Pick the Lock
by A.S. King
Dutton Books
an imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC
2025
400 pages
ISBN: 9780593353974
Bizarre and toxic, a tale of love and desperation, manipulation and power, domination a domestic abuse, Pick the Lock is compelling and fascinating, yet evil in the best ways. Like a terrible car accident on the side of the road, it's hard to ignore this book or look away. It grinds on the reader, demanding their full attention. Try to skip forward a few pages, I dare you.
See? You're lost already. King is like that.
Jane is a sixteen-year old girl kept locked behind the gates since the pandemic. Homeschooled by her father, they live in a Victorian mansion with a system of pneumatic tubes that her father uses to imprison her punk rock queen mother. When her mother is touring with her band, she sends postcards home from all the interesting cities she visits. Jane struggles to understand why her mother listens to her father and allows him to dominate not only her but everyone else in the mansion,
There's her awful Aunt Finch who is her father's new sidekick and sidepiece. Yes, it's her mother's sister who is cheating with her sister's husband. Then there's the mysterious gardener Milorad with his pet rat Brutus who manages to escape his cage all the time. Younger brother Henry seems to be a pathetic copy of his father, obeying everything Father says. Jane begins writing a rock opera scream into the endless void. She deals with love and hate, outrage and RAGE, questions that have no answers, and a system in place to control her and her mother.
The discovery of thousands of home movies is a treasure trove for Jane. As she watches her past, even from the time before she was born, she has more questions than answers. What happened to her beautiful, independent mother? How did she become the silent and docile prisoner in HER own home?
Readers will be turning pages at a rapid pace, enjoying this dark story and trying to figure out answers for themselves. I found myself thoroughly immersed UNTIL the story takes such an unexpected turn, I had to reread a few pages back to see if I perhaps had missed something. Nope.
I tried to go along where King was leading me, but I found the third act quite dissatisfying, Victims of domestic (even verbal) abuse react in different ways once they escape, but in this case, I found it unbelievable. Pick the Lock is hard to forget. It's a story I still have questions about.
I appreciate the different ways King manipulated the text using stage directions and lyrics, but some readers may find it jarring. It stops the story, if you will, and reading becomes more of a chore than a relaxation.
Recommended for fans of A.S. King and YA readers who like a strange story. If you're reading for fun and escapism, this is NOT the book for you.
Grades 8 and up.
