Simone Breaks All the Rules by Debbie Rigaud (review)

Simone's a Jersey girl, but her Haitian-American parents are "old-school strict," and she's haunted by the memory of her older sister's parent-selected date for senior prom. Now that Simone herself is a senior she's determined to break free of her parents' restrictions, and she joins with two similarly limited classmates to create a bucket-list style document, "a playlist to stunt on our parents' forbidden list," featuring items such as "cut class," "go on a date," and "hang out in NYC." Meanwhile, Simone is wheeling and dealing to get herself to the prom with Gavin, a cute guy from the nearby boys' school, by setting one of her friends up with Ben, the parent-chosen nice Haitian-American boy. Simone's narration is witty (her mother "stars in a one-woman show called Afflictions I Suffer Because of Simone") but overburdened with detail, slowing the book's pace, and many of the secondary characters (including saintly Ben) are flat. However, the book is shrewd yet affec- tionate about life with conservative parents and about the way Simone shares their impulse for stage-managing people's lives, and while it's predictable that Simone realizes Ben's the guy for her, affable Gavin (who really likes Simone's cousin) isn't demonized in the process. Readers with immigrant parents may particularly relate to the second-generation cultural divide, but others may simply appreciate the girls' glee at their forbidden adventures.