Review: Lock Every Door by Riley Sager

I cannot remember the last time I was awake until 3 am to finish a book. Especially not one I didn't start until like 5 pm the day before. I didn't read it in one sitting, but that was basically the case. I was slowly pulled into the story until I was suddenly so frightened that I had to finish the book before I could even think about sleep. There was no way I was turning the lights off until I knew what was going on.

I will, of course, not be spoiling anything here. It seems that best practices with going into a thriller/mystery/suspense/whatever novel is to know like five little things from the very beginning and just jump in. Unfortunately, that makes this genre weird to recommend. Also, I am just pretty new to the genre in general.

Lock Every Door, a title that in itself made me very apprehensive, is about a 25-year-old woman named Jules. Jules has no remaining family, one friend, just lost her job, and her boyfriend when she is offered a crazy amount of money to apartment sit at a luxe Manhattan apartment building with a mysterious and long history. Five days after accepting the job, she wakes up in a hospital, having fled from the building and been immediately hit by a car. We follow Jules as she interacts with two other apartment sitters; she slowly pieces together the mysterious ways in which the former apartment sitters have mysteriously disappeared. I think this is all the plot I can actually give you.

The book, as all great genre fiction does, tackles some important social issues, namely wealth disparity. The rules the apartment sitters must follow are condescendingly stringent, and the way the tenants treat them is frankly quite rude. I really found the commentary on generational wealth interesting an engaging. There are other topics the book discusses but I am not in the business of spoiling. Or I am trying not to be.

The most impressive thing about this book was that it sincerely built the feeling of dread. Once I was hooked in the story, I soon felt physically anxious and scared. I could feel the pit of your stomach dread building up making it impossible for me to put this book down. It didn't matter which plot reveals I had guessed would happen (hello big bad, I know it was you pretty darn quickly) because the book perfectly built tension in my physical responses. This is not to say I guessed the ending, I might have knows who was up to nonsense but I did not know what that nonsense was. I wish I could give a comparison here but it would just be far too spoilery. There were a few times I was slightly bothered that Jules was maybe a tad dumb to further the plot (the final push before the last 50ish pages), but there was so much momentum hurtling me to the end of the book I was not pulled out of the narrative.

I was so worried that I was torn between wanting to just spoil the book for myself so I could relax and just actually reading the book in a way that made me just experience the narrative. I went with experiencing the story, but it was close. I was very scared. I am a giant chicken.

I gave this book five stars on Goodreads and The StoryGraph. I would totally recommend this book! There are many people who properly read thrillers who I have seen recommend this book, but I would also suggest it to newcomers to the genre like myself! Anyone else who house/apartment sits like I do should read this if you want to decrease the amount you sleep while at others houses. I would also suggest the book to people who are very into the setting being so present it is basically a character, both NYC and the apartment building, the Bartholomew, are incredibly well done.

I plan on continuing my journey into thrillers over the course of the spooky season, I might need to balance this out with some tremendously happy books. Cause of the aforementioned cowardice.