Pick the Lock by A.S. King
Jane Vandermaker-Cook is desperate to get her mother back. Living at home with her father means she and her little brother are subject to brutal verbal and emotional abuse and his weird, unhinged rules. Jane’s mom travels the world to make ends meet for the family because she is a rockstar. Literally. But even if things are a little easier for Jane and her brother when mom is home, Jane’s dad confines her mom to a series of pneumatic tubes. The family is also joined by a rat named Brutus, a gardener, and a whole bunch of security cameras.
When Jane gets access to the footage of those cameras, what they reveal is a family that is anything but simply weird or quirky. This discovery, though, is key to helping save her mother—and as a bonus (if that’s even the right word!), there’ll be a punk opera involved in this story because when she’s able to, Jane is in a band and loves making music like her mom.
Throughout the book, there are interludes from Brutus the rat, who can also shapeshift. There are also interstitials written as a play and as a rock concert. This character-driven novel is a big boy at 400 pages and explores the relationships between mothers and daughters, as well as the way girls and women are subjected to the systems of the patriarchy, whether they want to be or not.
