Rules for 50/50 Chances is the new novel from Kate McGovern that looks at mortality from the perspective of a 17-year-old who faces discovering if she has a life threatening illness.

Rules for 50/50 Chances is a novel about mortality, illness, family, race, and class as 17-year-old Rose Levenson faces a decision that will change her life forever: does she want to know if she carries the genetic mutation for Huntington’s disease, the degenerative condition that is slowly killing her mother?

With comparisons to Gayle Forman’s If I Stay and Lauren Oliver’s Before I Fall, Rules for 50/50 Chances is “a standout contemporary read” (School Library Journal) that “skillfully engages with questions of fate, choice, and truly terrible luck” (Publishers Weekly).

McGovern was inspired to write the novel after reading a New York Times story back in 2007 about a young woman in her twenties who was choosing to get tested for the Huntington’s disease mutation, against her family’s wishes. When she took the test, she learned that she was gene-positive. She spoke frankly about how this information would shift her plans for the future, her aspirations for her life. McGovern explains, “Her story stuck with me.”

Rules for 50/50 Chances releases on November 24, 2015.

About Kate McGovern

Kate McGovern has taught theater and language arts to middle schoolers in Boston, New York, and London. A graduate of Yale and Oxford, she currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she was born and raised. Rules for 50/50 Chances is her first novel.

To pre-order Rules for 50/50 Chances visit Amazon and add it to your Goodreads shelf.