Review: "Breaking the Rules" by Cat Lavoie

27-year-old Roxy Rule is a middle child and she knows what her role is in the crazy and complicated Rule family. Her oldest sister Izzie is the loud and smart and successful one and her youngest sister Steffi is the free-spirited and adored one, leaving Roxy to blend into the background. That doesn't really phase Roxy much, though. She is lucky to share an apartment with her best friend Ollie and she has a great group of friends who keep her going through the good times and the bad. Despite the fact that her job can be classed as "soul sucking" on a good day, things with Roxy are okay.

Life suddenly becomes complicated when Ollie decides to move to London, England to accept his dream job. Moments before he leaves, Roxy and Ollie share a wonderful, romantic, and thoroughly confusing kiss, and Roxy doesn't know how to deal with the turn of events. Making matters even more complicated is the fact that her two sisters move into the space in her apartment that Ollie has left vacant, each sister bringing with her their own set of problems. Workaholic Izzie isn't allowed to return to her job as a lawyer until she can get her head sorted out and flaky Steffi is six months pregnant and refuses to name the father. Will the Rule sisters be able to hold it together, or will everything inevitably fall apart for them?

I loved a lot of things about Breaking the Rules. I loved the plot. It was complicated and not at all what I was expecting! There were twists and turns along the way that left me reeling, and this book was definitely one of those books that kept me frantically turning the pages to find out what was going to happen at the end. I also loved the fact that Breaking the Rules is published by an independent publishing house (Marching Ink) but it was very well edited. There is nothing that turns me off of a book faster than excessive grammatical and spelling errors or obvious problems with flow. I could tell that this book had been very well edited and that made the book far more enjoyable to me. Congratulations to Cat Lavoie and Marching Ink for their attention to detail.

Breaking the Rules provides readers with an ending that manages to be both unconventional and traditional at the same time. I'm a sucker for a unique or interesting ending, and I found this one to be particularly good. It kept me thinking after I had finished reading, and not all books have that impact on me. This is one that I am happy to recommend to anyone looking for women's fiction that examines family dynamics and how they affect us, but also provides us with some light romance and some food for thought. A fabulous debut, I look forward to Cat Lavoie's future offerings.