House Rules by Jodi Picoult

It's been a while since I last blogged - mainly due to a hectic run up to Christmas, a bout of Christmas illness, and a marvellous gift that has taken up all my attention; the kindle! Instead of blogging about every book I've been reading, I've been spending hours geekily categorising, downloading and organising my fantastic new toy, so much so that the battery is about to die a week after I received it instead of the usual month!
Anyway, more about that later. Before I became obsessed with the kindle, I was reading House Rules by Jodi Picoult. I'm a huge Picoult fan with My Sister's Keeper sitting firmly in my top ten, simply for one of the most amazing plot twists and jaw-dropping moments ever. However, this tale of an autistic boy, Jacob, accused of murder, just didn't do it for me. Although Picoult paints a very vivid picture of living with an autistic child - one that encompasses everything from the sadness, frustration, moments of fleeting joy and, lastly, hope, that comes with it, I didn't get caught up in the story.
Perhaps there were too many character perspectives in this one, but I found myself putting it down for days on end - returning to it seemed a chore, and I'm not usually like that with books. The tale is a clever one - after all, Jacob is so literal that his mother, Emma, can't put her hand on her heart and say that he's innocent - and there's a nice little twist at the end, although the reader is given enough information at the beginning to work this out much earlier. For me, it's not one of her best.