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A review by agoldendear
Lock Every Door by Riley Sager
dark
hopeful
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
As someone who is not very experienced with thrillers but loves mysteries, I enjoyed this book a lot. It focuses a lot on the mystery aspects of what happened to Ingrid and what's going on at the Bartholomew in general while having the main character find herself in some pretty tense situations, as you might expect. The writing style was easy to read and not flowery, but it was descriptive when it needed to be. Since I watched a review video of this book before reading it, I already knew what the biggest plot twist was before starting, but that made it fun to spot the foreshadowing and things that various characters said that might have had a double reading.
As often happens in mysteries, the plot starts off a bit slow due to the difficulty getting a foothold in the investigation. Once things got going, I had a hard time putting the book down since every chapter gave out a new piece of information to help solve the mystery. The timeline of the book was also fun--it mostly counts down the days until "now", with a few chapters taking place "now" slipped in after each day passes. It heightened the feeling of tension for me since it was only a matter of time until the two timelines converged and presumably brought with them the truth about everything.
It's difficult to accurately judge how "lovable" the characters are since you're supposed to go through the book not knowing who to trust. I did like the main character, Jules. I thought she was relatable, especially as someone who is newly out of college and going into the "working adult" world for the first time. I especially liked her bold moments and how she stuck to what she believed in throughout the book (even though it worked against her a bit in the beginning). However, I can't speak to how accurate her experience of poverty is since it's not something I've been through. The other characters as a whole were somewhat interesting. The main info we get to know about them is their secrets connected to the mystery, so we don't really get to know them on a deep, personal level.
As often happens in mysteries, the plot starts off a bit slow due to the difficulty getting a foothold in the investigation. Once things got going, I had a hard time putting the book down since every chapter gave out a new piece of information to help solve the mystery. The timeline of the book was also fun--it mostly counts down the days until "now", with a few chapters taking place "now" slipped in after each day passes. It heightened the feeling of tension for me since it was only a matter of time until the two timelines converged and presumably brought with them the truth about everything.
It's difficult to accurately judge how "lovable" the characters are since you're supposed to go through the book not knowing who to trust. I did like the main character, Jules. I thought she was relatable, especially as someone who is newly out of college and going into the "working adult" world for the first time. I especially liked her bold moments and how she stuck to what she believed in throughout the book (even though it worked against her a bit in the beginning). However, I can't speak to how accurate her experience of poverty is since it's not something I've been through. The other characters as a whole were somewhat interesting. The main info we get to know about them is their secrets connected to the mystery, so we don't really get to know them on a deep, personal level.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Suicide, Medical content, Medical trauma, Death of parent, and Fire/Fire injury
Moderate: Gun violence
Minor: Addiction, Self harm, Sexual content, and Gaslighting