House Rules

House Rules (2010) is a domestic fiction novel by American author Jodi Picoult that tells the story of teenager Jacob Hunt, who has autism. It depicts his experience with discrimination in the US legal system and how his autism diagnosis impacts his family.

This story is Picoult’s 18th bestseller and, in keeping with her overall body of work, explores medical, legal, and psychological issues of national significance in America through the lens of one family’s experience. House Rules also adheres to Picoult’s signature style of telling a story in multiple first-person perspectives, portraying each character’s version of events in an intimate and confessional manner.

Reflecting the novel’s focus on criminal investigations, each part begins with a brief overview of a true crime case, and the parts are labeled as cases (e.g., Case 1). In each part, the story is narrated from the perspective of five primary characters: Jacob, his mother Emma, his brother Theo, attorney Oliver Bond, and detective Rich Matson.

This guide refers to the 2010 Atria e-book edition.

Content Warning: This novel contains offensive language about and descriptions of people with autism. It also discusses suicide and murder.

Plot Summary

House Rules delves into the challenges and experiences of the Hunt family, which includes Emma Hunt and her two sons, Jacob and Theo. Jacob, who is 17, was diagnosed with autism as a young child and this condition significantly impacts his interactions and perceptions of the world. He is deeply uncomfortable with physical touch or eye contact, he has a very literal understanding of the world, he struggles to understand social cues, and the slightest deviation from his daily routine is painful to him because he craves consistency.

Jacob has a special interest: forensic analysis of crime scenes. To challenge himself and put his learning into practical application, Jacob often creates simulated crime scenes in his house and encourages his mother to solve them with him. He also enjoys listening to real local cases on a police scanner. His favorite TV show is Crime Busters, and Jacob never misses an episode. He also keeps notebooks with detailed records of the cases involved in each episode. Jacob’s fixated interest in forensics and his inability to interpret social cues makes it difficult for him to connect with his peers at school.

The social aspects of daily life are so difficult for him that Emma feels unable to work outside the home or even develop a social life for herself. Furthermore, Jacob and Theo’s father, Henry, abandoned the family because felt unable to cope with the reality of Jacob’s diagnosis. Emma’s preoccupation with Jacob’s needs and her own self-doubt leaves little room for her to focus on Theo, her younger son who does not have autism. Theo is intensely aware of his often-overlooked role in the family, and his perception of Jacob exists in polar opposition to Emma’s. Although he does love his brother, Theo’s love for Jacob is buried deeply beneath his resentment. From Theo’s perspective, Jacob’s differences and his need for specialized care have prevented Theo from making friends, attending social events, forming a relationship with his father Henry, or feeling that he has a stable home life. His longing for a different home and family motivates Theo to break into houses and snoop around in order to find comfort in other families’ normality.

Emma, Jacob, and Theo’s constant state of unease escalates when Jacob becomes a suspect in the murder of his social skills tutor, Jess Ogilvy. Jess often brings her boyfriend Mark along to her sessions with Jacob, and this explodes into conflict when Jacob confesses that he has a crush on Jess and Mark ridicules him. Mark, Jacob, and Jess argue until Jacob abruptly flees the session.

A few days later, Theo breaks into another house and, on impulse, steals a pink iPod. While snooping in another room, Theo is horrified when he accidentally spies on a young woman getting out of the shower. His shame intensifies when he realizes that he knows her: He has broken into Jess’s house. Theo leaves immediately and braces himself for the possibility that Jess will notify both his mother and the police. But that never happens because later that day, Jess disappears. Mark reports her missing and encourages the police to suspect Jacob of kidnapping her.

