Lock Every Door by Riley Sager

Book Summary

No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich or famous or both. These are the only rules for Jules Larsen’s new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan’s most high-profile and mysterious buildings. Recently heartbroken and just plain broke, Jules is taken in by the splendor of her surroundings and accepts the terms, ready to leave her past life behind.

As she gets to know the residents and staff of the Bartholomew, Jules finds herself drawn to fellow apartment sitter Ingrid, who comfortingly, disturbingly reminds her of the sister she lost eight years ago. When Ingrid confides that the Bartholomew is not what it seems and the dark history hidden beneath its gleaming facade is starting to frighten her, Jules brushes it off as a harmless ghost story—until the next day, when Ingrid disappears.

Searching for the truth about Ingrid’s disappearance, Jules digs deeper into the Bartholomews’ dark past and into the secrets kept within its walls. Her discovery that Ingrid is not the first apartment sitter to go missing at the Bartholomew pits Jules against the clock as she races to unmask a killer, expose the building’s hidden past, and escape the Bartholomew before her temporary status becomes permanent.

HOW I'LL APPROACH THIS REVIEW

I aim to carry out an analytical study of the text and provide a review. So, while the first part of this post is dedicated to a book review that can help you decide whether to read or skip the book, the second part will do a deep dive into the text to determine how Sager utilises genre archetypes. I also provide a personal reflection on this text using a cinematic example to analyse the importance of the themes covered in this novel. I will rate this book out of five, but instead of using using five stars, I'll use five doors.

One of the reasons it has taken me so long to write a book review is my enjoyment driven by the quality of books. Whenever I enjoy a book (particularly a thriller). I tend to devour its heart-stopping story as quickly as possible instead of conducting a comprehensive analysis with a notepad and pen. Lock Every Door is one such book, but this time, writing a review for my first blog has only enriched my understanding of the narrative.

I had not read Sager’s works before, so I approached this novel with a clean slate and no expectations. And boy, was this a ride! It balanced everything well, from a high-rise building in NYC with a dark past to a striking commentary on class inequality in American healthcare.

Sager kept Jule’s character growth and inner conflict at the heart of his story. After being offered a job at Bartholomew, her judgment gets filtered by a rose-tinted lens of optimism, which urges her to ignore all the red flags in the arrangement. Getting paid to live in a luxurious apartment—check. But here’s the catch: you must submit medical reports, cannot spend nights away from the apartment, and cannot invite any outsiders. At first, Jules may come across as a prototypical horror genre lead character who conveniently walks into a haunted house, ignoring the eerie circumstances surrounding the house, but Sager takes a different approach with the character by exploring her trauma from losing her parents and younger sister. Jules does not remain willfully ignorant for long, as she starts digging into the building’s past after the disappearance of her fellow apartment sitter, Ingrid.

Her investigation leads her to a gothic cult that used to carry out Satanic rituals by sacrificing young girls. But there is more to the story than what meets the eye, as the mystery unfolds at a measured pace, planting clues throughout the story that pay off in an explosive climax towards the end.

Overall, Lock Every Door is a thrilling and thought-provoking story with twists that will keep you on the edge of your seat. If you are a fan of thrillers, then this is a must-read book. Once you are done, you can check out the in-depth analysis of this novel below as I explore how Sager uses and subverts horror archetypes to craft a compelling narrative.

Horror stories usually tend to follow specific archetypes to craft a compelling narrative. They are:

• The Final Girl: The resilient survivor.

• The Monster/Villain: The primary antagonist.

• The Skeptic: Doubts the supernatural.

• The Reluctant Hero: Unwilling, yet pivotal to the story.

Riley Sager takes all these archetypes, puts them in a blender, and creates a story that not only honours them, but also manages to offer a fresh take.

Jules starts this story as an unconventional skeptic, that too a desperate one, as she has no job, an unfaithful ex-boyfriend, and no place to call home. A chance at living in the most luxurious building in New York isn't just an enticing offer; it's an opportunity on a silver platter that she doesn't believe she deserves! The novel does an excellent job of establishing her motivations. She isn't just someone who ignores the building's violent past and supernatural rumours because she is naturally logical, but because she is used to holding on to a sense of hidden optimism. This optimism compels her to see things as they are, even when Chloe warns her and Ingrid disappears. Watching her journey was like seeing someone trying to hold on to a tube after almost drowning in a pool. In such circumstances, anyone would want to hold onto whatever they have, even if the tube leaks. She manages to find a mundane and reasonable explanation behind every suspicious situation.

Skeptics usually impact the story in the following ways:

• Tension Creation: By denying the horror, they heighten the audience’s awareness of the danger. Watching Jules blindly accept the job of apartment sitter stirs up uneasiness in the reader as there are clearly too many red flags to ignore, but the narrative demands time for the protagonist to acknowledge the uneasiness.

• Character Dynamics: Their interactions with believers can lead to conflicts and thematic exploration. It is interesting to see Jule’s veiled skepticism revealing a girl in denial who was unknowingly pushing herself into danger by opening up to her neighbors. Finding Ingrid’s message in the dumbwaiter convinces her to uncover the truth.

• Plot Progression: Their eventual realization or downfall often marks critical plot points. She finds herself on a dangerous path as she investigates a cult. But the narrative subverts her and the readers' expectations by revealing the mystery in the climax. What Jules thought was a Satanic ritual was grounded in the horrors of inequality.

