Rating: 3 out of 5
Genre: Mystery / Thriller, Fiction
People who should read this: If you love suspenseful thrillers, stories set in New York, and a simple but entertaining story.
“One time is an anomaly. Two times is a coincidence. Three times is proof.”
He shoots and he strikes again. For some reason I just can’t get into Sager’s second and third books as much as I did the first one. This is definitely better than the second one, but still… the suspense he put into his first thriller was missing in Lock Every Door.
And no… I’m not typing that wrong. If you’re like me and didn’t know until three books in, I’m sorry. Riley Sager is a guy. Gasp. Right?!?!? My friend corrected me last week.
Moving on to the pressing matter of writing this review - I did enjoy reading Lock Every Door, but it was very middle of the road for me. There were no strong feelings either way. The writing was vanilla, the suspense average, and the plot a compilation of other stories.
All right. There you go. My entire review in one itsy bitty little paragraph. If you don’t care to know more, than you may click away and find a book more suited to your needs. Especially if thrillers are a hard sell for you anyway. They are for me. Most of the time I guess the result early on and spend the rest of the book bored, waiting for the characters to catch up. And when I’m not actively thinking, the book is dull for me. I’m not getting lost in the story.
“She's fascinating in the same way tornadoes are fascinating. You want to see how much they're going to spin.”
I keep coming back to Sager thinking he’ll pull another Final Girls but alas, I’m sadly disappointed.
For the main positives... I see how a lot of people are going to love Lock Every Door. This is a great time to point out that I’m always the unpopular opinion. Watch… I’ll go into book club and everyone but me will love it. This is a mainstream book with a lot for everyone. The characters are not cookie cutters, the ending is ghastly - for most people - and there’s nothing too hard to pay attention to.
Yet, for someone who reads a lot of books, I can find all the seams and all the “inspiration” that Sager found for the book.
Granted there are so many stories out there that I shouldn’t be picking apart Sager’s inspiration when I’m literally about to do the same thing in my own book.
Why do I keep getting side tracked with this review?
Sorry my friends. Let me see if we can right this ship.
“We grow up expecting our parents to live forever until, one day, they’re suddenly gone.”
The cons… The bad guys were very apparent. There was almost a sign above their head saying pick me, pick me. Readers went in already knowing that there was something wrong with the apartment which took away any slowly building tension. Again, the writing was plain. The backstory was also filled with weird fluff that tried to play into the main story but ended up falling flat.
There were two things that did shine in the book for me. One, The ending didn’t just give readers what they wanted. It was a plausible ending that felt true to the whole story. Second, I did miss some of the foreshadowing. Either that was because it was just that good - I wouldn’t pat Sager on the back yet - or because I was rushing to get through the book because of my crying TBR pile that even publishers are starting to complain about. I’m leaning more towards the second reason.
My last point is for all my writing friends out there that have been anxiously holding out for me to say something writingly about Love Every Door. Here it is… If you want to learn mainstream fiction, the type of book that gets sold in the airport, read this one.
Anyways…
Happy Reading
Love Kait
Reading Challenge: 12/150