Initially, the police assume that Mark is pointing them to Jacob to distract from his own guilt; Mark is brought in for intense questioning but is released after Jess’s dead body is discovered in a culvert and evidence reveals that Mark has an alibi for the time of Jess’s death. Jacob then becomes a person of interest in her murder investigation, and—after he admits to moving Jess’s body from her house to the culvert and creating a simulated crime scene—he is arrested by the detective on the case, Rich Matson. During Detective Matson’s interactions with Emma, he empathizes with her because—like her—he is also a single parent who feels guilty about his own perceived inadequacies as a father. However, Emma comes to revile Detective Matson when he manipulates Jacob. By playing on Jacob’s interest in forensics, Matson tricks Jacob into waiving his Miranda rights along with his right to have Emma present during an interview so that he can coerce Jacob into giving a false confession.

Jacob’s autism makes it impossible for him to cope with being interviewed by detectives and being detained in a jail cell, so Emma retains a young local lawyer, Oliver Bond. Oliver has no prior experience with autism, but he works with Emma to advocate for Jacob. As Emma and Oliver work together in Jacob’s defense, Oliver falls in love with Emma and the two begin a sexual and romantic relationship which they conceal from Jacob and Theo. Oliver’s increasing attraction to Emma makes him more motivated to get Jacob acquitted in court, so Oliver and Emma work together to find autism experts who can testify in Jacob’s defense and ensure that Jacob’s autism is accommodated during the trial.

Meanwhile, Theo feels even more neglected as the trial unfolds. He steals his mother’s credit card, flies to California, and finds his father, Henry. Theo’s sneaky escape prompts Emma to go after him and triggers an uncomfortable reunion between Henry’s former family and his new wife and daughters, none of whom have autism. As Theo reflects on his father’s seemingly perfect new family, he concludes that Jacob is to blame for the past and present destruction of his family, and he wrestles with anger toward Henry for leaving and guilt over blaming Jacob for a condition that is not his fault. Theo is even more disappointed when Henry makes no effort to initiate a relationship with him. On the flight home, Emma tells Theo that he has to pay her back for the money he stole.

Jacob’s murder trial begins shortly after Theo and Emma return to Vermont. Jacob finds it particularly hard to cope because of his sensitivity to lights, sounds, and other sensory stimuli. Oliver and Emma attempt to advocate for Jacob’s needs by requesting accommodations. The judge initially dismisses these requests. However, when Jacob becomes overwhelmed and reacts by screaming and throwing himself to the floor, the judge begins to take Jacob’s needs more seriously and allows for accommodations. As the trial drags on, Oliver becomes concerned that he may be unable to get Jacob acquitted.

Henry surprises everyone by flying to Vermont uninvited. Emma, Jacob, and Theo are shocked and initially resentful, feeling that Henry has no right to insert himself into their lives now after abandoning their family twice. Henry confesses that he is worried about Jacob and wants to make amends by being there for Emma, Jacob, and Theo now. A few days later, Theo turns 16, and Emma surprises Theo by telling him that she has released him from his debt: He does not have to repay her for the money he stole. Henry and Oliver also give Theo gifts; for the first time, he feels seen, loved, and valued. However, Jacob announces that he has a gift for his brother, and he produces the pink iPod Theo stole from Jess’s house and presents it to Theo. Jacob announces that he knows that Theo killed Jess and confesses that to protect Theo, he moved Jess’s body and created a crime scene that would draw attention away from Theo.

Theo confesses that he stole the iPod and ran away when he saw Jess getting out of the shower. Jacob confirms that Jess was already dead when he arrived and assumed that Theo had killed her. Oliver scrambles to submit a new theory to the judge: Jess was not kidnapped or murdered by anyone. Instead, Theo’s presence startled her as she was getting out of the shower, causing her to slip on the wet floor and sustain a fatal blow to the head. Jacob then moved her body, thinking he was protecting Theo.

The story concludes with Jacob summarizing his own case in one of his Crime Busters notebooks, adding that—despite everything he and his family went through—he is proud that his instinct was to protect his brother. The ending offers no information about the outcome of Jacob’s trial, leaving it ambiguous whether or not Jacob was convicted of murder.