A gothic tale of twins and the bond that stays even after death. An exploration of grief and its power to warp perceptions. I read through this on one sitting and couldn’t put it down. I will definitely buy for my library upon release.

Alfie was a happily married man before his wife Pippa died, leaving him alone with their young twin daughters, Cassie and Sylvie. The three of them now live alone in Hart House, a home where Pippa and her twin Julia grew up(and it’s a rather creepy place). The twins are young and don’t seem to be as upset about their mothers death as Alfie would like. It is all the fault of Black Mamba, their imaginary friend. He seems to mean more to them than Alfie, and he soon turns to Julia, a psychologist, to help sort out what is going wrong in their house.
Hart House has a dark past and the twins insistence that Black Mamba is real,had me looking over my shoulder trying to guess what was going on. The story isn’t filled with overt horror/gore, but rather the sense of some thing very wrong just builds and builds. At only 240 pages, I flew through Let Him In.
Told in alternating chapters by Alfie and Julia, I was quite surprised how it all came together. The ending really made me question what I believed and I expect it will be interpreted by different readers in different ways. I love when that happens. This publishes during October and I think it will be the perfect page turner for spooky season.

This book creeped me out more than anything I've read in a long time, but I couldn't put it down. It starts out as a sad, intimate little family story, but secrets soon begin haunting their family home, Hart House.

Alfie is a widower with twin girls who are tightly connected in their grief and fear after their wife and mother Pippa, suffers a shocking death. Julia is the sister in law that knows more than she's saying. a Psychiatrist, tries to help her nieces but knows more than she's telling about Hart House. Grandmother Marian, a member of a strange religious cult has her own secrets and fills the twin's heads with strange stories of demons.

Hart House has its own secrets of fire. death, and strange happenings. Pippa loved this house, but her twin Julia fears and shuns it. When a weird, shifting imaginary friend moves in with the twins, Alfie turns to Julia to help his girls process their grief and their need for a comforting figure. She must return to Hart House to personally and professionally care for her nieces.

Secrets emerge, and the girls' friend threatens to tear the family apart. Can anything stop the spiral the house and family are descending? The shocking ending will leave you sleeping with the lights on.

I read this gripping novel in two days, unable to put it down. This is psychological horror at its finest.

After the passing of his wife, Alfie is trying to cope as well as parent his twin daughters. Things only become harder when the twins start seeing a man in their room, who can turn into anything he wants, that the girls refer to as Black Mamba.

I didn’t enjoy this as much as I originally thought I would. That’s not to say I didn’t love it, but from the cover and description I thought this was easily going to be a 5 star read for me.
It was in no way bad, I loved the creepiness of the twins and the character development (especially Alfie’s). I thought it portrayed different ways one might deal with grief well and honestly, Black Mamba was such a great character.
The only negative thing for me was that it did feel a bit repetitive sometimes, which in turn made some parts feel slow and dragging.
But then that ending?! I have so many questions!

So while this wasn’t a 5 star read for me, I would give it a solid 3.5

Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for providing me with a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Psychological suspense, benevolent being, taunted family, struggling father, dead mommy- who or what is haunting the Hart Home?
Alfie, a young recently widowed and struggling father of five year old twins, finds himself drawn into a world unknown and hard to dispell. His twin girls are drawn to an imaginary friend who can shape change, requires them to do bad things, and becomes angry if not obeyed or threatened. Assuming the girls are having nightmares due to their mother’s recent death, the strange behaviors are dismissed or taken lightly as a harmless coping mechanism. That is until. It becomes more intrusive- whispering to them, sitting at the table with them, demanding things, hurting them, and saying he’s going to take them away. Alfie needs this to stop. He calls his dead wife’s twin who is a Psychiatrist to help. Can they stop the haunting? Or are the girls playing a game?
Overall, this was a great, fast read. I tore through the pages dying to find out just what happened next. It was scary, mysterious, thrilling and surprising! I loved it!
I highly recommend this book to psychological thriller and horror lovers. I look forward to more books by William Friend.
Thank you NetGalley, Poisoned Pen Press and William Friend for this DRC book to review. All opinions are my own!

Thank you NetGalley and William Friend for the ARC.

Let Him In is a multi layered story about grief, family secrets, culty legends, nightmares, and the different ways we process these things.

First of all, the creepiness factor in this book is through the roof. As someone who suffered from nightmares as a child, Black Mamba was a formidable antagonist. Mr Friend leaves several things up to interpretation in this book, and that strategy worked well for me. It's one of those books that would make for a good group discussion, as it's easy to interpret through the lens of your own experiences and belief systems.

In the interest of keeping this review spoiler free, I won't get into details, but I thought the ending was PERFECTION.

Daddy, there’s a man in our room...”

Alfie wakes one night to find his twin daughters at the foot of his bed, claiming there’s a shadowy figure in their bedroom. When no such thing can be found, he assumes the girls had a nightmare.



The books is really dark and creepy. It takes us on a stroll to the depths of grief, occult and paranormal.
This read made me feel scared, uneasy on some parts and there is still some questions that weren't answered at the end...
Overall a good read!

Thank you Netgalley for the copy of this book.

Oh oh oh! I loved and was tensed turning every page! I caught myself gripping my toes and tightening my shoulders more and more as the pages turned.

Such a creepy, slow burn, spooky read! There were multiple parts that confused me and/or were not explained, but overall, really kept my interest! Looking forward to the authors future books!

