Meet Jules Larsen, a twenty-five young woman who hits bottom and her life was in a shambles. Shortly after, the fates guide her to an ad about being ‘an apartment sitter’, which is basically a job to be a resident in a fancy unit at the top of a gothic old building called ‘the Bartholomew’. What’s interesting about the ad is that it doesn’t require previous experience and demands almost no expertise in any field, and what’s more, it pays a shit ton of cash. Does that raise all kinds of red flags for Jules? Maybe, but spelled by her wishful thinking, ‘the queen of magical thinking’ decides to take the job.
Lock Every Door isn’t as scary as advertised, but as it kicks off at nearly the 55% mark, it has an insidious quality to it that leaves readers sickened and nerve-racked. Luckily, there are so many, many clues sprinkled throughout the book about what’s really going on. If you’ve paid enough attention to them, and also if you’ve watched Netflix’s Archive 81, it’ll lessen the tension just a notch but without sacrificing the book’s entertaining value.
At first, I struggled at the beginning with the prose; it felt overly ornate and unnecessarily complex… just like the gothic architecture of the Bartholomew building. But then, all my worries were no more as the story moved on.
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Summary: Lock Every Door is a gripping thriller that has its ups and downs that offers a story about the drastic outcome of capitalism (the expanding chasm between the upper and lower classes and the disintegration of the middle class). It teeters between fantasy and fiction, between the paranormal and the work of foul play, but doesn't leave readers' questions unanswered. I have my reservations about the long and slow build-up, but the last third of the book paid off.
The bottom line is I loved every second of it... and the ending—my god!!! I can't wait to read more of Sager's books.
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