Book Review: Take the Key and Lock Her Up

Today, we look at the final book in Ally Carter’s Embassy Row series: Take the Key and Lock Her Up.

Here’s the summary from Amazon.com:

"For the past three years, Grace Blakely has been desperate to find out the truth about her mother's murder. She thought it would bring her peace. She thought it would lead her to answers. She thought she could put the past to rest.
          
But the truth has only made her a target.
       
And the past?
          
The only way to put the past to rest is for Grace to kill it once and for all."

My rating: ***** (Though I’m sort of leaning closer to 3 ½)

Okay, so when I first finished reading this book I thought it was wonderful. I couldn’t put it down, I had to see what was going to happen next. Usually when that happens, I’m willing to give a book 5 stars. With this one though, the more I thought about it, the more issues that popped up for me.

Also I just want to say, I totally forgot that Adria had a prince close to Grace’s age. Really I forgot that there was a prince altogether and when they first mentioned him, I was thinking that he must be a lot younger. He’s not fortunately, or else some of the stuff in this book would have been very awkward (which it was already awkward, but it would have been worse). Also Thomas is a real MVP. He goes through a lot of crap in this book and he handles it like a champ.

Before I get into any issues, let me focus on what I liked about this book:

• The cover.

The cover of this book is absolutely gorgeous and it’s by far my favorite in the series. I want the dress that Grace is wearing. I would never be able to wear it, but it is so pretty. I’m adding it to my mental list of fictional dresses that I wish I could own.

• The characters.

The characters were great as always, well most of them were anyway. A few groups of characters were just odd and Alexei had a moment or two where he wasn’t spectacular (mainly due to a weird pseudo love triangle, that wasn’t really a love triangle, that was popping up).

• The overall story.

While there were a few issues with it, the story was still exciting and fun to read. I kept wanting to see what would happen next and I wanted to see how Grace would solve everything.

Okay, so now onto the issues with the book. The problem here is that many of the issues are wrapped up with spoilers, both for this book and for the previous ones, so I have to be vague which makes this very difficult to talk about. Ultimately there are two issues that I need to discuss. One: Where the heck is Grace and Jamie’s dad? They’ve been on the run for months, people have been trying to kill them, and he’s MIA the entire time. Shouldn’t he be trying to find them? Has anyone filled him in on what’s happening? There’s a similar issue with Grace’s grandfather, but we do at least get to see him in the book.

Problem number 2: Everything ultimately could have been avoided. That is my main issue with all of this. The people who went after Grace’s mom, go after her and her brother years after her mom’s death. If they were such a threat, why wait this long? The Society, the group of women who influence everything, are fairly idiotic. I mean they have valid concerns, they really do (primarily because Adria has a really stupid constitution), but they are of no help to Grace whatsoever. Also they brush off Grace’s way of ending everything as an impractical solution that couldn’t work, when apparently it could work just fine. Which leads to a rather weak resolution in my opinion. Also I’m going to be honest, but I find the resolution to be a little unrealistic. Though to be fair, a lot of things in this series are unrealistic and that’s why it’s enjoyable, but still.

Overall the story isn’t a bad one, but there are some plot issues that bug me. That being said, they’re not so terrible that it makes the story completely unreadable. It’s still a fun page-turning story and I do recommend checking it out.