REVIEW: Lock the Doors (book) by Vincent Ralph

Lock the Doors is technically a YA thriller, but I think it'd appeal to adult readers of thrillers who are willing to take a chance on something with teen protagonists. I bought my copy of this book brand new.

Review:

Tom's blended family has just moved into their dream home, and Tom is still adjusting to...everything. Jay, his stepdad, seems like a genuinely nice guy, but his mom was in enough abusive relationships prior to him that part of Tom still expects things to fall apart if he gets too invested. He struggles with anxiety and OCD, and when he notices the odd little holes outside his and his stepsister's doors, everyone else dismisses his worries as probably nothing. But he swears they look like drill holes for locks. But they're on the outsides of the doors, so who were they meant to lock in? What happened in this house before Tom and his family moved in?

He gets a chance to start answering his questions when he meets Amy, a new classmate of his and a member of the family that just moved in across the street. Amazingly, Amy and her family were the ones who lived in Tom's house prior to them moving in - who moves out of a place only to move into another one right across the street? Granted, it's a bigger house, but Tom can't stop himself from digging for info, and it doesn't hurt that something in Amy reminds him of himself, sad and kind of broken. However, Amy keeps telling him that she's fine and that nothing happened in the house. Could he be seeing shadows that only exist in his own mind?

Despite the author's efforts to put doubts in reader's minds about whether Tom's own trauma was leading him to see monsters where none existed, I almost never expected anything other than the revelation of a giant secret on the part of Amy and/or her family. It was more of a question of what was being hidden, and each detail that was revealed ruined my past theories. I finally ended up with a reasonably decent idea that almost fit all of the clues - it turns out that I was partly right, but things were more messed up than even I guessed.

I really enjoyed the way the author built up the unsettling atmosphere and gradually revealed clues. For those who find themselves getting impatient, don't worry, you don't have to wait until the end of the book before finding out what's going on - the truth gets revealed in Part 3, starting on page 215. That might seem early, but there's more to this than just figuring out what's going on.

This is marketed as a YA thriller, but the thought occurred to me that it didn't read like it was written as a YA thriller, although I think teens could definitely still enjoy it. Despite the teen protagonists, it struck me as being more of a thriller aimed at adults. Everything it seemed like the author was trying to say between the lines was meant for adults - the responsibility that adults have in supporting and protecting kids and teens, keeping an eye out for cries for help that kids and teens might not have the words or power to verbalize, etc.

I wouldn't say the anxiety and OCD rep was necessarily bad, but to me it read more like a device designed to put doubt in reader's minds rather than good and nuanced mental illness representation. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this, and I highly recommend that, when you get to Part 3, you make sure you have a large enough block of time set aside to read the rest of the book in one go. I couldn't put it down once I got to that point. That said, some of the stuff at the end is a little farfetched. It's kind of amazing that the characters let things get so bad before even attempting to turn things around, and one character's inaction in particular bothered me a lot.