~~Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for the ARC!~~

1.5/5 stars rounded up.

I've read my fair share of A.S. King back in the day, a couple favorites being Please Ignore Vera Dietz and Everyone Sees the Ants. Dig was the last thing I read of hers before this one, and it didn't resonate with me like her previous work. Since rediscovering my love for more outlandish YA authors (i.e., Mindy McGinnis), I thought I'd try King again with her newest release. Pick the Lock.

Yeah, I didn't like this much.

King's style of writing very much screams weird and "not like other writers," and it's very obnoxious about it. One moment the characters will be talking normally, then at some point it's like both characters are having a completely different conversation at the same time? It was so bizarre and hard to describe, but it felt like two bots trying to have a coherent conversation but are suffering from malfunction.

Between scenes written in prose are these daydreams (But sometimes not? I dunno, I stopped caring so much what was realism or surrealism by the end) told in script writing where Jane and her imaginary band sing about how terrible her dad is. This is the most literal way to get your main character to express her feelings, and I ended up skimming through the majority of them because lyrics without musical accompaniment is just so awkward to read. I was reading these lyrics while my mom had the radio on, and my brain automatically set those word to the tune of "All Stars," "Take on Me," and the like because I had no idea how the music was supposed to sound, otherwise. There were also other sections like Jane describing the numerous tapes of Vernon being an abusive POS throughout the years and from a pet rat who hates the family and has killed people??? I did like the tapes, because it gave a stark image of what a monster Vernon was, but I still don't understand why the rat was so important to have its own POV.

The plot not only stretches itself out, but it also just doesn't make sense at times. So, there's this human-sized hamster tunnel running all throughout the house called the System, which is used by Vernon to trap, control, and dehumanize Mina, the mom. Then we learn that the System runs outside the home and is used by to move women around by men. Mina then explains how she's using it to rescue other abused women from their husbands. We get a whole history lesson about its conception back in WWII times and how Mina, want to reclaim it as a safe passage for women. But how can Mina go rescue other women who experienced domestic violence but doesn't recognize it as her own experience until Jane flat out tells her?? This contradiction is acknowledged but not explained, whatsoever. I think King is going for the thing about domestic abuse where its victims cannot acknowledge it as the horror it was until they're well out of it, but that's not made apparent until the end of the book. Like, I understand what King was going for. Vernon was a sick little man who want to tear the big feminist girl into his personal punching bag, and he did that through using the System. But Mina was still strongly feminist when she was outside of Vernon's direct influence; wouldn't she had submitted to Vernon's lies/manipulations and stop believing in those things by the story starts? I dunno, I appreciate King exploring the themes of domestic violence, but I just had such a hard time understanding the choices made here.

The biggest question I'm left with by the end is why Vernon and Finch weren't arrested, or, at least, brought to the proper authorities. There's literally decades of footage showing Vernon physically, verbally, and emotionally abusing his family that Jane gathered up via the very cameras he had installed in the house, and Finch is heavily implied to have murdered several members of her family. And yet neither serious offender are punished in any meaningful way. They are just kicked out of the house and it's all a happy ending from there. Like, what??? I get that the police in real life are typically useless when it comes to domestic violence cases, but I think even they couldn't deny all the proof Jane's got in those tapes. It's just so frustrating to read nearly 400 pages worth of this monster torturing his family only to get an equivalent of a slap on the wrist as punishment for all the shit he did.

I could go on about some other things, but I'd rather not. I don't want this book to take up more brain space than it already has. I'll just leave it here by giving my recommendation not to read it. I'm sure the people who've loved King's works the past five years would like this, but I'm obviously not one of those people.