Book: Lock Every Door by Riley Sager
Read From: 14th June - 26th June 2021
Rating: 2/5 stars
Summary: Jules becomes an apartment sitter at The Bartholomew, a high-profile private building home to the rich and famous. However, with the commitment comes some rules: no visitors, no nights away from the apartment and no disturbing the other residents. When Jules meets fellow apartment-sitter Ingrid, she learns that the Bartholomew is darker than what meets the eye. It's not long until Ingrid goes missing, and then Jules discovers that she isn't the first temporary resident to vanish.
Yikes, so this is the longest it’s ever taken me to read a thriller and I think it speaks volumes about how much I actually cared about what the ending turned out to be. I actually spent longer reading this book than Plain Bad Heroines which is over 600 pages long! Part of me wishes I had DNF'ed but I’m also kind of relieved that I managed to finish as it confirmed my suspicions that I would be severely let down by the ending. I now know for a fact that I wouldn't have missed out on anything mind-blowing.
It will be pretty difficult for me to go into the ins and outs of why I disliked this book so much without spoiling it, which is slightly gutting as I don’t want it to seem like my dissatisfaction is unsupported (if you’ve read this, PLEASE feel free to message me so that I can rant, I actually have so much to say)!
As always, I want to start with the positives because I really don’t want my opinion to put anybody off reading this. I thought that the third quarter (to be incredibly specific) was pretty suspenseful, and this was the time I found myself actually wanting to turn the pages as I felt like the first half was very convoluted and easily became repetitive. The ending was definitely... unique? And I also found that there were some interesting discussions surrounding classism which, despite being a work of fiction, are very relevant to society today (I just wish this would have been explored a little deeper but then again, it is a thriller so may not have been entirely appropriate).
Now come the disappointing aspects... there were SO many plot holes. There were too many for me to overlook and it ended up massively affecting my reading experience because everything seemed too unrealistic and convenient. On the topic of things being too convenient, I felt as though Sager had spent so much time building up Jules' character to be a little unsure of herself - which is perfectly fine and extremely common in thrillers when adding to the suspense and mystery as you're just as in the dark as they are. But then everything just came so easily to her, not at all fitting with her character arc that Sager had spent the entire novel creating!
As previously mentioned, I can't say too much about my dislike for this book without spoiling anything but I was just overall extremely bored. I really didn't find myself caring about how this book would end and even after I finished reading, I still didn't care. I'm not sure whether we were meant to find perfectly normal occurrences creepy or spooky? If this were the case, maybe I could haven given this book a little more time of day but I couldn't help but feeling that the 'creepy vibes' were compiled of the mundane. Whilst the last thing I want is to discourage anyone from reading this, I can't say it's one I would particularly recommend.