Lock and Key
Sarah Dessen
Realistic Fiction
Reviewed by Hannah Williams
Rated 4 out of 5 Stars
Ruby Cooper is eighteen years old. She’s been living with her mom for almost her whole life, just the two of them together. Out of the blue, Ruby’s mother abandons her, leaving Ruby alone to live by herself in their rental house. Although she’s quite capable of taking care of herself, someone turns Ruby’s situation into the police. Ruby’s seemingly long-lost sister, Cora manages to get reconnected with her. After being taken away from her old, run-down house, Ruby goes to live with Cora and her husband, Jamie. They live in a rich community, in a luxurious house complete with a big yard, grand furniture, and lavish bedrooms. Ruby used to go to a low-budget, crowded school and is now finding herself in the midst of a completely modern, crisp, private school. She realizes that in order to succeed, you’ll sometimes need to turn to others, and put your best foot forward. Tangled in her new life, breaking all of her rules, Ruby makes new friends, gets a job, and accepts a bit of generosity from Cora and Jamie. With this too-good-to-be-real life ahead of her, Ruby has many more futuristic opportunities than she ever would have had with her mother, or all by herself. Throughout Dessen’s plot, Ruby learns the true meaning of family; love, happiness, and trust.
I thought this book was interesting. It was one of those books that was kind of hard to get “into”, but once the works were in motion, the vividness of the characters came to life and I was quite captured with the unraveling story. Dessen used flash-back to relive some of the more important moments in Ruby’s life. She also made the plot very captivating, making you have to keep flipping the pages to see what will happen next. If you enjoy books with an under flowing love story, bittersweet moments, and harsh reality, this would be a great book for you! I would also recommend this book to anyone with too much time on their hands. If you are looking for an adventurous, eventful, gory story, this however would not work as well for you. Over-all this was a very well written book with meaningful character roles and finding who you really are.
