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ClareR (6054 KP) rated You Let Me In in Books

Mar 10, 2020

You Let Me In

Camilla Bruce | 2020 | Fiction & Poetry, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

10.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

A satisfyingly dark read!

You Let Me In is unlike anything I’ve read before. I signed up to read this on The Pigeonhole based purely on the cover. I didn’t read anything about it, in fact I thought it was going to be a thriller. The cover though: I actually thought it was a hand showing someone then bird’, and I was half right. It’s a dead bird, and the main character, Cassandra Tipp, does seem to spend most of her life metaphorically giving everyone ‘the bird’ (ie. telling them to leave her alone).

There is a mystery at the start of this. Cassandra Tipp has disappeared, and her niece and nephew have been told that after a year they can have her worldly goods if they go to her house, find the manuscript she has left them and deduce a code word.

This book is that story.

It transpires that Cassie has been involved in the death of three people: her husband Tommy Tipp, her father and her brother. But how did she get away with it? Or more importantly: who did it if she didn’t? And who is Pepper Man?

Ok, I don’t want to give too much away, but fairies are involved from the beginning, and they’re unlike the fairies I’ve read about in the past. They come with a fascinating origin story, and I’d be interested to know if they were a construct of the authors imagination, or whether they’re a Norwegian version of the fairies I’ve learnt about with my Anglo-Irish background. Either way, they’re great characters.

There’s also a chance that child abuse is involved, either by humans or fairies, it all depends on what you read in to things that happen, whether or not you believe that Cassie is in fact sane. Some of the violence is pretty graphic too, and did put some Pigeonhole readers off.

It’s a puzzling book, a book where you’re never sure whether the narrator is reliable. And I loved it. So, if you like quirky, puzzling, violent(ish), dark books, with fairies (or perhaps not) and potentially with characters with mental health issues, then you’ll enjoy this book as much as I did. It was a satisfying, startling ten days with The Pigeonhole!