This was a Book of the Month club selection and my first Riley Sager book. The synopsis intrigued me so I thought I’d take a chance on a “new for me” author and I’m so glad I did.
Lock Every Door follows a young woman named Jules Larson who can’t believe her good luck when she lands a dream gig: apartment sitting at the prestigious and mysterious Bartholomew, the gothic home for the rich and famous, for $1,000 a week. There are some terms of employment, however:
- No visitors
- No disturbing the neighbors (especially asking them questions)
- No spending nights away from the apartment
- No being nosey
- No sharing on social media
Not particularly bothered by the rules, Jules accepts the position because after all, this is an opportunity of a lifetime. Once there, she befriends another apartment sitter named Ingrid. Jules soon begins to hear odd noises at night, and Ingrid tells her that the Bartholomew may have some dark and hidden secrets and that the building is starting to frighten her.
Jules brushes off Ingrid’s concerns, but when Ingrid goes missing, Jules starts to wonder whether there really is something strange going on at the Bartholomew after all, especially once she learns that Ingrid is not the first sitter to go missing. Which, of course, brings to mind the adage, “If something seems too good to be true, it usually is.”
As Jules investigates, she learns that the building does indeed have a somewhat sinister history, complete with suicides, strange deaths, and other tragedies and if she doesn’t succeed in figuring out its mystery soon, she could very well be the next missing apartment sitter.
Lock Every Door is an intense, thrilling, suspenseful and compulsive psychological thriller with brilliant characters and a jaw-dropping mystery, and time seemed to slip away as I turned the pages. I found the plot both fascinating and inventive, and it reeled me right in, especially once the Bartholomew turned from quirky to menacing.
This was a super-twisty book with one surprise after another, and I did have a couple of theories on what direction it was heading toward, but boy was I wrong! There was no way I could have predicted the shocking reveal at the end. It was positively chilling.
Now I will say that the ending is a tad over the top and you may have to suspend disbelief a bit (there were a couple of occasions where I raised my eyebrows) but in the end, I thought it worked wonderfully in the story. There’s nothing I enjoy more than having an author pull the wool over my eyes and make me feel like an utter rube, and Riley Sager managed to do it with this book.
By the time the book concluded, I had experienced so many feelings – anticipation, dread, anxiety, hope, shock, surprise and although all my theories were wrong, the story was tidied up so nicely at its finish that I was not only happy I was wrong but was thrilled by it. What an unexpected gem this turned out to be! I ended up giving this book 5 stars, and I look forward to reading more by this author.
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