Here's the plot summary for House Rules courtesy of GoodReads and honestly if you plan on reading the book, I wouldn't read the summary. You have to trudge through about 100 pages for the action to start since it is given away in blurb. If the blurb was a little more discrete or heck even more misleading, this could have been A LOT better. We know Picoult's gameplan: Current controversial issue, different POVs of family members and how they view each other and and consequently interact, a trial and then a big fat twist usual in the last fifteen pages if not fifteen sentences of the book. Anyway, here is the blurb: "HOUSE RULES is about Jacob Hunt, a teenage boy with Asperger’s Syndrome. He’s hopeless at reading social cues or expressing himself well to others, and like many kids with AS, Jacob has a special focus on one subject – in his case, forensic analysis. He’s always showing up at crime scenes, thanks to the police scanner he keeps in his room, and telling the cops what they need to do…and he’s usually right. But then one day his tutor is found dead, and the police come to question him. All of the hallmark behaviors of Asperger’s – not looking someone in the eye, stimulatory tics and twitches, inappropriate affect – can look a heck of a lot like guilt to law enforcement personnel -- and suddenly, Jacob finds himself accused of murder. HOUSE RULES looks at what it means to be different in our society, how autism affects a family, and how our legal system works well for people who communicate a certain way – but lousy for those who don’t."
You can't deny that she does extensive research about legal proceedings and this novel's hot topic Asperger's Syndrome (AS). But at the same time, she doesn't need to share every single note she took on the subject with her reader. It almost gets to the point that she beats you over the head with it. I GET IT. Jacob doesn't understand idioms. He physically can't make eye contact. He is only looking out for himself but not out of selfishness but rather that's the way his brain works. I GET IT. And usually the trial is my favorite part but this one just did not do it for me. Maybe it's because the lawyer, Oliver, is such a newbie and I don't see how he got such experts to testify on a supposedly "uncharted topic of AS" (please, Nicky Sparks beat ya to that one, Jodi), I don't know. All I know is that part fell flat for me.
At least Picoult broke from her usual mold of creating a mother you just hate and dread where you get to the chapters from her POV. Emma wasn't too terrible. You didn't hate her like you did the mother in Handle with Care or The Pact. She wasn't great but at least you pretty much understood where she was coming from. I didn't understand why she included the POV of the police detective since he pretty much drops off the map for the second half of the book. Theo's POV was the most interesting and compelling in my opinion and wish she would have included more from him.
I think my main compliant with this book is you just saw the big twist coming from a mile away, well actually make that 400 pages away. I thought, surely this isn't the usual Picoult "Smack you in the gut and turn you on your head" twist but, it was. Sigh. And then she doesn't even give you a resolved ending. She drops the supposed "bomb" on you in the last five or ten pages and then... nothing. So... what happened? I sure don't know and I'm not even sure Picoult does herself hence her overly ambiguous ending. It's not even ambiguous in the "You can decide what happened way" it just... ends.
Oh and I know this is nit-picking but seriously it's Jodi freaking Picoult. Maybe she is such a hot commodity that they are just cranking out a book a year and doing it as fast as they can so they can cash in on her. But seriously that is why copy editors exist, to catch the mistakes of the author who is simultaneously researching, writing, and editing and therefore very much distracted. On one page she says Jacob can't stand long, flowing hair so he keeps his "military short". But several other times the mom talks about his hair falling in his eyes and smoothing his hair away from his face. Gee, that's not contradicting. And then another time she talks about a grandmother making something for her grandson but later she says the mother made that very item for her son instead. Come on! It's a major plot point hence my discreteness, you can't have that kind of sloppy writing and editing.
The book was interesting, sure, but unfortunately this time around, it wasn't a page turner because I just had to know what was going to happen next but rather I was just hoping Jodi was going to prove me wrong and throw me a curve ball. Maybe she just set the bar WAY too high for herself with works like My Sister's Keeper and The Pact but she has really got to do something to keep all of her faithful readers around for the next one.
Now I understand why Jodi does what she does. I complain about her being predictable and I don't know if it is just because I know to look for clues and how she has written in her previous 15+ novels. I mean every author drops the reader some bread crumbs along the way so they feel like they have your trust and they are partaking as opposed to merely being an observer. But you don't have to give me exhibit A and B and C and so on, all the way to Z all the while repeating A and B and C throughout the novel. Give me a little of A and then maybe a little N and then maybe X, almost to the end but not quite. I guess there is one particular point in Square One that I overly explain. Just because the character can't connect the dots on their own but that doesn't mean your intelligent reader doesn't. In fact that is number one on the list of changes for SO: I gotta take out some examples so it doesn't seem like I'm hitting you over the head with it. Sure, I want you to realize it and have an "a-ha!" moment but maybe once I actually reveal it to you as opposed to when it actually happens in the narrative. Does that make sense? Sure hope so.
Now I'm not giving up on Jodi just yet and I still admire a lot about her writing style and she definitely knows who she is as an author. But if I figure out the twist in the first 100 pages of the next one (yet again, I did this with Change of Heart as well. But that was seriously in the first 10 pages), I just might not be dancing with excitement about her new releases anymore. Come on Jodi! Prove me wrong! You can do it (said in Bella's Karolyi's voice)!
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