Book Review
Title: Lock Every Door
Author: Riley Sager
Genre: Psychological/Thriller
Rating: *****
Review: I haven’t read anything by Riley Sager in the past but the wonderful booktuber; BooksandLala is reading Home Before Dark with her book club this month and I decided to pick this one up just to get a taste for Sager’s writing before I jump into Home Before Dark. We are introduced to Jules Larsen after she is hit by a car right outside an old apartment building, the Bartholomew, she is in a very bad state but still has the mental function to beg not to be sent back there which raises a ton of questions for me. We then jump back 6 days to when she is being interviewed for a job apartment sitting in that very building. Jules doesn’t think she is going to get the job as she is poor and not the kind of person that lives in a building like the Bartholomew. Jules only applied for the position because it was vague and didn’t give an address but she is desperate as she has lost her job and found out her boyfriend was cheating on her in the same day which also meant she had to move out of Andrew’s apartment. Despite her reservations Jules gets the job which is going to pay her $4000 a month to stay there for 3 months and maybe longer depending on how long it takes the remaining family to agree on what they are going to do with the apartment now the owner has died. Chloe, Jules’ best friend has major reservations about her taking the job since so many rumours circle the Bartholomew, but she needs this chance to restart her life, but I already have so many questions we when are thrown back into the present.
As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, we have learnt that this novel takes place over six days jumping back and forth between each day and the present. In the present, Jules is relieved to be away from the Bartholomew although we still have no idea why or how she ended up injured. Five days before, Jules was moving into apartment 12A of the building and Leslie goes over the rules with her which seem sane enough apart from the no visitors’ rule but given the people that live there Jules understands the need for privacy. Chloe is even more opposed to the idea after hearing about this rule, but Jules doesn’t really have a choice. However, when she is moving in, she meets another apartment sitter Dylan who is on the floor below as is a third person, Ingrid. We begin to learn more about Jules, how her parents go into a lot of debt before they died, that Jules how has to deal with including her own student loans and credit cards and we also learn her sister Jane, disappeared two years before their parents died and no one has seen or heard from her since, which is why Jules believes she is dead. Her first day in the apartment seems pretty normal and she even received a welcome message from Ingrid in the dumbwaiter and despite never seeing her, Jules thinks she is going to like Ingrid. The next day after returning from shopping, Ingrid collides with her in the lobby causing Jules to cut her arm sending her to her apartment neighbour Doctor Nick for treatment. Nick isn’t rich or famous but inherited the apartment from his parents when they died, and Jules forms a slight kinship with Nick, and she is also very attracted to him, but something seems off about the building and the residents. Ingrid asks her to meet for lunch in Central Park where she apologises for the accident and the pair become friends, Ingrid because she is lonely and Jules because Ingrid reminds her of her sister, Jane.
As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, that night Jules is sure she hears Ingrid scream and goes to check on her and while Ingrid assures her, she is fine, Jules can’t shake the feeling that Ingrid is lying to her. We then jump back to present, where Jules is in the hospital and the doctor asks her questions about the accident and while she can’t remember it clearly she does say she ran into oncoming traffic because she was escaping from the Bartholomew and now I want to know why. We jump back again as Jules begins having nightmares she hasn’t had in a long time but it startles her and she begins to feel that she isn’t alone in her apartment but she is looking forward to seeing Ingrid for lunch but when that time arrives, Ingrid doesn’t show and she doesn’t respond to Jules’ text messages. Upon returning to the Bartholomew, Leslie tells Jules that Ingrid left in the middle of the night, most likely not long after Jules checked on her leaving nothing behind. As it is in Jules’ nature to worry she begins looking for Ingrid on social media, finding an old friend who she contacts in the hope he has heard from her but she also discovers that she has also met the author of Heart of Dream, Greta Manville and she hopes that this woman might have some idea about where Ingrid has gone and in going to her apartment, she breaks one of the rules about bothering the residents but in Jules’ mind the possible outcome outweighs the risk. Greta isn’t a very social person but while she talks with Jules’ over a glass of wine, she lets something slip that her book was a lie making me think the Bartholomew she portrayed in her book was nothing like the real one and she also warns Jules that this place chews up gentle souls and spits them out referring to both New York and the Bartholomew. After her chat with Greta, she bumps into Nick who is invites out for coffee, hoping that he knows more about the Bartholomew considering he has lived there all his life but she has also been flirting with him which I want to see more of since Nick appears to be a nice guy.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, Jules is developing a nice flirtation with Nick but her investigation into Ingrid’s disappearance continues. Jules checks the dumbwaiter believing that Ingrid may have left her a message there and she does find one but all it contains is a note telling her to be careful and the key for the storage locker of her apartment which Leslie hadn’t been able to locate when she left and the first thing she does is head down to the basement to see what is in the locker. However, it is appearing that anyone inside the hotel who could have come into contact either doesn’t know Ingrid, which seems strange given her friendly personality and her need for companionship or they are deliberately hiding the fact that they knew her. While down in the basement she gets a call from Zeke, one of Ingrid’s sort of friends and he tells her that Ingrid told him she was living at the Bartholomew, two days before. Two things happen in very quick succession here during Jules’ conversation with Zeke, she learns that Ingrid bought a gun from his friend and she has left it for Jules with the warning to be careful and this changes what Jules was thinking about her disappearance. A gun doesn’t imply the place is haunted as you can’t shoot ghosts, it implies that there is someone who Ingrid believed was going to hurt her and possibly hurt Jules. She tries to report Ingrid missing but it doesn’t come to anything as she doesn’t really know Ingrid but she doesn’t have time to ponder it as that night there is a fire in apartment 7C bringing back memories Jules doesn’t want to relive but has to although she does the right thing in helping Greta and the dog, Rufus escape from the blaze. Back in the present, Jules tells the doctor that the Bartholomew is haunted by its past so much, it fills the place and she has breathed it in, and I honestly have no idea where this book is going. After the fire, Greta and Jules start building a small friendship, and Jules trusts her enough to share her story where she recounts how her parents got into debt, fell on hard time and eventually committed suicide together in an effort to protect their daughters. Her father even removed all of Jules and Jane’s things from the home so they still held the belief that Jane would be found which is part of the reason why Jules is trying so hard to find Ingrid.
