The First Bank of Cleveland in this book is fascinating. Closed from on day to the next, completely locked up, deserted and then forgotten over time. The story has two different lines, 1978 just before this all happened, and 1998 when Iris, a young architect is asked to draw the building for an upcoming project at her firm.

The Dead Key had good and bad things. The best was by far the Bank, it was like it were an time capsule. However, neither of the two stories really got me into the novel. Especially the 1998 one, with Iris making a lot of bad decisions and she also had these strange wandering capacities that are almost as misplaced as would this have been a horror movie. There's a reading of a diary and I never buy it that characters take days or weeks to read it in order to slowly figure out what happened. If they were really as investigating as they show to be (by wandering into every dark, dusty place they discover), they would 'investigate' and finish this diary pronto. This is just a side note of something that annoys me often in novels.

It was not that The Dead Key didn't entertain, I just felt very little connection to any of the characters and it was very easy to put it down and read something else instead.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!