House Rules- Jodi Picoult

During the summer this year, I read the book House Rules by Jodi Picoult. This book is very realistic; this is because Picoult wrote about a family that doesn’t always fit in. A single mother, named Emma, with two kids Jacob and Theo, but Jacob the older son has Asperger’s Syndrome. Because of this Jacob gets scared of certain things and always likes there to be structure in his day, like Jacob will color courante his days like on Mondays he will only wear and eat things that are the color yellow, and this goes on through out the week.

The main conflict in the story is that Jacobs tutor dies and they think that Jacob may have been involved in the murder. Although they can not question Jacob unless it is under his times or else he will have a breakdown. This has a huge effect in many people’s lives. Emma is stresses out from dealing with the though that her son may have killed they only person that he would ever talk to about his day. Jacob is upset because no one believes that he is innocent. Most of all Theo is affected by the change because he feels that no one is ever listening to him, causing him to steal things. Through out the book the characters change because they are all more open about their life to their family.

The thing that is so unique about Jodi Picoult’s writing style is that she well always keeps you on your toes. She does this by using cliff hangers to end a paragraph. This is so you are interested to read the next chapter because you want to find out what happened. This is just like at the end when you do not know if the judge will say he is guilty or innocent. This made me not want to book the book down and keep reading the next paragraph. Another way that Picoult makes her writing unique is she changes the perspective every chapter. This is so you can figure out what many people are saying and not just one person. This is not just in House Rules but it is also in other books by Jodi Picoult like My Sisters Keeper.

This book is very good. I believe it is because you learn a lot about the family though out the book. Also they have many things in the book, like it is not just about a family learning to be together but also about a murder and crime solving. I would recommend this book to many people because it has something that everyone would like.