Lock and Key

Dessen inverts a familiar fairy tale:

What if Cinderella got the prince,

the castle and all its accoutrements,

but wasn’t remotely interested?

Lock and Key was ok, but it didn't measure up to some of her other novels. It fell into about the middle of them. The ending was what made it a little less apealing, even though the story was good. It didn't ever really say if Ruby and Nate got back together in college, but I guess a story can't end exactly the way I want it to. It is a pretty good book to read with a lot of family problems for the characters to overcome, which makes it a good character realization book. It deals with some parental abuse in Nate's case but not that much. I would say this book was good enough to recommend but definitely doesn't beat Just Listen or the Truth About Forever.

Review/ Description

]After her mother abandons her, Ruby Cooper is flying below the radar of officialdom and trying to make it to her 18th birthday, when she’s busted by the landlord and turned over to social services. Ruby gets taken in by her estranged sister, Cora, who left for college a decade earlier and never looked back, and Cora’s husband, Jamie, the wealthy founder of a ubiquitous social networking site. Resentful, suspicious and vulnerable, she resists mightily, refusing the risky business of depending on anybody but herself, and wearing the key to her old house around her neck. All the Dessen trademarks are here—the swoon-worthy boy next door who is not what he appears to be; and the supporting characters who force Ruby to rethink her cynical worldview, among them the frazzled owner of a jewelry kiosk at the mall. The author again defines characters primarily through dialogue, and although Ruby and her love interest, Nate, sound wiser than their years, they talk the way teens might want to—from the heart.