Reviews with content warning for Drug use - Lock Every Door

Thought this book was dealing with ghosts or witches, it wasn't. The "twist" was okay, I guess. The most interesting sub-theme of this book was about how poor people are mistreated, abused and aren't ever considered people at all. I would have liked a deeper exploration of that.

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toofondofbooks_'s review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Y'all, this one was a ride.

I put my physical TBR in a randomizer and let it choose for me, and it chose spooky apparently - and in terms of spookiness, this book delivers on all fronts. I loved the gothic apartment building setting. To me, it felt extremely vivid and claustrophobic. The gargoyles, the colors, the faces in the wallpaper, I felt like I could see it all. I loved that every single person in the book was suspicious as hell. There wasn't just one person I was side eye-ing - I was side eye-ing them all, even the MC's parents who were dead when the book began. I would compare this to American Horror Story: Hotel, but less unhinged because the writing is better. As a whole, the story was compelling and kept me guessing what direction it was going in.

There are parts, however, that had me scratching my head or made me uncomfortable - and not in the way that you hope to be uncomfortable when reading a thriller. There was some casual homophobia within the inner monologue of the main character that really took me aback, it didn't serve the story at all and it was the kind of casual homophobia that queer people like myself pick up on very easily. Additionally, there is some queer "rep" in the history of the Bartholomew, but it is all negative rep that does not serve the story. Speaking of the MC, Jules, she was incredibly annoying, and not to be mean, but she was dumb as rocks. I didn't care about her breakup, I barely cared about her life, I wanted to know more about the Bartholomew building and its history. This next critique is petty, but I'm wondering if Sager really needed to use the word "meager" as many times as he did while writing this book. It got to a point where I had to roll my eyes every time I saw it. Please open a thesaurus, for the love of God.

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breezer's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Wildly predictable but surprisingly compelling

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leahlovesloslibros's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

This book was "unputdownable". The story kept me interested the whole time; I flew through it in less than 48 hours. There was one major plot point/character who I figured out as soon as we met them, but that didn't stop me from enjoying seeing how things played out with the story. This has been my favorite of Sager's books so far!

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