Review: Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen

A few weeks ago, I was meeting with some friends in the mall. As usual, we walked into a bookstore (Technically, every bookstore we could find.) to see what's new. I wasn't going to buy any book until I saw this one, translated to Hebrew. My friends know who Sarah Dessen is, not because they read any book by her but because I couldn't stop talking about her since I've read The Truth About Forever, one of my favorites. 

Even before I read this one, I told everyone to get her book. I'm planning to get her popular here too lol. 

Lock and Key didn't disappointed me even for a second. After reading three books by Sarah Dessen, I've notice the familiar tone of her writing and her plot. It's like reading Harlan Coben, you just never get tired of that. 

I started reading the book when I knew I had only a couple of hours. I didn't plan to read more than 50 pages and found myself sinking into the story and reading 172. I probably would have read the whole book in one sitting, but my copy was damaged. Page 173 was missing, so do 176-177 and a couple of others. It was frustrating and the only reason I had to stop reading. 

One of the best things about Sara Dessen's books are the characters. As a writer I admire her ability to write characters like that, a variety of them whose each one is totally different. During the story, you learn about each of them including his history and presonality. They're never boring.  

The plot is another amazing thing about this story, one most of us would find it hard to believe when you're surrounded with your family members and having none of Ruby's problems to deal with. When you're in Ruby's shoes, her world makes sense and her choices don't seem unbelievable as they usually should. In addition, I loved the fact that you get to find everything, there's no missing information or some lack of details. Sometimes when I read, I feel like there are things that even the author doesn't know, here this is exactly the opposite: I feel like Sarah lived her story. 

The writing.. Well, as usual, Sarah's writing is beautiful. The story is written in a way that makes you get attached to everything that happen there. The scenes are powerful and light, as it needed. 

In fact, the book I've read is this: The Hebrew's translation. So I thought I'd talk a little about the translation. Luckily, I've read other book by Sarah Dessen before in English so I could feel when the translation was the cause that some of the sentences were clumsy and confusing. I knew it could have been translated better due to my past experience. Anyway, I don't regret reading it in Hebrew. It was great to know every word in this amazing book. I probably will read all Sarah Dessen's other books (that I haven't read yet) before the next translated book, but it'll be great to get all my friends to read them. I'll let you know when they'll fall in love with it. 

I'd like to hear what you thought about this one or if you're planning to read it! (: