Review of No Rules by Sharon Dukett

For the past year, I delayed reading Sharon Dukett’s memoir, No Rules, because I wasn’t eager to read yet another memoir about the sex, drugs, and rock and roll of the early 1970s. I had chosen a different life path, so in the first chapters, I found it hard not to judge the young protagonist for treating her body and life with such careless abandon. But the author’s detailed narrative, reflections, and vivid descriptions soon captured me, much like her charms captured those who tried to watch out for her. I, too, wanted to protect her from her more foolhardy decisions. The story of her life between the ages of 16 to 19, follows her from coast to coast and hitchhiking through Canada and back to the US. Each adventure and misadventure inches her closer to a realization of her strengths. This moving memoir whisks us through the tumultuous times of an earlier era as a young girl searches for wholeness and love, that she finds reside within herself.