Hello beautiful people! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into a dynamic book by Jodi Picoult House Rules which revolves around the topics of disability, family dynamics, and to add to that all, a mysterious element of murder. I wasn’t really sure what to expect going to the book. Still, I found myself being drawn into the different characters and in Jodi’s fashion her ability to get you to connect and feel with the people she is writing about. Once I started getting into the book I had trouble pulling away and wanted to follow the Hunt family and their secrets the whole way.
Main Characters:
- Emma Hunt: Single mother to two teenage boys but struggles as her life revolves around her 18-year-old son Jacobs functioning autism and making sure that he is comfortable in the world, is thrown for a loop when Jacob is accused of killing one of his aids who helps him work on his social skills, Emma believes Jacob had nothing to do with the death and quickly sees how law enforcement use his disability to judge and abuse him rather than provide him extra support
- Jacob Hunt: A teenage boy with functioning autism but his functioning is very limited past his special interests and desires, is very socially inept and struggles with social cues or things like sarcasm, is extremely interested in forensic science to the point he sets up fake scenes for his mother to solve, this interest is a factor in what gets him in trouble when Jess his aid is murdered and he is placed center at the lense of suspicion
- Theo Hunt: Jacobs younger brother who has no conditions like his brother, struggles with having an older brother who soaks up the attention and channels his feelings into action like petty theft, breaking and entering, and peeping, struggles to see Jacob be accused with these crimes when he feels like he’s the real bad one out of the sibling duo
- Detective Rich Matson: Is the detective on the case of Jess’s murder and heavily believes that Jacob killed her, has a bit of a bad perspective on autistic people and believes that Jacob would and had attacked Jess, defiantly doesn’t respect Jacob’s disability and takes advantage of it
- Oliver: A young lawyer who takes on Jacob’s case and quickly comes to see he may have bitten off more than he could chew when it becomes clear that representing a man with no social skills and no ability to hold a conversation that doesn’t revolve around what he wants to talk about, try’s hard to fight for Jacob to have some level of fairness in the courtroom
My Review
I haven’t checked out a ton of Jodi Picoult’s books just a few in the past, but really enjoyed them. There’s just something about the way she tells a story that’s just golden. You get so intertwined with her well-described characters and start to almost feel like you’re just sitting off to the side watching all of this happen. After reading her book House Rules I definitely want to check out more of her books in the future. Getting into the book it openly seems mundane. An average family is made up of a single mother and her two boys. Behind the scenes though like most families, they have their struggles and battles. Battling the everyday struggles combined with single parenthood, and disability the Hunt family knows what it’s like to hurt. I also found the book super interesting because it was published back in 2010 and 14 years later it’s clear that at this stage we have such a stronger understanding of autism and what it means as a diagnosis for a person. In the book, Jacob has a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome which today is an outdated term today. Today Asperger’s is now a spot on the autism scale as being in the more functioning range. Jacob functions very well but not to the point where he would ever live on his own, or have a driver’s license, or job, and I think he has some obsessive behaviours that don’t scream high functioning to me. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the main character being disabled and how this added this aspect to the book whereas the reader you were watching the other characters and how they treated this disability to assess what role they would play in the story.
I gave House Rules by Jodi Picoult an 8/10 rating overall. The book follows the Hunt family made up of Emma and her two sons Jacob and Theo. Being a single parent is hard enough but Emma often finds that her time and efforts are spent on making sure her eldest Jacob is having his needs met due to his autism diagnosis. Jacob and Theo’s father left the family after struggling with his son’s diagnosis and left Emma to pick up the pieces every since. Jacob while having his struggles is an interesting and smart young man. Having a memory like no one else’s and an interest in forensic science, Jacob could tell you everything about a crime scene, court, and law from the top of his head. However, Jacob’s interests are not so much in the people who are hurt in these crimes but in how a crime is solved by using clues at the scene. His interest further takes dangerous angles when he starts to show up at local crime scenes hoping to sneak a peek and maybe help the police. Jacob’s younger brother Theo who is used to having the eyes away from him is getting into some trouble. Theo has started breaking into houses, stealing small items, and even spending periods in these homes. Always waiting for the police to come knocking it’s a shock when they show up not for him but for his older brother Jacob. Jacob’s aide who helped him with his social skills Jess was found murdered in the woods not too far from her house. When clues start to point to Jacob being at the scene of the crime all questions point to if he killed her or not. Emma knowing her son fully believes he would never hurt Jess, but she has her questions and doubts. The police question his disability and wonder if it’s a cover to pass of insanity for his crimes. His lawyer is desperate to get him justice but also understands his client is very literal and doesn’t hide secrets well. So what are the secrets? Did Jacob kill Jess? If he did, who did, and why?
