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Locks and Keys: A Dark Psychological Novel
A secluded house.
A family already carrying old wounds.
And four men who should never have crossed the threshold.
When strangers arrive at Mara’s rural home, the house itself begins to change. Doors close. Time stalls. The air turns cold. Her youngest child, Eli, who is mostly nonverbal and deeply sensitive to the world around him, fixates on his box of old keys, whispering words no one understands.
As fear tightens its grip, past and present quietly collide. Long-buried trauma surfaces. Unanswered violence presses back into the light. And the lines between victim, witness, and accomplice begin to blur.
Locks and Keys is a psychological novel about memory, guilt, and the way harm echoes through spaces long after it’s been committed. Told with restrained, poetic prose and mounting dread, it explores what happens when the past returns uninvited, and the house remembers what its occupants would rather forget.
This is not a fast thriller.
It’s a slow, unsettling descent.
And once the doors close, nothing leaves unchanged.
A family already carrying old wounds.
And four men who should never have crossed the threshold.
When strangers arrive at Mara’s rural home, the house itself begins to change. Doors close. Time stalls. The air turns cold. Her youngest child, Eli, who is mostly nonverbal and deeply sensitive to the world around him, fixates on his box of old keys, whispering words no one understands.
As fear tightens its grip, past and present quietly collide. Long-buried trauma surfaces. Unanswered violence presses back into the light. And the lines between victim, witness, and accomplice begin to blur.
Locks and Keys is a psychological novel about memory, guilt, and the way harm echoes through spaces long after it’s been committed. Told with restrained, poetic prose and mounting dread, it explores what happens when the past returns uninvited, and the house remembers what its occupants would rather forget.
This is not a fast thriller.
It’s a slow, unsettling descent.
And once the doors close, nothing leaves unchanged.
213 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 24, 2026
About the author
Onidas J. Beaudin
4 books1 followerHi all in the Goodreads world. I'm new to Goodreads and am still finding my way around. Thank you for having me.
I've been gone a long time. I've learned a few things and forgotten a few things along the way.
I have a new book that I think outshines most of the things I've done in my life.
I hope you will try out "HIM and I." (It is NOT a romance) HIM and I: A Story of Fractured Identity, is a slow-burn psychological literary fiction with some twists that many have commented on so far
I hope some will try it out and like it.
Regards,
Onidas J. Beaudin
I've been gone a long time. I've learned a few things and forgotten a few things along the way.
I have a new book that I think outshines most of the things I've done in my life.
I hope you will try out "HIM and I." (It is NOT a romance) HIM and I: A Story of Fractured Identity, is a slow-burn psychological literary fiction with some twists that many have commented on so far
I hope some will try it out and like it.
Regards,
Onidas J. Beaudin
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 28, 2026
Addivtive
Starts off with a bang. Think you can tell what's going to Will try to but it does not happen the way one thinks. Held my attention from the first page. Could not read fast enough to get to the ending. Will try to search for another book as addictive
Starts off with a bang. Think you can tell what's going to Will try to but it does not happen the way one thinks. Held my attention from the first page. Could not read fast enough to get to the ending. Will try to search for another book as addictive
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Thanks to Onidas J. Beaudin, Victory Editing and NetGalley for this free copy of Locks and Keys. I am leaving this review voluntarily and all opinions expressed are my own.
I will start off with the positives from this book. The author's writing style was very engaging and I appreciated the quality of their descriptions.
However, I must admit that for the majority of the book I had absolutely no idea what was going on and I struggled to follow the plot. It didn't grip me the way other books in this genre have and I think this was purely down to me struggling to work out what was happening.
Despite this, there can be no argument that the author is fantastic at building atmosphere and succeeded in making the scenes suspenseful and at times downright creepy (especially where little Eli was concerned).
Perhaps I wasnt picking up on the subtlety of the writing or reading the subtext, but I was left with more questions than answers at the end.
I will start off with the positives from this book. The author's writing style was very engaging and I appreciated the quality of their descriptions.
However, I must admit that for the majority of the book I had absolutely no idea what was going on and I struggled to follow the plot. It didn't grip me the way other books in this genre have and I think this was purely down to me struggling to work out what was happening.
Despite this, there can be no argument that the author is fantastic at building atmosphere and succeeded in making the scenes suspenseful and at times downright creepy (especially where little Eli was concerned).
Perhaps I wasnt picking up on the subtlety of the writing or reading the subtext, but I was left with more questions than answers at the end.
April 10, 2026
A secluded house where four strangers try to break in. Onidas brings us Mara, who is at her rural house when these strangers show up. But it is the house that changes and molds to them. Through great poetic prose, Onidas shows the memories and ways the house takes care of these interlopers. The story starts off with a bang and never lets you go. I can't wait to see what else Onidas has in store for us in the future.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews