Rules of Rain by Leah Scheier
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Rain has taken care of Ethan all of her life. Before she even knew what autism meant, she’s been her twin brother’s connection to the hostile world around him. She’s always prepared—when her father abandons them, when her mother gets sick, when Ethan is tortured by bullies from school—Rain is the reliable, stable one holding them all together. She’s both cautious carer and mad chef, preparing customized meals for her family and posting crazy recipes on her cooking blog.
Each day with Ethan is unvarying and predictable, and she’s sure that nothing will ever change—until one night when her world is turned upside down by a mistake she can’t take back. As her new romance with her long-time crush and her carefully constructed life begins to unravel, she discovers that the fragile brother whom she’s always protected has grown into a young man who no longer needs her. And now, for the first time, she finds that she needs him.
Warnings: ableism, major character in medical distress, violence, bullying
Since the blurb is pretty much self-explanatory, I’ll jump right to it. This is a story about a neurotypical girl having an autistic brother and how her life is set by rules that she creates in order to care for him. But their relationship is based on her caring for him, and always being what he needs, which means that she doesn’t entirely treat him like a brother or her twin, but like a child under her care. What she doesn’t realize is that her rules don’t always apply to him, and she should give him space to grow as a person, rather than deciding that for him. The story has two romances in it – Rain’s romance with her classmate, and Ethan and Rain’s best friend. Rain constantly meddles in his relationship with her best friend (welp, I can’t remember her name, so let’s call her Bubbly Blond, okay? BB, for short). And despite him pushing back, it takes a lot of time for her to be comfortable with BB having feelings for her brother. The story is also interspersed with Rain’s blog posts and Ethan’s journal, so we get a little peek into what he thinks of this mess, too.
In Rain’s own personal life, she is not sure what she wants for her future, only that it is something that keeps her close to her brother. That is being a good sister and all, but she also comes across as controlling. Which is when ‘spoiler event’ happens, and she comes to know that shit, you cannot think everything in terms of plans and people are unpredictable, whether they are autistic or neurotypical. Her relationship with Liam was cute and well-developed, and at some points I was holding my breath for ‘oh noes misunderstanding will derail this plot’ but it did not happen, thankfully. The fate of their relationship, however, made me a little sad, because they had promise. Other interesting characters in the book I liked were Marcus and Kathy, and I would really like their story to be explored as a companion book or sequel or something.
Rain is presented as mature, even though she is still a teen, because she had to grow up and be a caretaker, what with the ableist parents they both have. Their mother, especially, who is like overjoyed whenever Ethan does anything ‘normal’, as in neurotypical, like get a girlfriend, etc, and also she constantly blames medicine for him being autistic (she sounds like she would be one of those anti-vax moms). And the father makes a list of things Ethan should aim to do if he wants to ‘pretend to be neurotypical’, which is slightly better but not entirely un-problematic. This is not challenged, mind you, although Rain’s ableism is challenged more than once in the text. I admit, with Ethan’s dream to become a surgeon and having to interact with people regularly, his way of interactions may not always come across as warm, (I say screw warm, let people exist in their multitudes!) but he is trying to fit in the world the best way he can. His perspective shines through even when Rain is the one narrating, and you can really empathize with him being stuck around these people (No kidding, his family is terrible at communication) and trying to make them understand that he can be left alone to his own devices.
Overall, a good read, with some heartfelt moments, an interesting plot, and well-written characters.
Received an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review from Sourcebooks Fire, via Edelweiss.
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