Reviews with content warning for Gun violence - Sluit alle deuren

Thought this book was dealing with ghosts or witches, it wasn't. The "twist" was okay, I guess. The most interesting sub-theme of this book was about how poor people are mistreated, abused and aren't ever considered people at all. I would have liked a deeper exploration of that.

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juliaaa02's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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ettbokland's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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toofondofbooks_'s review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Y'all, this one was a ride.

I put my physical TBR in a randomizer and let it choose for me, and it chose spooky apparently - and in terms of spookiness, this book delivers on all fronts. I loved the gothic apartment building setting. To me, it felt extremely vivid and claustrophobic. The gargoyles, the colors, the faces in the wallpaper, I felt like I could see it all. I loved that every single person in the book was suspicious as hell. There wasn't just one person I was side eye-ing - I was side eye-ing them all, even the MC's parents who were dead when the book began. I would compare this to American Horror Story: Hotel, but less unhinged because the writing is better. As a whole, the story was compelling and kept me guessing what direction it was going in.

There are parts, however, that had me scratching my head or made me uncomfortable - and not in the way that you hope to be uncomfortable when reading a thriller. There was some casual homophobia within the inner monologue of the main character that really took me aback, it didn't serve the story at all and it was the kind of casual homophobia that queer people like myself pick up on very easily. Additionally, there is some queer "rep" in the history of the Bartholomew, but it is all negative rep that does not serve the story. Speaking of the MC, Jules, she was incredibly annoying, and not to be mean, but she was dumb as rocks. I didn't care about her breakup, I barely cared about her life, I wanted to know more about the Bartholomew building and its history. This next critique is petty, but I'm wondering if Sager really needed to use the word "meager" as many times as he did while writing this book. It got to a point where I had to roll my eyes every time I saw it. Please open a thesaurus, for the love of God.

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ashleycmms's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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teresa_lynn's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

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agoldendear's review against another edition

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dark hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

As someone who is not very experienced with thrillers but loves mysteries, I enjoyed this book a lot. It focuses a lot on the mystery aspects of what happened to Ingrid and what's going on at the Bartholomew in general while having the main character find herself in some pretty tense situations, as you might expect. The writing style was easy to read and not flowery, but it was descriptive when it needed to be. Since I watched a review video of this book before reading it, I already knew what the biggest plot twist was before starting, but that made it fun to spot the foreshadowing and things that various characters said that might have had a double reading.

As often happens in mysteries, the plot starts off a bit slow due to the difficulty getting a foothold in the investigation. Once things got going, I had a hard time putting the book down since every chapter gave out a new piece of information to help solve the mystery. The timeline of the book was also fun--it mostly counts down the days until "now", with a few chapters taking place "now" slipped in after each day passes. It heightened the feeling of tension for me since it was only a matter of time until the two timelines converged and presumably brought with them the truth about everything.

It's difficult to accurately judge how "lovable" the characters are since you're supposed to go through the book not knowing who to trust. I did like the main character, Jules. I thought she was relatable, especially as someone who is newly out of college and going into the "working adult" world for the first time. I especially liked her bold moments and how she stuck to what she believed in throughout the book (even though it worked against her a bit in the beginning). However, I can't speak to how accurate her experience of poverty is since it's not something I've been through. The other characters as a whole were somewhat interesting. The main info we get to know about them is their secrets connected to the mystery, so we don't really get to know them on a deep, personal level.

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