House Rules (novel)/YMMV

• Asperger's Syndrome: Some people seem to think that Jacob wasn't portrayed as being Aspergers but instead as being autistic. This troper lives with someone who is severely autistic, and also lives with having Aspergers. There's quite a difference, part of that being the ability to pretend to be normal. Someone who hasn't been forced to fake being normal is generally less likely to show the ability to, and Jacob was never really thrown to the wolves, so to speak.
• Idiot Plot: Many reviewers note that the entire premise of House Rules depends on absolutely nobody asking Jacob whether he committed the murder or not. His mother and lawyer immediately organise an insanity defence instead. This is particularly glaring because one of the traits of Jacob's Asperger's is that he's terrible at lying.
  • The plot would also be over in fifty pages if Theo didn't sit through his brother's arrest, jail time and trial, and all the strain this causes on his family, without telling anyone that he broke into Jess's house on the day of the "murder" and saw her fall down and hit her head. All right, maybe he's frightened of being charged with causing her accidental death, but when he finally owns up that doesn't seem to have occurred to him.
    • They assumed that he did it because he's abnormal. That seems to be a theme of this book.
• Straw Man Has a Point: Emma goes to great lengths to convince everyone Jacob is a kind, caring boy who is far too innocent to commit murder... But as Theo points out Jacob is frequently violent and very capable of killing someone.
  • Except Jacob didn't kill anyone. The slippery floor and the edge of the sink killed someone.

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