by Sarah Dessen

Ruby has been abandoned by her mother. For months she’s lived alone in her yellow house. But now she’s been discovered and she’s transfered to her sister’s house, with her sister and her sister’s husband: Cora and Jamie. Now she has to go to a new school, with new people, with nobody whom she knows except maybe Nate, the friendly neighbor boy.

But Ruby doesn’t want to change. She wants to be by herself, like before. But unfortunately, that’s not happening.

I’m not completely sure about this book. I liked the writing, and I liked Ruby, but there was something about it that I really couldn’t get into. I’m guessing it was because Ruby’s situation and reasoning was just really different from mine. A lot of Ruby’s actions I just couldn’t really reason with.

There wasn’t anything wrong with the writing, and I could tell it was well thought out. I really liked Olivia (Ruby’s eventual friend) and Jamie (her brother-in-law). I liked other characters too. But I’ve never experienced anything like what Ruby or Nate did, so it was a little hard there understanding them completely.

Lock and Key, I think, is about a girl understanding that life isn’t always what is expected. It’s about the fact that anything can happen if you try, and that everyone does what they think is best-although sometimes it’s good for you, and sometimes, sadly, it’s not. It’s about helping others, and how you shouldn’t be afraid to let others help you. These are big themes, and I think Sarah Dessen did a good job trying to express it.