House Rules

Sooo, House Rules is not really what I imagined it to be. Even the introduction of the novel was very outlandish. I was shocked when the opening scene described the mother, Emma, walking in on the murder scene of her child. And instead of bursting into hysterics, like any normal mother would, she just stands there and internalizes the scene. Within the first couple pages I was already judging Emma as the cold hearted killer of the story but then it was revealed the whole crime scene was staged by her son who was still alive. Talk about buzz kill. The crime scene scenario quickly grabbed my attention but then lost it when they revealed this was not the crime that ties the book together. While this was a nonconventional opening to the novel, I still think this book would have kept my attention longer if the big mystery was presented sooner.

I had the inclination that the main character was a detective or a person who had an obsession for solving crimes and used the advantages of his disorder to solve some centralizing mystery that encompassed the whole book. Instead I was presented with a young adult suffering from Aspergers who almost had an eerie fetish with forensic science and blockaded the solving of a murder mystery. I hate a book that sells itself as something that it’s not. The back cover of the book made it seem like Jacob would use his disorder and love for forensic analysis to prove his innocence in the murder of his tutor. In its place, the book preaches about the fallacies of our justice system when it comes to people who can’t communicate in a “neurotypical” way.