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jyan's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Confinement, Drug abuse, Violence, Child abuse, Child death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Grief, Mental illness, and Suicide
Moderate: Cancer, Classism, Self harm, and Sexism
Minor: Homophobia and Transphobia
alaynachristina's review against another edition
4.0
I gave this book four stars because if the authors amazing ability to make her readers identify with her characters. I got a little lost mid end. Overall not best work, but still a good book.
faehearted's review against another edition
4.0
A really fantastic gem of a horror novel. One of my new favorite horror authors.
alexctelander's review against another edition
3.0
In Bram Stoker winner, Sarah Langan’s third novel, Audrey’s Door, the reader is left with questions and feeling confused, which is never a good sign for a book. Audrey Lucas has a lot of problems: with a terrible upbringing from a drug-addicted and abusive mother, she managed to get herself an architectural degree and is pretty good at it, yet her mental status is certainly to be questioned; then there’s her boyfriend who she’s becoming close to but has commitment issues with, then he proposes and she just needs to get away from everything. Audrey moves into a new apartment that she finds at a record rent for New York in an old building known as the Breviary. Of course, there are a few caveats with moving in: she has to vetted by the landlord and tenants first to be a specific kind of person, and she apparently qualifies. Audrey loves the place, as it’s one of the last examples of Chaotic Naturalism still standing. After getting somewhat settled, Audrey then discovers that it was in her very apartment that a short while ago a mother killed herself and all her four children.
Audrey never gets a decent night’s sleep at the Breviary, plagued by strange dreams and nightmares. She wakes to find she has wet her bed (something she had problems with as a child) and that she has been busy in the night building a doorway out of boxes and packing tape, which will open to she knows not where. Then there are the strange tenants, who spy on her every move, and seem like they’ve lived there for centuries. As Audrey begins researching the history of the building, she finds it to be a unique and unusual commune for unique and unusual people. Then she discovers the number of deaths and suicides in the building and realizes she’s made a very big mistake. But with her job on the line and her sanity all but gone, she doesn’t know what to do.
Audrey’s Door won Sarah Langan the Bram Stoker Award once again in 2009, and while the novel definitely has its high points with its interesting characters, the down-spiraling of Audrey’s sanity, and the unusual plot; at the end the reader is left unsatisfied and wondering on the whole story, while this reader is wondering why the book won an award at all.
For more book reviews and exclusive author interviews, go to BookBanter.
Audrey never gets a decent night’s sleep at the Breviary, plagued by strange dreams and nightmares. She wakes to find she has wet her bed (something she had problems with as a child) and that she has been busy in the night building a doorway out of boxes and packing tape, which will open to she knows not where. Then there are the strange tenants, who spy on her every move, and seem like they’ve lived there for centuries. As Audrey begins researching the history of the building, she finds it to be a unique and unusual commune for unique and unusual people. Then she discovers the number of deaths and suicides in the building and realizes she’s made a very big mistake. But with her job on the line and her sanity all but gone, she doesn’t know what to do.
Audrey’s Door won Sarah Langan the Bram Stoker Award once again in 2009, and while the novel definitely has its high points with its interesting characters, the down-spiraling of Audrey’s sanity, and the unusual plot; at the end the reader is left unsatisfied and wondering on the whole story, while this reader is wondering why the book won an award at all.
For more book reviews and exclusive author interviews, go to BookBanter.
beckylej's review against another edition
5.0
Audrey Lucas has never had things easy. Much of her life was lived on the road taking care of her bipolar mother. When the woman was finally committed, Audrey made her escape to New York City. Now with an architecture degree behind her, Audrey is ready to embark on the next phase of her life. She’s landed a position with a great architecture firm and found the apartment of her dreams: The Breviary is strangely within budget, but that could be due to the tragedy that took place in Audrey’s new apartment when the previous tenant killed her own children before committing suicide. The building itself, an architectural marvel, is enough to inspire Audrey. The fact that the apartment is beyond what she could expect in this area of the city is almost secondary. But The Breviary is hiding a secret, one that is decades old, and Audrey has been chosen as the one who can finally unleash the evil that lives within. Langan’s previous novels, The Keeper and Missing, have earned the author much-deserved praise and respect in the horror community. Once again, she delivers. Langan builds a scenario packed with a creepy atmosphere, suspenseful plot, and tangible characters with deep-seated issues.
woowottreads's review against another edition
4.0
A little different from the previous two books, this focuses mainly on the titular character, an OCD Nebraska girl with a rough past and insane mother. It's about her life, her problems, and her creepy new apartment building filled with creepy old crazy folks. The building is also evil and part of the Chaotic Naturalist movement, which I'm not dying to read more about. There was a slow patch in the middle, but, all in all, I quite liked it. Like always, a central theme is mother/daughter relationships, and Audrey herself has trouble relating to people, even the man she loves. But it's delightful, sad, personal, and nicely creepy.
tumblingdown_1's review against another edition
4.0
This was a slow read for me. Interesting characters, and definitely disturbing.
nancyotoole's review against another edition
1.0
After breaking up with her boyfriend, Audrey finds herself on the lookout for a new place to live, but it needs to be cheap. Then she finds The Breviary, a beautiful apartment that not only works for her wallet, but seduces the architect in her. To Audrey, her new apartment is almost too good to be true. Unfortunately, that's because it is. There is evil in this apartment that speaks to her in her dreams, begging her to build a door.
Audrey's Door is the October selection for calico_reaction's bookclub. Although I don't read too much horror, the title seemed more than appropriate the Halloween season, making me quite interested in reading it. Unfortunately, it didn't take too long before I realized that something was very wrong. I had a really, really hard time connecting with the main character. I didn't even really feel all that sorry for her. Given the fact that her life had been so traumatic, this was shocking to me. In fact, Audrey kind of drove me a little nuts, and the secondary cast wasn't that much better. This made it really hard for me to look forward to reading this book.