I really enjoyed this one and read it very quickly ... it does have elements of a slow burn, but in that way that keeps you turning pages to see how things may or may not escalate. There are flavors of Hereditary and The Babadook here, with the wonderfully gothic horror tropes of twins (multiple generations of them), eerie houses, odd rituals, imaginary friends, spooky children, and the strange, fraught relationship between a deceased woman's surviving twin sister and her mourning husband. There are some really chilling moments in here, and an enduring sense of dread and ambiguous, creeping threats. I loved reading it during the sunniest days of summer and can only imagine it will be even better read on a chilly, stormy October evening ...

I was so intrigued by the cover of this book I knew I had to read it.

Alfie is a widower trying to raise his young twin daughters Cassia and Sylvie. He is already struggling to hold the family together when he is awaking in the middle of the night by his daughters telling him there is a man in their house. This man can transform into different animals and they begin calling him Black Mamba. When the twins become obsessed with Black Mamba, Alfie reaches out to the girl's Aunt Julia. Julia is a therapist and also a twin. As she counsels the girls about their new imaginary friend, she soon discovers this friend's appearance may be all her fault. Through Julia's character we learn about the history of their house, the fact both her sister and father died in the house and her families fascination with twins. As Black Mamba draws the twins closer, Alfie and Julia both begin having visions and trouble determining what is real. Is Black Mamba an imaginary friend or an entity who is destroying their family?

This book has is all! A haunted house, a supernatural being and events, a family with crazy religious belief and of course, the creepy ass twins. The author did a fantastic job slowly building the intensity of the suspense. The build was so slow I think it made the story even creepier. There were several times I felt uneasy reading this book. Recommend to those who love horror or supernatural thrillers.

Thanks NetGalley, Poisoned Pen Press and William Friend for a copy of this book in return for my honest review.

This book had enough substance to pull me in but I feel like it fell short in terms of Black Mamba, and the mysteries surrounding the deaths the main characters are mourning.

I do feel like the author portrayed grief well, from the total disconnect to the stuck feeling we get when a loved one passes prematurely or in a manner that’s traumatizing.

I honestly hated Julia. Why didn’t she talk about it from the beginning? Couldn’t bring herself to even help him until halfway simply because she couldn’t handle the house? Poor Allie though endures so much between grieving Pippa and raising a set of twins while living in a house full of ghosts and memories.

Black Mamba and its relationship with the twins, Sylvia and Cassia, was intriguing and outright spooky when interacting with the adults. But I still don’t understand why Allie was completely left in the dark. I feel like that got lost in the grey and could have been a good ending plot twist with the revelations and findings in the last third of the novel.

I will say that Black Mamba and the twins escalated quickly and for that, the pacing was great. I felt there were no lulls or areas that were unnecessary or drawn out. I did have a hard time putting this book down and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it.

If you like spooky and supernatural thrillers, this novel is right up your alley.

Horror novels just aren’t my genre. I tried to follow the plot, but I kept getting confused. By the time I reached the ending and figured out “the shocker”, I really didn’t care. This was well written, but just not my cup of tea.

3.5 stars! I loved the cover of this book and I just had to read it. The story kept my interest enough to keep me reading to find out the answers, The story jumped around a lot, so it made it a little hard to follow. I still have questions about the ending, which frustrates me, but I am assuming that was what the author wanted? If so, he succeeded! #NetGalley

This book starts off strong with an underlying sense of eeriness that mounts with each page. The relationship between the girls and the portrayals of grief are authentic and relatable. As the book progresses though and new elements are added it slowly becomes disjointed. While each individual story aspect such as the houses history, the religious trauma, and the relationships are interesting on their own they are never fully explored or resolved. Their is never any a satisfying summary of how all the different directions the book takes actually connect or what the significance was. I think this book had great potential and an interesting concept but ultimately falls flat and has too many plot holes.

What a creepy book! It was great. Not one to read alone at night. I just wish the ending was explained a little better.

As always, thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read this ARC. I finished a few days ago, but still trying to figure out my review because I'm confused about a few things. Overall, I did enjoy the book and definitely felt creeped out at times. I wish the ending was explained a little better. However, still a solid 3.5 stars for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Poisoned Pen Press for this ARC in return for my honest review

A newly widowed father, Alfie, and his twin daughters live in a family home with a very storied history. His wife, Pippa, was also a twin. Naturally a family who has suffeeed such a loss will struggle in a variety of ways and he believes that his daughters have an imaginary friend, Black Mamba.

First of all let me say that I would not read this book alone and maybe not in the dark if I was super afraid. I could feel the creepiness in every single sentence. It was all over the pages and the characters and the descriptions of everything was ummmmm …. Dark. For example how Alfie notices that that colors of the walls in Hart House have been like sucked out of the walls. You have to read it to understand. But it’s there I promise.

Now - read no further if you don’t want a spoiler - the rattle (give me more). The father and mother and whatever cult they appeared to be a part of that has to do with twins (explain) - the Aunt Sue and her part in this needs more - the ending was abrupt and I think that sells the book short. I would have easily kept reading to get these things figured out. But overall super spooky. This is the authors first book and I hope to see more !!

Just when you thought you may have figured out the situation with the twins and there "friend" boom something comes out of left field and has you rethinking everything that you had previously read. I overall loved this book as it kept me on my feet the whole time and kept me guessing with each page I turned. I highly recommend you read this book and let William take you on a journey as only he can in this book.

I couldn’t put the book down! A few parts were slightly confusing and required a reread to figure out the premise of what was happening, but overall really enjoyed the book.