Author: Lisa Jewell
Publisher: Penguin Books Australia
Reviewer: Jacquie Byron
Do not read this book if you’re using dating apps. Or maybe do.
In Melbourne, autumn is around the corner and winter is closing in. Lucky crime readers! This is a corker – the kind of book that says: fire up the kettle or uncork the wine, whatever’s your jam, turn on the reading lamp, curl up and devour. It really is a lot of fun.
Lisa Jewell is one of Britain’s most successful writers. She has sold more than 15 million books worldwide, won numerous prizes, and is a regular fixture on the “big lists” – including the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Don’t Let Him In is her twenty-third novel, and it shows – in the best possible way.
As is often the case with this author, Jewell’s book is written from a couple of points of view. It won’t take long for Sisters in Crime readers to get into the swing of it. Key to the story is “the male” – let’s call him Nick. The other key perspective is Ash, the predominant narrator, a young woman with a slightly troublesome backstory that may lead you to suspect she’s an unreliable source. A few other women are involved, including Ash’s mum, and their stories, vignettes in their own way, come together to form one of the most diabolical and unnerving big pictures any woman currently in the dating game could imagine.
If I say that Jewell credits Dirty John as one of the podcasts she listened to while researching this book, that should be a clue. At the heart of the story is a nefarious fraudster preying on not-always-vulnerable women. So many elements of the book are easy to understand, easy to see how they could eventuate. I think that’s the scariest part.
This is not a book about sad, vulnerable, sucked-in women. Some of the characters are pretty ballsy. They’re just no match for a charming psychopath.
Don’t Let Him In is chock-full of wonderful settings, interesting houses and intriguing people. That, combined with the twisty, confronting storyline, is a cornerstone of Jewell’s work, in my opinion. And there’s heart here – family dynamics, the impulse to create the ideal home, career ambitions, the issues around bereavement and loss, even the desire to feel sexy and wanted in older age – all of which fold into the plot to give it realism, depth and often wincing insight.
I sensed a twist coming at the end. It wasn’t what I imagined. That made me like the book even more.
Publishers blurb
He’s the perfect man.
He says he loves you.
You think he might even be made for you.
Before long he’s moved into your house – and into your heart.
And then he leaves for days at a time. You don’t know where he’s gone or who he’s with.
And you realise – if you looked back – you’d say to yourself:
DON’T LET HIM IN.