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House Rules (novel)House Rules (2010) is the eighteenth novel by the American author, Jodi Picoult. The novel focuses on a young adult male, Jacob Hunt, with Asperger's syndrome living in Townsend, Vermont, who is accused of murder. The novel follows the struggle between Jacob and his family (consisting of his mother, Emma, and his younger brother, Theo), the law, and his disability.

Plot
Eighteen-year-old Jacob Hunt lives with his mother Emma and his younger brother, Theo. Jacob has Asperger's syndrome, then considered a form of high-functioning autism. Jacob lives by a highly structured schedule and feels comfortable when all of his daily activities are pre-planned. Jacob thrives when he is able to engage in structured, focused activities, and he particularly enjoys things that are incredibly intellectual and academic. Emma is able to ensure that Jacob's anxiety and outbursts are infrequent by creating her and Theo's schedules around Jacob's needs. However, this often displeases Theo.

Jacob is deeply interested with forensic analysis to the point of obsession. The novel begins with Jacob setting up a crime scene (in which he plays the victim) for his mother to solve. Jacob is later accused of murdering his tutor, Jess Ogilvy. It is eventually revealed that Theo snuck into a house that Jess was house sitting at and startled her, causing her to accidentally hit her head on the sink and subsequently die.

When Jacob arrived at the home for his tutoring sessions, he staged a crime scene to make it appear as if Jess's boyfriend, Mark Maguire, had committed the murder, and then tried to make it appear as if it was a kidnapping. Eventually, Jacob is arrested for Jess's murder. During the trial, Jacob states that he staged the crime scene to take care of his brother, in accordance with a "house rule" set by Emma to take care of one another. Jacob asserts that if, by chance, the circumstances arose again, he would do it again for his brother.

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