Book Review: House Rules by Jodi Picoult

If you’ve been reading me for any amount of time you’ll know that Jodi Picoult is my favorite writer of all time. Sadly her books are becoming predictable. But what I like about them is you know she didn’t half ass the research of the book.

House Rules is about a boy with Aspergers. He’s 18 and bright but as with many who have the syndrome he’s socially awkward and requires constant attention from his mother. He’s accused of murder and basically the book follows what happens with him and those who care for him during the trial.

What bothered me about this book was not that I had it figured out by chapter two (although I would hazard to guess that you were meant to figure it out and thus made the book a more interesting read) but rather the slant that vaccinations caused the boys disorder. Yeah there wasn’t much focus on it, but there were a few pages, and a few pages is enough for me to get annoyed at it. Mainly because it’s pure crap in my opinion

Other than that the book was pretty good. It was a fast read for me, had it done in 3 days. There was a lot of frustration while reading it, more so because you wanted to reach in and shake the truth out of the boy, or shake the hell out of his mother and force her to ask the right questions. That’s the one thing I was screaming in my head the entire time, ask the right questions!

And then the judicial system and it’s lack of respect for mental disorder and belief that it exists. Part of the book focused on trying to convince the judy that this boy was just “weird” and not mental handicapped. The lack of understanding and belief of the disorder was brought out in this book, probably in the hopes that people will look past “eccentric” behavior and recognize that people with these types of disorders can’t just control themselves.

I recommend picking up this book if you can, or you can ask me to borrow it.

I’ll be writing a review about another of Jodi’s books, Handle with Care. Handle with Care was good as well, it’s just with all that happened last April, when I was reading the book, I kind of forgot the book and just recently found it and finished it.

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