Reviews with content warning for Forced institutionalization - Sluit alle deuren

Things are not going well for our main character, Jules. She lost her job AND her boyfriend on the same day, and she has no money and no family she could reach out to. When she’s offered a job as a housesitter in the famous Bartholomew-building, she accepts, even though the job seems too good to be true.

Despite the strict rules, she gets acquainted with the other housesitters and a few of the residents. She has started to feel uneasy about the building, and when one of the other housesitters disappears, she is determined to find some answers: is she in danger too?

Despite the fact that her sister has disappeared, Jules seems to get very quickly involved in the other housesitters' disappearance. It's hard for the reader to get emotionally invested in the character's disappearance or understand why Jules is so invested in it.

This book has gothic undertones, but I wish that the uneasiness would have been explored more slowly. There are a few moments the book captures the Gothic feeling, but it passes way too quickly. Maybe this book could have done with a little less investigative twists and turns and a little more atmospheric horror. And I wasn’t a huge fan of how we are shown glimpses of how things are now and working our way to find out how Jules ended up there.

For New Yorkers, everyone seems to be surprisingly friendly and helpful in this book.

Things seem to move both too fast and too slow in this book. It certainly is a page turner and I was interested enough to see how it ends, but… More on that in the spoilers.

Spoilers!

The characters feel a bit archetypical and shallow, and like I said, as I was not very invested in the characters, I wasn't as invested in the story as I would have liked. Especially towards the end we get some very clichéd villain monologue.

And of course she manages to throw herself into one of the villain’s (Nick) arms, who is shady from the beginning. The character’s description takes an interesting turn when she finds out he’s involved in the strangeness of Bartholomew: at first he’s depicted as attractive, and then almost nerdy and creepy. Initially the role of a sketchy male suspect is played by Dylan, whose description changes in a similar manner, but to the opposite direction. Even though I have to admit that I kind of liked Nick's ending.

I didn't guess the mystery behind Bartholomew, even though I probably should have. I guess I liked it more when it was Satanic sacrifice. Organ harvesting for the rich seems cheap and boring. In hindsight, the twists were predictable and the book doesn't do much that feels original.

Also I kept expecting to get something out of Jules' sister's disappearance, but apparently it was there only to provide a tragic backstory.

Content Warnings