House Rules by Jodi Picoult
🧬 House Rules by Jodi Picoult
⭐️⭐️⭐️½ (3.5 out of 5 stars)
Genre: Legal Drama / Family Drama / Mystery
📢 Spoiler Warning: This post reveals every house rule — and every plot twist. Proceed with caution.
🚪 Asperger’s, Forensics, and a Family on Edge
House Rules is my first Jodi Picoult novel, and I totally understand the hype now. Her writing is so smooth — almost deceptively so. The book is long, but I never felt bored. It reads like a true crime meets family drama hybrid, with each chapter opening with a mini case file before zooming back into the real mystery: what happened to Jess Ogilvy, and did Jacob Hunt kill her?
Jacob is an 18-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome. He’s highly intelligent, obsessed with forensic science, and struggles with social cues. He’s also fiercely literal, obsessively routine-driven, and emotionally limited — but he’s not violent. Or at least, that’s what his mother Emma believes with all her heart. Emma’s entire life is Jacob — so much so that her younger son Theo is left completely in the shadows.
And it turns out, that’s a problem.
👨👩👦 Meet the Hunt Family: One Rule, Two Forgotten Boys
Emma is the kind of mom who tries so hard that it actually hurts. She builds her whole identity around Jacob’s needs — his diet, his color-coded schedules, his therapy — at the expense of literally everyone else. Her husband Henry leaves early on, unable to keep up. Theo, the younger son, spends his days feeling invisible. He quietly rebels by breaking into people’s homes — not to steal anything important, just to imagine what it’s like to live in a normal, happy family.
One of the houses Theo sneaks into just so happens to belong to Jess Ogilvy, Jacob’s beloved social skills tutor. He breaks in and pockets a pink iPod. Then, to his horror, he sees Jess coming out of the shower. Naked. Their eyes lock. He panics and bolts.
That same day, Jess disappears.
🧪 Jacob’s Rules Don’t Include “Stay Out of Trouble”
Jacob, meanwhile, arrives for a tutoring session at Jess’s house, sees something terrible (which we don’t yet know), and returns home in a catatonic state. Emma can’t get anything out of him.
When Jess is reported missing by her abusive boyfriend Mark, Jacob becomes a suspect — partly because he’s “weird” and partly because the police absolutely botch how they interrogate someone with autism. They ignore Emma’s pleas for accommodation and grill Jacob until they have enough for an arrest.
Emma hires a green but well-meaning defense attorney named Oliver, and the two of them eventually grow close (of course they do — it’s a Jodi Picoult novel). Meanwhile, Theo continues to spiral. Feeling neglected and desperate, he steals Emma’s credit card and flies to California to stay with Henry, his long-absent father. Jacob, because he’s a tech whiz, figures out where Theo went, and Emma goes to retrieve him.
🎁 Happy Birthday, Here’s a Murder Confession
Everyone is back home in time for Jacob’s trial, and surprise! Henry shows up and offers to pay Jacob’s legal expenses. Emma, understandably, has some choice feelings about this sudden reappearance.
The whole family is now living under one roof — Henry, Emma, Jacob, Theo, and Oliver. It’s tense, awkward, and undeniably compelling.
Then comes Theo’s birthday.
Jacob — who never buys gifts — gives Theo the stolen pink iPod. Everyone freezes. And then Jacob drops the bomb:
He set up the entire crime scene to frame Mark, in order to protect Theo.
Turns out, Jacob arrived at Jess’s house and saw that she’d suffered a fatal fall after seeing Theo. Instead of calling for help, he used his forensic know-how to stage the scene to look like a murder — complete with blood splatter and tampering. Why? Because his mom’s house rule has always been: "Take care of your brother."
So he did.
🏛️ Legal Drama With a Side of Emotional Chaos
Oliver scrambles to contact the judge with the new theory: that Jess slipped and hit her head after seeing Theo in her house. Jacob simply found her, assumed Theo was responsible (or would be blamed), and decided to protect him the only way he knew how — by turning it into a classic whodunnit and pinning it on the terrible boyfriend.
The book ends there, with no verdict, no sentencing, and no clear resolution. Just Jacob calmly stating that he’d do it all again.
To protect Theo.
🧠 Final Thoughts
There’s a lot to appreciate here — the autism representation, the complicated family dynamics, the moral gray zones. I loved the true crime aesthetic at the start of each chapter, and I found Jacob’s voice both heartbreaking and believable. The book definitely gave Rain Man vibes, but with a darker twist.
That said, Emma was frustrating to me — she’s so wrapped up in Jacob’s world that she doesn’t even notice Theo falling apart right in front of her. And while I usually enjoy open endings, this one felt just a little too abrupt.
Still, I’m really glad I read this. Picoult’s writing is tight, emotional, and accessible — and I can see why she’s so beloved. I’ll definitely try more of her work in the future.
⭐️⭐️⭐️½ - 3.5 out of 5 stars.
🛒 Buy House Rules
👉 Find it here on Amazon (affiliate link)
🧩 If You Liked This, You Might Also Like:
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon — another perspective from a neurodivergent teen
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Defending Jacob by William Landay — for a family-on-trial legal thriller
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Room by Emma Donoghue — intense child perspective with major emotional weight
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Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult — if you're ready to dive deeper into her catalog
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