Despite House Rules being written in 2010 I feel like the topic of police being unable to handle cases of disability or mental health is still very relevant. Now this isn’t exactly a dig on police because it’s not completely their fault their employers don’t provide training in this area. However, I think it’s interesting that even today we don’t arm the first people to come face to face with vulnerable people with all the tools they need to make sure that they can handle situations with the most care and knowledge possible. I was so irked when Jacob was getting interviewed because you could tell that they were manipulating him because of his special interest and how he was struggling to differentiate Jess being dead from the crime scene ahead of him. I would say that things are probably a bit better than how they were back in 2010 but definitely not that much better. I also enjoyed how the book brought up the taboo topic of how best to handle people with disabilities or mental health issues when they commit a major crime. It’s very relevant because there was that case just recently about an autistic teen assaulting his teacher. I don’t really have too much opinion on the topic other than I think when assessing cases with these factors in place has to be one of the biggest factors paid attention to. Was the intention to physically harm, hurt, or even kill another person? If the answer is yes then I think it’s appropriate for there to be some form of punishment. If the answer is no well then now we are dealing with a whole other thing, because there is always an intent with everything, always. It’s just up to people to find out what it was and make a judgment on that.
I really enjoyed getting so many different perspectives in the book and since it was so clear which role everyone was here to play I didn’t find myself getting lost or confused at all. It was nice to not just get the perspectives from the Hunts who would of course always love their family member. Getting an outside idea helped solidify whether we could really even trust the differing Hunt perspectives at all. It was just a really interesting story with very personable and relatable characters who you could connect to and feel for. I was honestly surprised by the end and had a totally different idea in my head as to what happened to Jess.
Have you read House Rules or any other books by Jodi Picoult? What did you think?
*** Don’t go any further if you don’t want to read any spoilers ***
I was really struggling throughout the book with who killed Jess. I wasn’t ever fully convinced that Jacob did it, however, his behaviour after going into Jess’s home and finding a crime scene was weird. He cleaned it up and then staged his own crime scene. I just wasn’t sure why he did that. It became clear later in the book however as to why that was. It wasn’t that he was doing it for fun, he did it because he thought that Theo killed her.
Turns out Theo had been breaking into the home that Jess was staying at often, but had no clue she stayed there. One day when he was in the house she was home when he hadn’t known. He scared her but it was left at that so we don’t know if he killed her or what happened after. It was clear however that Jacob thought he did. When Jacob set up the scene he thought about Theo and forgot that by doing what he was doing he would become implicated in the crime.
After the trial when Jacob is with his family, he exposes that he was covering for Theo. Theo then informs the family that he didn’t kill her but he did scare her, causing her to fall and hit her head. Due to him running and not getting Jess’s help she died and stayed there until Jacob showed up at her home for their lesson together. Finding Theo’s shoe prints he covers for him thinking he’s doing the right thing, and given how much he knows about forensics he should be good. However, Jacob’s instability to differ crimes from people means that he forgets some of the things he does may lead to him.
So it turns out that no one killed her and it was just a case of no one talking to each other, and everyone hiding their secrets. Theo worried he would get in trouble for breaking into the house, and Jacob worried that Theo would be caught for murder.
I hope you enjoyed this review! Thank you for checking it out! Feel free to follow me on my socials @baddiebookreviews to be kept up to date for when I release a new review!
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