Kate’s Review: “Let Him In”

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Book: “Let Him In” by William Friend

Publishing Info: Poisoned Pen Press, October 2023

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publisher.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: William Friend’s haunting debut Let Him In is a creeping, gothic psychological suspense about a young, newly widowed father struggling to raise twin daughters obsessed with an imaginary friend.

“Daddy, there’s a man in our room…”

Alfie wakes one night to find his twin daughters at the foot of his bed, claiming there’s a shadowy figure in their bedroom. When no such thing can be found, he assumes the girls had a nightmare.

He isn’t surprised that they’re troubled. Grief has made its home at Hart House: nine months ago, the twins’ mother Pippa died unexpectedly, leaving Alfie to raise them alone. And now, when the girls mention a new imaginary friend, it seems like a harmless coping mechanism. But the situation quickly develops into something more insidious. The girls set an extra place for him at the table. They whisper to him. They say he’s going to take them away…

Alfie calls upon Julia—Pippa’s sister and a psychiatrist—to oust the malignant tenant from their lives. But as Alfie himself is haunted by visions and someone watches him at night, he begins to question the true character of the force that has poisoned his daughters’ minds, with dark and violent consequences.

Whatever this “friend” is, he doesn’t want to leave. Alfie will have to confront his own shameful secrets, the dark past of Hart House, and even the bounds of reality—or risk taking part in an unspeakable tragedy.

Review: Thank you to Poisoned Pen Press for sending me an ARC of this novel!

It’s that time of year again!! It’s finally October, my very favorite month, and being the month of Halloween that means it is time for my annual Horrorpalooza celebration here on the blog! For those unfamiliar, in honor of my favorite holiday and favorite genre I am dedicating all of my reviews to horror related books and stories. I hope we have a very creepy and macabre month ahead of us, reading wise, and we are going to start with “Let Him In” by William Friend, a book that has been on my pile for awhile and has now made its debut, just in time for the season of the witch.

It wasn’t the stellar start to the season that I was hoping for, honestly, but I will start with what I did like about “Let Him In”. Friend does know how to write in a way that is both evocative and eerie, his turns of phrase lyrical at times and his motivations of his characters really clear and well thought out. We alternate between two perspectives. The first is Alfie, a recent widower who is grieving and raising his twin daughters Sylvie and Cassia now that his wife Pippa has died in a freak accident in her childhood home, where they had all been living. The other is Julia, Pippa’s twin sister who is also grieving, but is also nursing old wounds from her childhood. When Sylvie and Cassia start talking about an imaginary friend name Black Mamba, and their behavior goes from strange to concerning, Alfie calls Julia in as she is a psychiatrist. I liked the way we got to see both Alfie’s and Julia’s perspectives on Black Mamba, and the things that they are hiding from each other and the reader until the escalating situation with the twins and their own past demons start seeping in because of this ‘imaginary friend’, who may be a sign of a serious behavioral problem, or may be a supernatural force that has been lurking and waiting. There were a number of moments in which I was left ill at ease, and I think that it had a lot to do with the descriptions of the strange house, what may lurk in the dark there, and the damaged people within.

But on the other hand, I think that for me this book almost takes a little too much time to build up the tension, and is a little more ambiguous than I would have liked. Is Black Mamba a folie à deux between the grieving Sylvie and Cassia, or is it a demonic force? I like it when there is some sense of not really knowing what’s going on to a point, as I do think that it adds to the tension and it adds to the overall unease of a novel. But the problem with “Let Him In” is that it made it hard for me to engage and invest because it was ambiguous and moving a little slower than I would have liked. And by the time we got to the end and SOME answers were revealed, there was still a bit that was left unresolved, enough so that I was left fairly unsatisfied by the time I was finished with the story as a whole. This probably shouldn’t stop others from reading this book, especially if ambiguity is your cup of tea when it comes to horror or thriller novels.

So it was a little bit of a mixed bag for me. It didn’t quite live up to my expectations and hopes, but I do see how other horror fans would probably find a lot to like in it. Regardless, I will be curious to see what Friend does in the future. Horrorpalooza is here, folks. I’m so excited to talk about so many scary stories this month!

Rating 6: There are many eerie moments and I liked the writing style, but I think that there’s a little too much ambiguity when some answers may have been more satisfying.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Let Him In” is included on the list “Horror to Look Forward to in 2023”.