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A review by juliriganti
Let Him in by William Friend
3.0
"They say that grief numbs, but I still feel everything and mostly it hurts"
Thank you NetGalley and the author William Friend for the ARC! To me, this book was a solid 3 stars: I liked it. could have been better.
Alfie is a recently widowed parent of twins. One night the girls come to his room saying that there's a man in their room, and even if that's not weird (considering the trauma they just sustained and the grief affecting them because of Pippa, their mother, dying), it is when an imaginary friend, starts taking a lot of space in their family life. Thinking that it's just a coping mechanism he calls Julia, the girls' aunt who is a psychiatrist to help out. But then weird things start happening in the house and he's plagued with visions as the imaginary friend tells the girls he doesn't want to leave.
This was cool. There's nothing creepier than twin girls who speak in unison of strange imaginary friends. Between that and the cover, honestly, I was hooked.
It's difficult to explain the things I liked and didn't like about this book without spoiling it, but I'll try my best.
The first 15% of the book felt a bit dense and boring. As I got to the 25% mark it got a little better. I really liked how the book handled Alfie's struggle with raising two girls while also grieving himself and, to someone who doesn't understand how kids work, they felt very real (I don't know if it's just me but sometimes kids in books seem fake, like to charactery to be actual kids).
I didn't like Julia. I think she had a lot of potential to be a really cool character but I got bored of her really fast and (a little spoiler). To me, she lacked a real personality because a lot of it was her not being Pippa.
I loved the ambiance of the strange house and how the rooms are described, and I love that you can tell there's a lot of history in those walls even before reading about it, just by how the characters feel in it. I think the author did a great job of making it feel as if we were actually there.
The twins and the imaginary friend are very creepy, but what I loved the most was the constant doubt about the thing being actually an imaginary friend or a supernatural being.
I don't have a problem with short books, but even though GoodReads states that the book is 240 pages my ARC was 208 which I feel is too short for a book surrounding family relationships, which could have been more developed. I'd also like to read more about the church Pippa and Julia attended as kids.
I have a lot to say about the ending but I don't want to spoil anything, so I'm just gonna say that I hated half of chapter 15, including Alfie's part, and half of chapter 16. Chapters 17 and 18 were great, but I'm still not sure what happened and I don't know how to feel about that. I get that maybe that's what the author intended, to leave the ending a bit ambiguous so the reader could take it wherever they wanted, it's just that I don't know if I liked that. I expected something a bit more intense given everything that led to what happened, but it just felt a bit anticlimactic.
Overall I liked this book, I just think it left a lot to be desired and it could have been a lot better.
Thank you NetGalley and the author William Friend for the ARC! To me, this book was a solid 3 stars: I liked it. could have been better.
Alfie is a recently widowed parent of twins. One night the girls come to his room saying that there's a man in their room, and even if that's not weird (considering the trauma they just sustained and the grief affecting them because of Pippa, their mother, dying), it is when an imaginary friend, starts taking a lot of space in their family life. Thinking that it's just a coping mechanism he calls Julia, the girls' aunt who is a psychiatrist to help out. But then weird things start happening in the house and he's plagued with visions as the imaginary friend tells the girls he doesn't want to leave.
This was cool. There's nothing creepier than twin girls who speak in unison of strange imaginary friends. Between that and the cover, honestly, I was hooked.
It's difficult to explain the things I liked and didn't like about this book without spoiling it, but I'll try my best.
The first 15% of the book felt a bit dense and boring. As I got to the 25% mark it got a little better. I really liked how the book handled Alfie's struggle with raising two girls while also grieving himself and, to someone who doesn't understand how kids work, they felt very real (I don't know if it's just me but sometimes kids in books seem fake, like to charactery to be actual kids).
I didn't like Julia. I think she had a lot of potential to be a really cool character but I got bored of her really fast and (a little spoiler)
Spoiler
I hated that she knew something was happening and still not only didn't want to help but also kept telling Alfie that everything was fineI loved the ambiance of the strange house and how the rooms are described, and I love that you can tell there's a lot of history in those walls even before reading about it, just by how the characters feel in it. I think the author did a great job of making it feel as if we were actually there.
The twins and the imaginary friend are very creepy, but what I loved the most was the constant doubt about the thing being actually an imaginary friend or a supernatural being.
I don't have a problem with short books, but even though GoodReads states that the book is 240 pages my ARC was 208 which I feel is too short for a book surrounding family relationships, which could have been more developed. I'd also like to read more about the church Pippa and Julia attended as kids.
I have a lot to say about the ending but I don't want to spoil anything, so I'm just gonna say that I hated half of chapter 15, including Alfie's part, and half of chapter 16. Chapters 17 and 18 were great, but I'm still not sure what happened and I don't know how to feel about that. I get that maybe that's what the author intended, to leave the ending a bit ambiguous so the reader could take it wherever they wanted, it's just that I don't know if I liked that. I expected something a bit more intense given everything that led to what happened, but it just felt a bit anticlimactic.
Overall I liked this book, I just think it left a lot to be desired and it could have been a lot better.