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A review by cmzukowski
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
4.0
Let the Right One In is one of my favorite movies yet for some reason I have never read the book until now. I am so glad that I finally did. This book was so amazing in so many ways and also much creepier and more disturbing than the movie. I don’t want to give away the plot and spoil the story for anyone who has yet to read it but I do what to share my feelings on the book.
Lindqvist did an excellent job at portraying vampires and showed them in a brutal yet sympathetic way and did not sensationalize them, which seems to be a current theme with vampires. He was able to show a vampire in a human way and a supernatural way and depict an internal struggle that goes on in them, not just a bloodlust and a need to kill. I think this was done rather brilliantly and is something that isn’t seen often in vampire books, at least not the way it was done in Let the Right One In.
The book is highly disturbing so you need to be prepared for that; the movie ends up seeming quite tame compared to the book. However even the disturbing aspects were done in such a way that they didn’t seem just brutal and gory but necessary to the story to make all the pieces fit and to make the reader understand. It was done to show how dark this story really is and not beautified or sanitized to avoid making the reader feel uncomfortable. I believe you need to feel uncomfortable at points when reading this book so you can get the true emotions of the characters and the point the author was trying to get across. This book successfully showed so many emotions throughout the story and it was done in such a way that you felt them all.
When you go into this book you may just expect a vampire story but it is so much more than that. You see stories of so many peoples’ lives and not the lives of “perfect” people but of people with problems and conflicting emotions. The book explores friendship, the lives and problems of adolescent boys, broken homes, addictions, crime, love, death, so many different aspects of life. The book is heart-wrenching and disturbing and beautifully written and it is so worth the read. It combined horror and brutality with a beautiful yet atypical love story and the end of the book even made me smile.
Lindqvist did an excellent job at portraying vampires and showed them in a brutal yet sympathetic way and did not sensationalize them, which seems to be a current theme with vampires. He was able to show a vampire in a human way and a supernatural way and depict an internal struggle that goes on in them, not just a bloodlust and a need to kill. I think this was done rather brilliantly and is something that isn’t seen often in vampire books, at least not the way it was done in Let the Right One In.
The book is highly disturbing so you need to be prepared for that; the movie ends up seeming quite tame compared to the book. However even the disturbing aspects were done in such a way that they didn’t seem just brutal and gory but necessary to the story to make all the pieces fit and to make the reader understand. It was done to show how dark this story really is and not beautified or sanitized to avoid making the reader feel uncomfortable. I believe you need to feel uncomfortable at points when reading this book so you can get the true emotions of the characters and the point the author was trying to get across. This book successfully showed so many emotions throughout the story and it was done in such a way that you felt them all.
When you go into this book you may just expect a vampire story but it is so much more than that. You see stories of so many peoples’ lives and not the lives of “perfect” people but of people with problems and conflicting emotions. The book explores friendship, the lives and problems of adolescent boys, broken homes, addictions, crime, love, death, so many different aspects of life. The book is heart-wrenching and disturbing and beautifully written and it is so worth the read. It combined horror and brutality with a beautiful yet atypical love story and the end of the book even made me smile.