Her denial transitions into determined investigation, mirroring the arc typical of skeptics who are forced to accept the terrifying truth.

Jules is also a reluctant hero as her arc is driven by her moral compass and personal trauma, which compels her to fight back. Her journey of heroism overlaps with her skepticism, as both cannot exist without the other. Meanwhile, the Sage archetype is beautifully subverted with Greta as she seems like an old, distant, yet knowledgeable writer who willingly befriends and guides Jules in her investigation, as she knows the building's history. But she is, in fact, complicit in the horrors of the building. Her literary status is a façade that masks her moral decay.

The Bartholomew is more than just a setting; it becomes a character in its own right as a brooding, secretive presence that exudes an aura of dread. Its opulent façade masks a history of tragedy and malevolence, including past murders and suicides. This architectural grandeur, coupled with its dark past, positions the building as a gothic villain, reminiscent of classic horror settings where the environment itself seems to harbour evil. But the real evil comes from its residents, namely Dr Nick and Leslie Evelyn. Their actions—harvesting organs from unsuspecting and desperate tenants—highlights a grotesque form of human monstrosity rooted in classism and greed.

Many of the young apartment sitters in the story are archetypical innocent victims. They are naive, vulnerable, and desperate working-class individuals who are lured in by the promise of wealth and shelter. But their fates take a tragic turn to raise the emotional stakes and reinforce the monstrous nature of the antagonists. They all have one thing in common—they have no family or people who could potentially look for them if they disappear. Nick sees his ailing patients as the real victims, as they are prominent people like billionaires, scientists, doctors, scholars, and writers. He justifies his actions because he believes that 'ordinary' people do not make valuable contributions to society. But the victims are people who are objectified as mere organ donors for the wealthy, only to be disposed of discreetly in a body bag.

Jules functions as the final girl archetype who uses her strength and willingness to live to become a survivor. The book's climax really stands out to me as Jules leaves the building with a bloodied knife in her hand and her family's photo. The hopeful girl who once stood in the elevator on the day of her job interview now leaves with the weight of her traumatic journey. Jules is not the only “Final Girl” in the building—there are traces of others who came before her but didn’t survive. This haunting presence of “failed” Final Girls raises the stakes and amplifies the danger she faces.

CINEMATIC PARALLELS

Reading this book reminded me of Get Out by Jordan Peele.  While both are distinct in form, as one is a psychological thriller novel and the other a horror film, they share striking thematic and structural similarities that makes them really compelling to compare. Both stories use horror as a metaphor to highlight how systemic exploitation, privilege, desperation, and hidden agendas manifest in modern society.

The Bartholemew is a luxurious building in Manhattan with a long history of murders and organ trafficking, but to outsiders, it is the most glamorous and desirable place to live. Meanwhile, the Armitage family estate is a normal suburban home with a progressive white family. But behind this perfect family lies a chilling secret: the auctioning of Black bodies through mind transplantation. Both stories mask horror and exploitation using civility and wealth as the attractive settings, and the seemingly nice people pave the way for unsettling revelations. This is most evident through the behaviour of Dr Nick and Rose in Lock Every Door and Get Out respectively. At first, Nick seems like the perfect boy next door out of a rom-com novel. He is a kind, warm and dependable neighbour and doctor who seemingly treats Jules after her accident and treats her like a friend. The narrative directly acknowledges the clichéd nature of this trope, but leans into it as Jules and Nick's friendship blossoms into a potential romance.

The book repeatedly highlights that Nick, Leslie, and Greta are nice people despite being rich. Their kindness not only evokes sympathy as their behaviour goes against the snobby elite archetype, but also makes their betrayal more impactful as they seemed to be helping Jules during her stay. Even at the end, it doesn't just tell a story of moustache-twirling villains with devil metaphors, but it also explores the ingrained views of exploitation of the working class. The same way, Rose in Get Out is characterised as the ideal progressive white girlfriend who defends her black boyfriend when they are interrogated by the police. Even her parents seem progressive, but there is a sense of uneasiness looming over Chris and the audience, as he notices the microaggresions towards black people which suggests fetisization of race. In both stories, the villians deliberately target people with limited means or support systems, people who won't be missed or believed. Rose didn't stop the police officer from seeing Chris's ID to defend him, but to make him untraceable after the brain transplant. The police officer has been depicted as a bigot. Still, in hindsight, his actions could be interpreted as caution and concern, as several black people disappeared from the same locality. Similarly, in Lock My Door, the police don't help Jules locate the missing apartment sitters, as Leslie staged their disappearance and they had no one to report it. Leslie asking for medical reports and introducing Jules to Dr Nick seemed like an employer taking care of her employee's wellbeing, when in reality it was just an excuse to obtain her blood samples.

In both stories, the victims experience the loss of bodily autonomy. These aren't just physical invasions—they’re metaphorical commentaries on how marginalised bodies are commodified. The only difference is that Lock My Door focused on class, while Get Out focused on race.

Therefore Lock Every Door and Get Out are modern horror/thriller dtories that weaponize wealth, isolation, and trust to terrify. They both use "safe" environments to unsettle the audience, while exploring how privilidge exploits others, and highlight how the protagonists survive by resisting objectification and fetishization.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Emotional, thrilling and subversive, I'll give it 4/5 rating.