Review 2: Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen

Title: Lock and Key
Author: Sarah Dessen
Publisher: Viking Juvenile Fiction
Rating: 9.5/10
The Lowdown:
Ruby is a young and troubled girl.. Yeah, we've heard a lot of those before. But she seriously has a messed up mommy. So when her mom abandons her, she decides to live alone until she turns 18. But lo and behold, she's caught before that can happen and is thrust into high class society when she is sent to live with her sister (incognito in Ruby's life for more than 10 years) and her nice and entrepreneur (rich) husband, Jaimie. Sort of like a Great Expectations, but a more teenage and modern twist to it.
The Good:
A. Excellent narration by Sarah Dessen.
B. Excellent plot.
C. Obviously has a romantic element to it, for which I go gaga for.
D. Good character development.
The Bad:
A. Ends too soon :(
B. A little slow-paced.
C. Ruby's private school universe is extremely strange. By strange I mean there are no evil girls. And in every school there are evil school girls, trust me.
The Consensus:
Overall, I seriously loved this book. It had to be one of Sarah Dessen's best creations. What I feel about Sarah's novels are that she is one of those authors that sort of get better and better with every book he/she writes. When I first picked this book up, I was like, Gee, I didn't know Sarah would stoop to such a low level that she had to cheat off of Dickens! (Not that Dickens isn't awesome.) But seriously. I was seriously pissed off. But after reading this book, I seriously know what the phrase "Don't judge a book by it's cover" means. This book is one of my favorite, but Sarah's Just Listen, still is better than this one, because of the ending and the emotional tirade of it. But that's just my opinion.