Review: Lock & Key by: Sarah Dessen

Title: Lock & Key
Author: Sarah Dessen
Publisher: Speak
Pages: 422
Format: Paperback
Source: Personal Purchase

Description:

Unlock your heart and the rest will follow.

Ruby is used to taking care of herself.

But now that she's living with her sister, she's got her own room, she's going to a good school, and her future looks bright.

Plus there's an adorable boy next door.

Can Ruby learn to open her heart and let him in?

My Thoughts:

This book follows Ruby Cooper who has been abandoned by her mother during her senior year of high school.  Having done the best she could living in a beat up house, waiting hoping her mother would return she learns that her mother is gone.  Through social services Ruby gets sent to live with her sister Cora who Ruby assumes doesn't really want her ruining their lives.  What Ruby has to learn is her sister loves her and wants to help her.  Can Ruby build a life with her sister and her husband or is Ruby more like her mother and apt to run away?

This book really was a look that not all family lives aren't perfect and family became a big theme with this story as Ruby tries to figure out what she wants and whether she can achieve it and what is with the boy Nate Cross next door.  As we follow Ruby we see that's Nate's home life is very much like Cora and Ruby's can Ruby help him with what she knows. It was a great teen book that dealt with different things definitely great book for teens and even adults who can recall their teen years!