In Lock the Doors, Tom's blended family have just moved into a new house. At first everything seems idyllic, but then he starts to find things that raise questions about who may have lived there in the past, and when the opportunity to find out exactly what presents itself, he can't help but investigate ...

This book is a tense and slightly creepy mystery. Everything was wrapped neatly by the end, with the twist about two thirds through and a satisfactory resolution. I didn't particularly care about the characters, but the plot was good and it was a good, quick read!

I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Tom has just moved into a new house with his mum, step dad and step sister. Life is good. He and his mum and no longer running from her abusive boyfriends and although his worries and OCD are still there, this will be a nice fresh start. Until he notices the tiny holes on his bedroom door. Tony holes that match exactly with a lock having been put on the outside.

At school he’s asked to show the new girl, Amy, around. Amy happens to be the previous occupant of his new house. He needs to know if those locks were on her doors and if she’s hiding her own abusive family. As he gathers more and more evidence, things seem even stranger than he first believed and he’s determined to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Lock the Doors had me on the edge of my seat for almost the entire book. Well paced, twisty and downright spooky at times, I was not at all prepared for the outcome! I thought the psychological aspects of both Tom and his mother’s trauma, and Amy’s family situation, were well done. The affect of the maliciously manipulative people within the book, and in general, was well explored too. This was definitely YA domestic thriller at its finest.

It’s often said with thrillers that they’re heart-stopping, adrenaline fuelled reads that you can’t tear yourself away from, but with Lock the Doors it rings true. Similarly to Are You Watching?; I was utterly addicted, staying up into the early hours to race towards the conclusion.

Right from the start, Ralph had me in the palm of his hand. I was instantly intrigued and sucked into the story, knowing I wasn’t leaving until I’d discovered exactly what had happened. Every time I thought I knew where this story was going, I had everything flipped upside down once again. For me, that’s the hallmark of a stand-out YA mystery – which Lock the Doors definitely is. It makes you want to discover every last secret and figure out how all the details fit together. The twists were well-executed and genuinely took me by surprise, upending expectations and taking narrative turns that were unexpected but paid off brilliantly.

I really liked Ralph’s exploration of the long-term effects of grief and trauma, something which has carried over from Are You Watching? It’s handled sensitively, but with real pathos in how past experience informs your current reality. I liked how Ralph made it all more grey rather than Though it may be a cliched statement, you really do never know everything that happens behind closed doors and I appreciated the nuanced take Ralph had on this. There’s different forms and guises of monsters that often hide in plain sight.

Tom was an interesting protagonist, with an arresting voice that was also so deeply troubled and fractured by the events of his past. He is just trying to fit in, both at school and within his family. The residual effects of his trauma means that he questions himself and the safety of his family constantly, creating an intriguing dynamic where you question the limits of his reliability. Without spoiling anything, I also want to quickly say that I really liked how nothing was easily resolved or tied up in a nice neat bow. Real life and humans are messy and impossible to easily categorise, which I felt like Ralph really captured.

Nothing is as it seems in this fantastic thriller that weaves hard-hitting topics into a morally complex mystery packed full of emotion.

I as a big fan of Vincent Ralph's debut and I am happy to report that this lives up to 'Are You Watching?' in terms of pacing, intrigue and a twisty, compelling plot. 'Lock the Doors' is extremely creepy and my heart was in my mouth at times! Aspects did stretch my credulity towards the end but by this time I was really invested in the characters and was desperate to find out how it would all come together. A really entertaining and enjoyable thriller - perfect for fans of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder...

I could not put this down!

When Tom moves into a new house with his mum, step dad and step sister Nia, the first thing he notices are holes in the doors, suggesting that the previous owners had locks on the outside of the bedroom doors. Other strange and sinister clues suggest that something untoward went on in this house. The previous occupants haven’t moved very far; in fact Tom can see their house from his bedroom window. When the daughter, Amy, starts at Tom’s school, they begin a tentative friendship. Tom is adamant that Amy needs rescuing, but from what, he doesn’t know.

I liked the way the author used Tom and his mum’s previous experiences to help us understand Amy’s behaviour and the powerful effect that manipulative people can have when they play mind games.

A gripping plot, short chapters, fast pace and many twists and turns result in a thriller that is totally gripping. If life hadn’t got in the way I could easily have read this in one sitting. Definitely one to be recommended.

