Reviews - Don't Let Him In

2.05k reviews for:

Don't Let Him In

Lisa Jewell

3.73 AVERAGE

coffeecole's review against another edition

2.0

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

cornflakegirrrl's review against another edition

3.0

This was an audiobook for me, so I struggled with being able to keep up with the temporal changes in the novel. I loved the different perspectives and all of the narrators were entertaining, and the story was compelling, but it was hard to follow. You also have to be really careful when giving the antagonist a first person perspective in a murder mystery because it’s possible to seem like you’re justifying what he’s doing by allowing us into his mind. It was interesting to read what the perspective of a psychopath is like. Still I needed more clarity as to which women he was with in the present versus which women he was with in the past because that made a huge difference as to who was involved or could possibly be involved in his potential undoing. There weren’t enough narrative signals for someone listening to the book to figure that out.

beautifully_becky's review against another edition

2.0

2⭐️⭐️
I REALLY struggled with this book initially, I got to the 40% mark and really wasn’t sure I wanted to finnish it. The character POV switching, the sometimes messy writing and the constant over explaining of the male character was really annoying me!
I was really hoping at any moment there would be a shock or a twist, I just wanted more from the story… it was all very predictable and had no shock factor to me.
I only persevered with reading this book in case of a twist and gradually I got to understand and recall characters more… although still a few times where I was like ‘Who is Emma again?’
I can understand that maybe Lisa wanted this book to be more realistic, to show a current issue/crime going on, to show how easy it is to stay in toxic relationship but this is a Fiction novel, so I feel there could of been more shock value created or just something to make it a THRILLER…
I don’t know, I’m walking away feeling like I’ve wasted my time reading which is never fun!
I’ve not read many Lisa Jewell books and I’m not sure I will now in the future…

reasteen's review against another edition

3.5

dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

kristineisreading's review against another edition

1.0

This book is not it. I am, quite honestly, baffled that this has so many glowing reviews. It's not fun reading a book fro the POV of such a total dirtbag. And that's just one of multiple POVs, and there are two timelines, and it was hard to keep up with at times. I also didn't find it remotely suspenseful, or thrilling, or even surprising. It was obvious early on what was going on and it just felt like a long, tedious build up to a ridiculous, unlikely ending. I'm mad at myself for not DNFing this. I just kept thinking, this has such great reviews, there's gotta be more to it than this. But there isn't. I don't want to yuck anyone's yum, but I really, really disliked this book.

cometlinelah's review against another edition

2.75

tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

janemarple's review against another edition

3.75

dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

It’s not a bad book though it’s a thinly veiled fictionalization of real life crimes (Dirty John in particular). You can see the final twists coming, which does dampen the end a bit.