Book Review: The Locked Door

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Thriller

This was my first Frieda book I’ve read. I’ve been really hesitant about reading her books because of all of the mixed reviews, but I finally just did it! And I seem to be in the minority by saying I actually really enjoyed this one and that I am now planning on reading every single thriller/mystery book Frieda has published.

Continue reading for more details.

Synopsis:

Some doors are locked for a reason…

While eleven-year-old Nora Davis was up in her bedroom doing homework, she had no idea her father was killing women in the basement.

Until the day the police arrived at their front door.

Decades later, Nora’s father is spending his life behind bars, and Nora is a successful surgeon with a quiet, solitary existence. Nobody knows her father was a notorious serial killer. And she intends to keep it that way.

Then Nora discovers one of her young female patients has been murdered. In the same unique and horrific manner that her father used to kill his victims.

Somebody knows who Nora is. Somebody wants her to take the fall for this unthinkable crime. But she’s not a killer like her father. The police can’t pin anything on her.

As long as they don’t look in her basement.

Review:

I think most people didn't like Nora because of her very cold demeanor. She was not social, preferred to be alone, quite rude, easily agitated, and straight-forward. Not the best qualities, as you can probably tell. Though, truly understanding Nora's character meant seeing that she was simply scared of being her serial killer father's child and was trying her best not to give in to that part of her she knew she had in her. We can really understand that with what she says in the epilogue, and honestly that makes sense, keeping in mind her father was a notorious serial killer.

I think it's Frieda's writing style that really resonated with me. With thrillers, I think what makes it a good book for me is if I can't help but flip pages because I'm dying to know what happens. If the premise/whole situation is boring, I will not feel the urge to keep on reading. Though, the way Frieda gave us little bits of pieces at a time, it made me curious as things slowly escalated and felt like she set things up in a way to make my brain start coming up with more and more possibilities which I love doing (and which also gets me more paranoid than I should be) and why I end up not enjoying basic mysteries because I end up guessing what happens. She also was able to keep things intriguing while not describing things in a way that made me disgusted and was overly-gorey because I can not handle too much gore.

I need the most ridiculous plot twists and endings to make me satisfied because of my brain spewing out so many predictions of what could happen, that many times it gets it right. At first, I thought I had guessed Frieda's "plot twist" in which I felt proud but still kind of underwhelmed. But then Frieda really did bring out the most out-of-nowhere, never could've saw it coming because there were zero indications plot twist ever. Part of the reason I didn't rate these a full five stars is because there was no possible way of seeing that plot twist happen which was a little bit disappointing. I wish there were some clues pointing towards it, but there were none. Though, still, my jaw did indeed drop because--wow--that was crazy but at the same time still made sense. And aren’t the best plot twists always completely unpredictable, it just comes down to how it’s executed and if it fits with the rest of the story. This one was executed nicely, and for the most part, fit into the story.

Another reason this was not a five-star read is because the past, I understand it had a purpose to serve, but the ending of the past storyline was kind of underwhelming for me because it kept me on the edge of my seat and I would look forward to it, but nothing super big happened. It did help us really understand that Nora is not a bad person, no matter what might be lurking inside of her, and that she has both the good and bad inside of her, it just comes down to her choice for how to use those parts of her.

This may not be the best mystery/thriller ever, but it really resonated with me and I enjoyed this way more than I expected. Crossing my fingers and holding out hope that I’ll enjoy the rest of her books just as much as this one!

Overall,

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