Lock Every Door

For the new year, I decided it was time to finally give Riley Sager another chance. Well ... we all know how New Year's resolutions can go!

Here’s what you have to ask yourself before reading this book:  How much disbelief am I willing to suspend? For me, at least with this particular book, the answer is “not enough”.

Twenty-five-year-old Jules has lost her boyfriend, her job and her family. With little money and few reasonable options, she’s enticed when she sees an ad for an apartment sitter at the prestigious and highly secretive NYC building The Bartholomew - home to the rich and famous.

One mildly creepy interview with building manager Leslie Evelyn later, and Jules now has a three-month stint that will pay her $12,000 to stay in posh Apartment 12A overlooking Central Park. There are just a few tiny rules, the biggest of which are:

No visitors EVER.

You must sleep in the apartment every night.

You must never bother the other residents. Speak only if spoken to.

No red flags there, Jules? No … just me? In fact, her best friend Chloe does nothing short of plastering alarming news articles about The Bartholomew’s dark history of murders and deaths to Jules’ face, to which Jules basically pulls out the old classic … I’ll be fiiiine! What could go wrong?

Oh, silly Jules.

When she has a literal run-in with fellow apartment sitter Ingrid one day, Ingrid makes it up to her by inviting her to lunch in Central Park where they apparently become insta-besties, because after one lunch, Jules is ready to scour the ends of the earth to search for Ingrid who goes missing that night. Jules is traumatized by her own sister going missing years before, so she doesn’t want it to happen again. OK … I’ll bite.

Here’s where that bite starts to sour. Everything that happens in this story, happens over the course of 5 days - counting down to the interspersed chapters titled “Now”, then later what follows after, and it requires A LOT of buy-in.

First, I have to buy into almost dead-broke Jules’ sudden obsession with not only finding Ingrid, but also solving the mystery behind a number of other past disappearances, not to mention her willingness to risk life and limb for another fellow tenant she barely knows. She’s doggedly pursuing other building residents for answers which risks her big payday, she’s draining what little money she does have, and she’s disregarding barely veiled threats to stop.  I haven’t met this kind of 25-year-old.  No diss intended, but at that age I was just trying to survive and figure out what flavor of ramen I was going to eat that night.

As with my only other Sager read Home Before Dark, the story is kind of ho-hum with  no real thrills until the ending which goes ALL kinds of silly and defies every ounce of logic I possess.  Even the big twist about the “now” chapters I saw coming from a mile away. I listened to the audiobook while reading, and while Dylan Moore did a fine job with the narration, it didn’t elevate the read for me.

Those of you who can roll with Sager’s OTT-ness … you have my admiration. I’ll give him this much - he keeps me flipping pages to see what will happen next, which is the only reason I'm rounding up to three stars. I can see why he’d work well for others who don’t overthink everything and can just have fun with it.

I waited four years since Home Before Dark to see if a second try would go better. It didn’t. To borrow a quote from this book: One time is an anomaly. Two times is a coincidence. Three times is proof. Do I give him a third chance? Hmmm ….. 🤔

★★ ½  (rounded to 3)