Unfortunately, my issues with Audrey's Door go beyond characterization and into plot as well. Everything seems to set up nicely at the beginning. This is clearly a classic haunted house story, with the twists being the fact that its an apartment and the horrors that exist inside Audrey's mind are what's the most terrifying. But it wasn't too long before the book began to feel awfully repetitive. We're delivered scene after scene of Audrey's nightmares, and moments where Audrey acts crazy. These were fine at the beginning but they began to grow old rather fast. The horror elements of the novel also didn't always work for me. Maybe it's because I prefer more subtle kind of horror but Andrey's Door (especially near the end) felt way too over the top to me, even to the point where the book was border lining on comical instead of creepy. I also found the writing to be a little week to be honest, as the author seemed to occasionally fall into the old trap of telling instead of showing.
Final Thoughts: I always feel a little guilty about giving negative reviews (not just in this case where the author lives here in Maine, meaning I might actually run into her one of these days. There aren't that many people up here), but despite an interesting set up in the beginning, this book really didn't work well for me. Perhaps it's because I don't read a ton of horror but I found the horror elements to be a over the top and therefore ineffective, the plot to be repetitive, and the characters to be unsympathetic. I have no plans on picking up any other books by Sarah Langan.
Audrey's Door is the October selection for calico_reaction's bookclub. Although I don't read too much horror, the title seemed more than appropriate the Halloween season, making me quite interested in reading it. Unfortunately, it didn't take too long before I realized that something was very wrong. I had a really, really hard time connecting with the main character. I didn't even really feel all that sorry for her. Given the fact that her life had been so traumatic, this was shocking to me. In fact, Audrey kind of drove me a little nuts, and the secondary cast wasn't that much better. This made it really hard for me to look forward to reading this book.
Unfortunately, my issues with Audrey's Door go beyond characterization and into plot as well. Everything seems to set up nicely at the beginning. This is clearly a classic haunted house story, with the twists being the fact that its an apartment and the horrors that exist inside Audrey's mind are what's the most terrifying. But it wasn't too long before the book began to feel awfully repetitive. We're delivered scene after scene of Audrey's nightmares, and moments where Audrey acts crazy. These were fine at the beginning but they began to grow old rather fast. The horror elements of the novel also didn't always work for me. Maybe it's because I prefer more subtle kind of horror but Andrey's Door (especially near the end) felt way too over the top to me, even to the point where the book was border lining on comical instead of creepy. I also found the writing to be a little week to be honest, as the author seemed to occasionally fall into the old trap of telling instead of showing.
Final Thoughts: I always feel a little guilty about giving negative reviews (not just in this case where the author lives here in Maine, meaning I might actually run into her one of these days. There aren't that many people up here), but despite an interesting set up in the beginning, this book really didn't work well for me. Perhaps it's because I don't read a ton of horror but I found the horror elements to be a over the top and therefore ineffective, the plot to be repetitive, and the characters to be unsympathetic. I have no plans on picking up any other books by Sarah Langan.
bagel_cm's review against another edition
2.0
Lots of Rosemary's Baby and The Shining influence
Pros
• Blurred border between waking and dream states
• Interesting use of family history of mental illness/neglect and heroine with mental illness
•The push and pull between Saraub and Audrey was a nice weaved into the story of her "descent into madness" (duh duh duh)
• some genuinely creepy imagery - skeleton man with arms as long as his legs skittering across the floor, build the door out of what you love, etc.
Cons
• A little too confusing at times, the use of the 'red ants' seemed kind of muddled or unclear, overused; Audrey's friend Jayne seemed weird as a reader but ended up being another innocent targeted by the building(?)
• The other tenants being used by The Breviary as part of its family didn't come together fully and felt rushed towards the end - this is where a lot of the Rosemary's Baby stuff came out - I thought interesting and frightening but not done quite right here
Suprisingly, this felt like maybe the author started out writing " Literature with a capital L" then somehow got lost and ended up finishing it as a genre horror story (as much as I hate hewing to those categories) - I thought the use of mental illness was really interesting because it was fleshed out more than one usually sees in things. I don't know the ins-and-outs of OCD but it was brought up throughout the story in a novel (to me) way.
Not super scary, a couple of scenes that were a little unsettling if you're reading somewhere by yourself at night.
Pros
• Blurred border between waking and dream states
• Interesting use of family history of mental illness/neglect and heroine with mental illness
•The push and pull between Saraub and Audrey was a nice weaved into the story of her "descent into madness" (duh duh duh)
• some genuinely creepy imagery - skeleton man with arms as long as his legs skittering across the floor, build the door out of what you love, etc.
Cons
• A little too confusing at times, the use of the 'red ants' seemed kind of muddled or unclear, overused; Audrey's friend Jayne seemed weird as a reader but ended up being another innocent targeted by the building(?)
• The other tenants being used by The Breviary as part of its family didn't come together fully and felt rushed towards the end - this is where a lot of the Rosemary's Baby stuff came out - I thought interesting and frightening but not done quite right here
Suprisingly, this felt like maybe the author started out writing " Literature with a capital L" then somehow got lost and ended up finishing it as a genre horror story (as much as I hate hewing to those categories) - I thought the use of mental illness was really interesting because it was fleshed out more than one usually sees in things. I don't know the ins-and-outs of OCD but it was brought up throughout the story in a novel (to me) way.
Not super scary, a couple of scenes that were a little unsettling if you're reading somewhere by yourself at night.