Warning: the story contains details about domestic abuse and OCD.

I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This had me hooked with short chapters that I rushed through in a couple of hours but it felt a bit flat; the big tense moments weren't tense, they felt rushed, and there was a lot of telling not showing going on - Tom talks about how amazing Amy is and how they're together and he thinks he loves her, and we've seen like five scenes with her? And none of them show any of the things Tom's talking about? Not as good as Ralph's debut unfortunately.

Thank you to Netgalley and Publisher for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thomas has faced so much domestic abuse after his father left him and his mother. All the boyfriend of her mother turned out a monster until she met Jay. Her mother has found her dream house where they've moved with Jay and Nia, there new blended family. Everything seems to get better until Tom found holes in bedrooms door.

Amy is a new student at Tom's school and turned out she is the former resident of Tom's new house. Amy and her family have moved to the corner house of the same street. Amy is strange and Tom can't stop thinking that she is hiding something. Is it Tom's paranoia from his past life or there is something really strange going on?

I am sucked for YA Mystery and I am glad, I found this one. I really enjoyed the story from a teenage boy's perspective. The way writer handles Tom's OCD is so realistic, I also have OCD for like 12 years so It was really great to read the realistic representation. The author didn't forget about Tom's OCD when everything was getting too much, I loved the way he highlighted the OCD cycle and the way his family has accepted it and support Tom. 

I really love the family dynamics of a blended family, step-siblings relation. The way everyone tries to bond to each other without forcing anything. The friendship between Zach and Tom was also refreshing and portrayed beautifully.

The pace was perfect and the story kept me hooked throughout the book. I didn't see that twist coming so it was perfect. Though I felt that the history of Amy's family could be better like there could be one or two chapters from other perspective but still I liked the format of the book and The ending was also realistic. 

I'll recommend this book to everyone🖤

Tom's blended family moves into new home. As a sensitive and overly suspicious teenager he soon notices strange holes on a doors and writing on the wall. The doors were obviously locked from the outside.
Who lived here before them and who was locked in?

Very good written, with delicate approach to teen's anxiety, OCD, sensitivity and how everybody take that as normal, as it is.

The narrative is almost creepy and full of twists, turns and action.

Great YA read!

Vincent Ralph confidently delves into some challenging teen issues, mixes humour with emotional intensity, enough laughs to balance the scary moments and in doing so creates an original thrill of a book.

There's a nod to his previous book, 'Are You Watching', and just as with his first book, 'Lock the Doors' sets a pace and tone that had my brain scrambling to keep up with what was happening. Just as I thought I had the mystery sussed, the narrator changes from Tom to Amy and I had to look at everything with fresh eyes. It's a genius move on the author's part and it made working out what exactly had happened in Tom's house that much more satisfying.

There are some really tough issues that are presented in the book; domestic abuse, mental health issues, OCD, amongst others, all handled sensitively and, more importantly, realistically. Tom's OCD is accepted as part of him by his family because it has helped him to cope with his past. Normalising it in this way was really refreshing, and I appreciated that it didn't become a big issue.

It's a fantastic read, thoroughly deserving of the 5 stars I have rated it, and I would like to thank the publishers and Net Galley for the advance copy in return for an honest review.

My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House UK for a review copy of this exciting YA suspense mystery/thriller.

Lock the Doors is told in first person, opening with Tom/Thomas Cavanagh who is just moving in to a new house with his mother, stepdad Jay and stepsister Nia. The house is his mother’s dream home, and here he hopes they will finally find some happiness for they have had their share of trials in the past. After Tom’s parents separated, his mother made some poor choices in men and as a result they have faced domestic abuse, the scars of which remain. But Jay is a really good man and with him they are making a fresh start. But in his new room Tom notices something strange—there are holes in the door indicating that there had been a lock to lock someone in but who? Meanwhile at school he meets Amy Pearce, whose family lived in Tom’s house before him. Amy seems lost in thought and sad at times while she is friendly at others showing an interest in him. Tom tries to find out if the mystery of the holes was anything to do with Amy but she tries to assure him that all is well with her, even inviting him home to dinner. But Tom begins to find more strange things like writing on the walls in his room which increases his suspicion, while Amy’s family moves across the road from Tom’s family. Tom tries to speak to his family and friends about his suspicions and while they don’t exactly disbelieve him, they are also worried that he might be getting unnecessarily suspicious because of his experiences in the past. Is this really the case? Is it just Tom’s imagination or is there really something suspicious about Amy and her family?

