $16.99 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-0-670-05906-5

Annotation: Battle Hall Davies leaves home to spend the summer before attending Reed College to live with her estranged brother, Nick and his theater troupe house mates in Portland, Oregon.

Review: In this quasi-sequel to Ryan's award-winning debut, Empress of the World, Battle contends with several emotionally challenging issues at once. She leaves home to live on her own for the first time, attempts to re-establish a relationship with the unreliable Nick, gets involved with another young woman while still getting over her relationship from the previous novel, and tests her confidence as an actor among a troupe of eccentric and demanding theater people — while living with them in the same house!

This may seem like a lot, but a lot can happen in the few months between high school and college. Ryan puts the pieces together with Battle's humorous, observant voice, and sticks closely to Battle's perspective, especially her limitations, allowing her room to grow. As with the previous novel, Ryan shows bisexual and gay relationships as exciting, confusing, loving events in the lives of young people, yet without "out of the closet" melodrama or "story of the week" moralizing. Straight and LBGT teens alike will appreciate Ryan's sympathetic, yet realistic handling of her characters, their foibles, contradictions and ultimately human virtues. Also, teen readers still in high school will get the vicarious thrill of the sort of life that awaits them after graduation.