Lock and Key - Sarah Dessen

Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen
Date Released: April 22nd 2008
Publisher: Speak
Pages: 422 Pages
Format: Paperback
Source: Borders

Summary

Sixteen-year-old Macy Queen is looking forward to a long, boring summer. Her boyfriend is going away. She's stuck with a dull-as-dishwater job at the library. And she'll spend all of her free time studying for the SATs or grieving silently with her mother over her father's recent unexpected death. But everything changes when Macy is corralled into helping out at one of her mother's open house events, and she meets the chaotic Wish Catering crew. Before long, Macy joins the Wish team. She loves everything about the work and the people. But the best thing about Wish is Wes—artistic, insightful, and understanding Wes—who gets Macy to look at life in a whole new way, and really start living it.

My Review:

Am I allowed to say that I thought this was the most boring Sarah Dessen Book ever? WAIT! Before you jump at my throat and start cursing my way – it has happened O.O – am I also allowed to say that this book is also one of my favorites? Now allow me to explain – just bear with me for a sec.

After reading six of all the Sarah Dessen novels I think I can divide her main characters in two: shy and introvert and others rougher around the edges. Ruby – main character of Lock and Key – is a bit par of the “rougher around the edges” and she’s definitely my favorite character of this category. I think she’s one of the most complex and beautiful characters of all Sarah Dessen Novels.

What I loved most about this book was the theme: Family. The whole book centered more around Ruby’s family, in her other books, SD centers more around the boy or the friends. In Lock and Key it was Family. But of course we have Nate – because there’s always a boy – who was a great support for Ruby and the story in general, but not the most important. Surprisingly my favorite characters in the story where Ruby’s brother in law and her sister Cora, they were just great supporting characters.

I really think that the beauty of this novel is how it touches such delicate subjects, like being abandoned, to know what a family is and to learn how to love it, and to understand that even when it looks like a dead end, there are still doors to unlock.

Why did I thought about Lock and Key as boring? I just think that a few chapters where way to long and that maybe a few paragraphs and chapters could’ve been cut. I just found it a little tedious to read at some times but, other than that, it was pure perfection.

What I got out of Lock and Key was this:

Home, is where your story begins. Home, is where your family is. And family, is the one you choose.

In Memorable Quotes I attached my favorite quote of ALL the Sarah Dessen novels, which belong to Lock and Key; and just that paragraph makes every single boring sentence in the book worth it xD.

Once more:

Only Sarah Dessen could have done it.

"It's a lot easier to be lost than found. It's the reason we're always searching and rarely discovered--so many locks not enough keys."

"What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn't just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger. Cora was right- we had many families over time. Our family of origion, the family we created, as well as the gorups you moved thorugh while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers.

 None of them were perfect, and we couldn't expect them to be. You couldn't make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build a world from it. So my true family was not just my mom, lost or found; my dad, gone from the start; and Cora, the only one who had really been there all along. It was Jamie, who took me in without question and gave me a future I once couldn't even imagine; Oliva, who did question, but also gave me answers; Harriet, who, like me, believed she needed no one and discovered otherwise. And then there was Nate.

Nate, who was a friend to me before I even knew what a friend was. Who picked me up, literally, over and over again, and never asked for anything in return except for my word and my understanding. I'd given him one but not the other, because at the time I thought I couldn't, and then proved myself right by doing exactly as my mother had, hurting to prevent from being hurt myself. Needing was so easy: it came naturally, like breathing. Being needed by someone else, though, that was the hard part. But as with giving help and accepting it, we had to do both to be made complete- like links overlapping to form a chain, or a lock finding the right key.

~Ruby (pgs 400-401)"