This was certainly a very gripping read in which the author manages to keep up the suspense really well and keeps us readers glued to the edge of our seats. Honestly, at the start the story was feeling to me a little like the Goosebumps film where the new neighbour meets RL Stine’s ‘daughter’ and is suspicious of what she is going through, but in the book as our story moves on Tom uncovers more and more clues or rather suspicious circumstances and we soon become convinced that there is indeed something the matter, but have no idea what this could possibly be. And then we start getting some clues….

Alongside the suspense the author has also created some pretty creepy situations and frightening characters who aren’t your typical ‘villains’ but at the same time turn out to be far more frightening and dangerous. There are also the contrasts that keep standing out between Tom’s unhappy past, his present when things seem to be normalising even though this has its obstacles as well, and then again the mystery that the house is throwing up, unsettling things for him again.

Fast paced and exciting, I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

This was on another level to some of the teen/YA crime thrillers I've read. Some tough themes sensitively dealt with, alongside delightful twists and shock reveals.

Lock The Doors is one of the most fascinating novels I’ve ever read. I wasn’t sure at first I was going to love it, but it actually grew on me the more I read and by the end, I was flipping the chapters as fast as humanly possible to get to the end and see how it all turned out. The novel has super short, sharp chapters so it was so easy once I started reading it each day to get ten or so chapters in each day, because the short chapters made it feel like I was reading so much at one time because of the shorter chapter format.

What I liked about Lock The Doors was the entire concept, because Tom seems to be anxious about everything, so when he and his family move into a new house and Tom sees holes in the door that seem to be from locks, he’s determined to find out what has happened - his whole family are doubtful it was anything terrible, but Tom is convinced. It did take me a while to fully believe Tom, I was a bit skeptical as his family were, but he was so convincing in his beliefs and it got to the point where I felt like I was investigating it with him and once he met Amy and he realised she used to live in his new house, it all seemed to come together.

I absolutely did not expect this novel to go where it did. I can’t say much, but it genuinely surprised me the depths that this novel went to, and it got to say two-thirds of the way through the book and it just suddenly changed to something entirely different and the novel just went up another notch entirely. I said to my boyfriend that the novel had taken an entirely new direction, with a new narrative and I couldn’t get enough. I don’t want to say a lot but this was a super clever read.

I really loved Tom as a character. He seemed a bit emotionally immature due to his upbringing and I could understand that, because I’m thirty and I’m emotionally immature, and I kind of understood his anxieties and OCD because of what him and his Mam had been through and it just pained me because him and his Mam seemed so lovely and it just seemed like his Mam had just made bad choices because she wanted to be happy and wasn’t quite happy within herself so it took her a while to find what she was actually looking for.

I absolutely loved Lock The Doors, it was such a fascinating read, I loved that the more I read the more I loved it and the more invested I became and probably the only thing I would have liked would have been Will’s narrative, Amy’s brother. He fascinated me and I’d love to have known his thoughts/feelings etc. I enjoyed this novel so much that I immediately went and bought Ralph’s first novel, and I can’t wait to read it especially if it has the short, snappy chapters and super-relatable narrative. Vincent Ralph is a brilliant writer and this was an absolutely wonderful novel, I loved it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Children’s UK for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Tom's family have moved into their dream home. But pretty soon he starts to notice that something is very wrong - there are strange messages written on the wall and locks on the bedroom doors. On the OUTSIDE. The previous owners have moved just across the road and they seem like the perfect family. Their daughter Amy is beautiful and enigmatic but Tom is sure she's got something to hide. And he isn't going to stop until he finds the truth behind those locked doors. . . Will their dream home become a nightmare?

Tom is a character who seems very cautious to open himself up after his mum’s abusive relationships. He’s developed OCD and is obsessed with ensuring they’re safe. He develops more as a character as he delves deeper into investigating the mysteries that surround Amy and her family. I think Tom is a good character - we can see his motives and how he thinks - but I feel there was a bit more that we could have seen from him. I can’t put my finger on what, but I felt like there was a little something lacking from him.
Amy is full of mystery and I was drawn in instantly by her character. I enjoyed the evasiveness we experience as it helped to add to the tension that steadily built during the story. I wish we could have seen more of her despair and depressive moods - it was there initially but then we saw more of the happy, flirty Amy which kind of took away from the horrors and events that have taken place.