As we cross into the second half of the novel, Jules gets some more clues from Charlie the doorman who mentions Marianne, the owner of Rufus and an actress was outside the apartment building the night Ingrid left but he didn’t see her because he was repairing a camera in the basement. As Marianne sent her flowers for rescuing her beloved dog, Jules uses it as an opening to speak to Marianne who acts as strangely as Ingrid did the night she disappeared. However, Leslie catches her and she sees it as Jules bothering the residents which would normally see her kicked out but after her actions the previous night she gives Jules a second chance but this makes looking for Ingrid harder as she herself is now being watched. She decides to rope in Nick after he helped her deal with Andrew when he showed up asking for money, the plan is for Nick to lower Jules in Ingrid’s apartment so she can see if there are any clues left behind but she has to hide as Leslie turns up interviewing Ingrid’s replacement. In the rush that came with escaping without being caught, she falls into bed with Nick but when we jump back to the present, she mentions several murders at the Bartholomew, and I am sat here thinking what the hell is happening. We are now only two days before the events of the present and I am wondering what on Earth can happen in two days for Jules to react the way she did in fleeing the Bartholomew. When we return to the past, Jules is leaving Nick’s apartment to return to her own, but her keys fall into the heating grate again and when she retrieves them, she finds a phone. Once she turns it on, she recognises the face not because she has met this person but because she is on a missing flyer, Erica Mitchell, the apartment sitter for 12A before Jules. She rings the number of the poster only for it to be answered by Dylan, the only other apartment sitter remaining besides herself and together they learn that several apartment sitters have gone missing and they all share a common history, orphans and no next of kin. Dylan is searching for Erica because they were sort of dating when she disappeared and he was supposed to meet Ingrid the night she disappeared, because she had uncovered what happened to Erica. The only thing that might contain evidence is the phone Jules found so she rings Zeke in the hope he knows someone that can hack it and he does.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, the find two videos in Erica’s phone but not a lot else. The two videos couldn’t be more different as one documents her wonder at moving into 12A and the other was recorded the night she vanished, Erica is terrified at something in the apartment when someone knocks on her door just after midnight as she refers to the person as a him. However, Greta is also lying about things as she presents Jules with a signed copy of her book and says she hasn’t signed a book for anyone else when Jules knows that both Erica and Ingrid had signed copies, the only difference in the inscriptions are the names and this mystery just seems to get bigger and bigger but I am now certainly that Erica, Megan and Ingrid are all dead and Jules or Dylan might be next. Despite Greta’s lies, Jules knows who did something to the girls when they respond to her text message to Ingrid but they don’t know the nickname Ingrid gave her, Juju and they also know that Jules isn’t short for another name which she has only told one person in the Bartholomew, Nick. Back in the present, the nurse can’t find her phone and she realises that Nick has taken it which now puts Chloe in danger but when she tries to get the doctors to help her, they only think that she is crazy but her friend is in real danger now, if we are to believe that Nick kidnapped and killed the three other apartment sitters. I actually hated this reveal a little because I really liked Nick as a character, and I would have been just as surprised if Greta or Leslie were the ones making the girls disappear, but it had to be Nick. Jules dig further into the mystery finding out the supposed dead woman whose apartment she is looking after is still alive and when she talks to the woman she sees the ouroboros symbol on her brooch, the same one that is in Nick’s apartment and she realises that they are a cult. The same cult involved with the Ruby Red Killing in 1944, committed by Greta’s grandmother. However, shortly after Bobbie from the woman’s shelter calls her telling her Ingrid is there and she rushes to her friend’s aid. Ingrid relays all the other details about how Erica started the chain of events they are finishing and Ingrid wants them to leave together but Jules has to go back for Dylan and that night is a blue moon, the same time of the lunar month when the others went missing and possibly killed. The only reason, Ingrid is alive is because Jules heard her scream when Nick came for her and gave her enough time to escape but we know where Jules ends up in the present.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, I really don’t want to say too much because this ending was a major rollercoaster that left me absolutely dumbfounded. If Home Before Dark is anything like Lock Every Door, then I have no doubt I am going to love it. I love how every false trial or small clue came together in the end, although I would have liked to have seen more from Nick before he went all psycho surgeon on us and I would have liked the relationships between Nick and Jules to be developed a little more along with the relationship between Jules and Greta but overall this was an amazing dark thriller that I would highly recommended to anyone, especially around Halloween and I can’t wait to get into Home Before Dark and anything Riley Sager has written. A definite insta-buy author.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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