The Bibliophile's Bookshelf

Title: Take the Key and Lock Her Up

Series: Embassy Row #3

Author: Ally Carter

Genre: Young Adult, Action, Mystery, Romance

Rating: 4.25 stars

Review:

Grace finally knows why her mother was killed. Unfortunately, now the killers are after her and her brother. After some time on the run, Grace decides to take a stand and stop the people chasing her. Grace returns to Adria and comes together with her friends to end this once and for all.

Take the Key and Lock Her Up was a good ending. Ally Carter did a good job of making it so you didn’t know who to really trust. All the characters came together in this book and gave a satisfying conclusion. A new character, Thomas, was introduced and I really liked him. The only thing that wasn’t great about Thomas’ introduction was that it created a love triangle, though it was quickly resolved. More information was provided about Alexei’s family, specifically his mom, which further developed Alexei and helped solve the mystery. We also finally got to know what happened to the royal family and Amelia two centuries ago.

I really enjoyed this series, but I didn’t completely love the ending. I feel like the ending, what Grace did with the main antagonist, didn’t fit her character. Jamie was such a big part of the series and a lot of what Grace did this book was driven by Jamie, but he wasn’t actually in the book very much. There were maybe two paragraphs with Jamie in them at the end and he didn’t say anything. Overall, I think the ending was a little rushed, though it still concluded everything nice enough.

Take the Key and Lock Her Up concluded the mystery that surrounds Grace and Adria. All the characters reunited to save Grace, with the introduction of a few new characters. While the ending was good, it could have been developed better. I absolutely loved this series, though it has a different tone than Ally Carter’s other books.

Goodreads Page for: Take the Key and Lock Her Up by Ally Carter