It was interesting splitting the story into two, each half being split also. The first half, I was engaged with Tom’s investigating, wanting to know what happened. It was quite jarring moving into Amy’s POV though. I felt like Tom’s side of things wasn’t complete and his POV chapter ended very suddenly before going into Amy’s. We were also suddenly thrown back into Tom’s POV into Part Four. I’d been engrossed in Amy’s unfolding story and became rather confused about it switching back.

Overall, Lock the Doors is an interesting thriller that keeps you guessing.

⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Thank you again to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Children’s UK for an advanced copy of this book. Review will be live on my blog on release day

Lock the Doors is a fantastic read. Full of tension and unexpected twists that you don't see coming. This is a book you will not be able to put down.

I had a great feeling about this book before I started as it was sold as a 'must-read' for fans of Karen McManus (One of Us is Lying) and Holly Jackson (A Good Girl's Guide To Murder) of whom I am a huge fan; I was not at all disappointed. I think this is a worthy comparison and Lock The Doors turned out to be a brilliant thriller and an unputdownable read!

The story revolves around Tom, a teen boy who has had a difficult life growing up with his mother's many failed relationships and fleeing domestic abuse. Now Tom lives in a quiet suburb with his new family in a new home, except there is something strange about his new home. There are holes on the door, drawings on the wall - what happened here? Then Tom meets Amy who has moved in across the street, but then finds out that Amy used to live in his new house. Immediately the story begins to get tense. Cue an onslaught of twists and turns before a really breathtaking reveal towards the end. I certainly didn't see this book panning out the way that it did!

I REALLY loved the pace of this book. I love a book with fairly short chapters and Lock the Doors delivered this to me. Four parts; two points of view; short, snappy chapters which really ramp up the tension in this fast-paced thriller. I couldn't put the book down and every time I thought I had nailed what would happen next, something would totally derail that thought process. Tom was a character I really liked and I loved seeing his new family dynamic and how those relationships evolved over the course of the book. Amy was a character who immediately intrigued me and did not disappoint! I'm hesitant to talk about any other characters or to add more detail as this is a book where you are better off just jumping in!

For me this delivered exactly what I want in a thriller/mystery: plenty of suspense, likeable characters, fast and twisty plot, shocks right up until the end and then a satisfying ending. All in all a really brilliant book and I would highly recommend fans of YA thrillers get themselves a copy of this when it releases next month. Bravo, Vincent Ralph!

As I couldn't read the blurb or get a good sense of which genre this book was I spent the first third of it wondering whether it was going to be a supernatural thriller or not. It isn't but actually I think that the fact that I thought that it might be shows how clever and actually surprising the plot is. In a sense that sometimes 'real life' horror, the horror of people pushed to the limits, can seem like something unworldly I guess. I felt slightly uncomfortable with the domestic violence described at the start of the book possibly being used as a bit of a plot device but actually I think it worked in that the main character won't let his investigations drop because he doesn't want his new friend to be suffering the way that his mother was and it was dealt with sensitively. It also works in that it explores different kind of abuse within families- physical violence and emotional/psychological violence in a subtle way. Ultimately I found this thriller difficult to put down as it was so unpredictable.

LOVED THIS. What a sad and gripping tale, I believed every word and was really taken by the story from page one. It didn't go where I thought it would - I thought I was going to get a ghost story, but instead, it was a dark tale of a broken family, where one accident caused a lifetime of worse issues. Just heartbreaking and brilliant.

I won’t lie, when I started this book I kind of felt like it was a bit bleh, but the more I got into it, the better it got.

THE WRITING: Vincent knows how to write a good book and I felt gripped from about 30% into the book and I had no idea on the direction he was going to take us in.
THE PLOT: This didn’t feel like a book I had read before and this was something I really enjoyed. I felt like the pacing was great and the ending left me reeling.
THE MYSTERY: I felt like the concept was original and I liked how nothing was as it seems. The chapters from Amy’s perspective were really good and so creepy. I thought Tom was a great lead and he made realistic decisions based on the info he got.
OVERALL: This book is a decent YA mystery that gets you thinking!

I received this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.