House Rules tells the story of Jacob, an 18 year with Aspergers Syndrome who is obsessed with forensic sciences, he lives with his devoted Mom (Emma) and his younger brother Theo. His Dad has left and started a new family in California because he couldn't deal with the way things were at home and how much time Emma was giving to Jacob. Jacob has a social skills tutor named Jess who he has a bit of a crush on or at least thinks that he would be a much better boyfriend than her current boyfriend Mark. Jacob asks Jess out in front of Mark causing a cringeworthy scene that I must admit I couldn't get through, Jess gets mad and tells Jacob that she doesn't want to see him again. Jacob of course doesn't realize this is serious. Jess is later found dead and Jacob is accused of murder because he wrapped the body in a quilt and posed the scene.
I can't write a full analysis of this book yet because I am just too mad! There is no end! We never find out what happens because as Picoult states at the back of said book, Jacob already knew he was innocent. Well that's great but I would still like to know what happened to said characters. We have no idea about any of it! UGH! That's just not acceptable. It's not acceptable at all.
So rewind before my rant and I will get into more details. Theo is sort of the forgotten child, and when he tells his part of the story you can see that he is acting out because he wants his Mom to pay attention to him, he's breaking into houses and stealing people's things because he can and maybe just maybe he wants to get caught. Theo breaks into a house and it says that he sees someone showering and he gets out of there as fast as he can. It then goes into Jacob's perspective where he is upset that Jess did not show him pictures of the professor's house that she has been housesitting at. It's important to know that Theo had broken into a house that he knew belonged to a professor and that he had broken into before. Jacob comes home quite anxious and it's hard for his mother to calm him down and Emma is worried about him and worried that something happened with Jess but he says that it didn't and Jacob can't lie. So she doesn't worry about it too much, until Jess is said to be missing. She worries that it might have been Jacob but then she puts that out of her mind. The detective comes over and asks questions and Jacob admits that he had cleaned up the crime scene and organized it all. Jacob had previously been at a crime scene with said detective and solved a case for him. Jacob is also sort of happy because he can talk about forensics but not much more is said about it.
Jacob has Jess' phone though and this makes the reader uneasy but she left it at the restaurant and that's normal but he keeps calling to listen to her voice and then...he goes to her body and dials 911 and lets the police find the body. I don't know about anyone else but I suddenly thought, oh god he did it and now he wants the police to think that he's smarter than them. However, at the same time you can't figure out why he would do it. So obviously his mother calls the police when she realizes that it's his blanket and because she can't go with him, she ends up going to a young lawyer who doesn't really have a clue what is going on. His name is Oliver.
So Jacob is arrested and his trial is quite a fiasco because of the whole he needs sensory breaks and Oliver doesn't really have a clue what is going on. Theo takes off and tries to run to be with his father and Oliver and Emma sleep together. Oliver is helping her out in a lot of ways and eventually the Dad shows up after they sleep together for the first time and it makes it very awkward. It comes out in the end at Theo's birthday that Jacob had seen Theo coming out of where Jess was staying and he was covering for his brother but Theo hadn't done it either. Turns out that he shocked her in the shower and she fell and hit her head. So it was a big ole accident and well...we don't find out anything else because there is no end!
My Thoughts
You means other than the fact that there is no end? I think Jodi Picoult is a good writer, I like her books. My Sister's Keeper did hook me on her and I find them to be a bit...well they can be stereotypical in a way because she goes with an ending that you don't really expect. Like in My Sister's Keeper. However, that being said I read this book quickly via Scribed but...it wasn't amazing. It was just alright. If you want to read a mystery with a kid that's on the autism spectrum that's fine, read it and enjoy it. It's not bad but it's not great. It's just meh. I think that's the best way to put it and then the lack of end, the fact that I don't find out what happens to his mother and Oliver, that just ughhhhh! Puts it a little less than meh. I'm going to give it four sensory breaks out of ten!
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