Rules of Attraction

American author Simone Elkeles’s young adult fiction Rules of Attraction (2010) is the second book in the series, Perfect Chemistry. The novel follows high schooler Carlos Fuentes who emigrates to Boulder, Colorado from Mexico to stay with his brother. There, he is framed for narcotics possession, is sent to a rehabilitation youth program, and falls in love with his mentor’s daughter, Kiara. The novel received positive criticism for expertly blending the genre of the bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story, with the modern problems of drug trafficking, immigration, racism, and criminal justice reform.

Rules of Attraction begins just as Carlos moves to Boulder and settles into the apartment of his brother Alex. Central to his decision to move is to get out of the gang life, having been entrenched in criminal activity to pay for his family’s needs and keep them safe. Having left his Mexican pre-college education unfinished, he enrolls at the local school, Flatiron High. There, he is placed in the care of peer guide Kiara Westford. In Boulder, Carlos looks forward to building a future for himself that he can be proud of.

The first few days of school proceed well until, for reasons unknown to him, someone plants evidence of drug trafficking in his personal effects. He is expelled from school; REACH, a local government program designed for youth with criminal backgrounds, takes him in. He is housed by a professor, Westford, who is both Alex’s former college instructor and Kiara’s father. Professor Westford immediately communicates the ground rules of their relationship, which include a prohibition on alcohol and drugs, and anything else that could violate Carlos’s court order. He also prohibits swearing around his young son, staying out late, causing messes in the house, avoiding chores, and sexual activity.



Though foreign to household rules, Carlos obeys them for the most part. His only notable transgression is when he feigns an advance to kiss Kiara. Though he initially means it as a joke, the two develop a romantic relationship. One night, when they almost have sex, Carlos restrains himself, fearing that he will get emotionally involved and become unable to moderate his actions. Meanwhile, he searches intently for the culprit who framed him for the drug bust. He figures out that it is a gang member named Wes Devlin. Carlos knows of Devlin from his gang activity back in Mexico, where Devlin and his partners threatened his family. Wanting to avenge their suffering by attacking Devlin, he becomes grossly outnumbered and is beaten to a pulp. Instead of risking continued persecution, he joins their gang for a while but worries that he is endangering the Westfords.

Learning about Carlos’s gang activity, Professor Westford delivers him an ultimatum in exchange for his help: he must go either to college or the military. Carlos accepts; in a final standoff, he protects Professor Westford from the gang, sustaining a shot to the leg. After he finally breaks ties with the gang, which diminishes in Boulder thanks, in part, to Professor Westford, Carlos enrolls in the military to acquire physical and moral discipline and to become an upstanding citizen.

At the end of the novel, Carlos and Kiara have been married for two decades. Now living with three children, all girls, Carlos is surprised when Professor Westford asks him to house a teenager with a criminal history. Carlos agrees, and when the boy arrives, he delivers the same six house rules that Professor Westford gave him years ago. While listing them off, he forgets the sixth, but roughly restates it in his own terms: “Dating Cecilia is out of the question.” The cyclical plot structure of Rules of Attraction points at its characters’ constant striving to recursively help repair each other’s lives and build a functioning community.