Book Review: Let the Right One In

So a few months back I had a strange experience online. I was looking for an older post I had written on the Justin Cronin novel, The Passage, and rather than combing through all of my old posts I figured it would be simpler to Google the terms bookmonkey, Cronin and passage. I did get directed to a post about the book The Passage (a great post-apocalyptic vampire novel, by the way), and it was done by Bookmonkey, but it was a different bookmonkey.

The weird thing was, even though this bookmonkey was from a different country, and was a girl, she was reviewing a lot of the same materials as me, and in one specific review, had done a book I had been meaning to do for a while now, John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let the Right One In.

So last week I finally got around to reading this novel and you know what? It is pretty awesome.

Having spent last October reviewing Twilight, I've got to say there are a lot of easy comparisons; 1) both books feature a human starting a relationship with a vampire, 2) both films were released on the same day in North America, 3) Both book helped change my opinion on vampire fiction.

Let The Right One In follows a young boy named Oskar who is consistently being bullied by kids at his school, his parents are separated and life is not going to well for him. Then he meets the new girl who has moved in to his apartment building. Eli has some pretty strange habits; she only comes out at night, her father doesn't really act like a dad and her arrival is strangely timed with a recent string of murders.

Here's the thing about the book - it is really, really good. It works as a young romance, a horror novel and a vampire novel. I will say this about it compared to Twilight however; Twilight is an excellent gateway book for young adults to get into supernatural fiction, while Let The Right One In is pure horror - if you're not sure if you like scary stories, you might want to warm up with some other stuff first.

Not for the faint of heart - Let the Right One In is definitely on my must-read list for great vampire stories.