_askthebookbug's Reviews (1.34k)

Sometime this year I read my very first book by Freida McFadden called The Housemaid. Although I didn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted to, I still wanted to give her other books a try. And so I proceeded to read The Locked Door and boy, was it a ride! I was hooked from the prologue and found it almost impossible to do anything else but to keep reading. With short, gripping chapters and intriguing characters, The Locked Door had everything that was needed for a great psychological thriller.

Nora Davis is a good surgeon who prefers to lead her life quietly. She is very cautious of the people around her and doesn’t believe in forging any kind of relationships. That’s because many decades ago, Nora’s father was convicted of multiple murders, all of them carried out in her family home’s basement. With her father in prison and a mother who is long dead, Nora likes to be unrecognised and forgotten. But when a similar type of murders are committed again, following the MO of her father, Nora is shaken up. How and who is responsible for copying her father’s actions when he is still in prison?

As Nora tries to figure out this mysterious case, she keeps revisiting her growing up years in her mind. The timeline shifts from past to present as she tries to make sense of things. Some characters are introduced to the story while Freida builds our protagonist’s character cleverly. There’s a lot of suspense to the story and although the end may get a tad bit dramatic, I was in no way disappointed. You may even guess the killer but even this doesn’t dampen the plot.

This was such a refreshing change from The Housemaid. So much so that I immediately read her next book. I’ll post a review of it soon, I promise.

I went on a thriller reading binge last week and finished two books in two days. And both of them were by Freida McFadden. The Inmate is a fast paced psychological thriller that can easily be finished in a few sittings. The Locked Door worked well for me but her other book, The Housemaid was a miss and so I wasn’t sure how well I’d enjoy The Inmate. Now, The Inmate isn’t a flawless psychological thriller because I guessed the killer before the protagonist could do it but it has all the makings for a gripping mystery.

Brooke Sullivan returns to her childhood town with her son after her parent’s death and finds a job in a prison as their new nurse practitioner. Coming back to her hometown stirs up mixed emotions within her because of an unfortunate incident that happened back in high school. But bumping into her ex boyfriend, Shane and present inmate in the prison throws her off. The fact that she was the one who put him in prison all those years ago, is a dangerous truth that lurks between them.

The timeline keeps jumping between the past and present where we see all the things that eventually led up to Brooke’s ex being sent to prison. While she deals with this adjustment, she also finds a romantic interest in her long best friend. But there’s something off about her past, a missing link that she just can’t make sense of. Does Brooke really has the facts about her past life correctly or was Shane actually innocent all these years? While we watch her struggle to put things together, we see pieces things starting to make sense.

The story is breezy and is almost unputdownable. It certainly has a dramatic end, which at times felt over the top. But it did keep me engaged throughout the day. If you’re looking for something to get you out of a slump or to keep you cosy on a rainy day, this one’s for you.

Thank you for the copy @penguinindia ✨