S. F. Prescott

Unsettling and immersive.

William Friend is a fiction writer based in Hertfordshire. His debut novel, BLACK MAMBA, was published in the UK in June 2022, and was published in America in October 2023 under the title LET HIM IN. He is currently working on his second novel.

Published October 3rd, 2023.

This book was deeply disturbing with haunting scenes that drew me in. I don’t read a lot of horror, especially stories this dark featuring kids but Let Him In is the exception. It’s written in such a way I felt as if the adult characters were more at risk than the twin children. Told between alternating perspectives, Friend delivers an eerie observation of how children use their imaginations to deal with grief. The first is Alfie, a recently widowed father looking after twin girls, Cassia and Sylvie, since their mother Pippa was killed in a freak accident. The second perspective is Julia—Pippa’s twin sister—who is a psychiatrist, also nursing unresolved wounds from childhood. Alfie calls Julia to help after the girls mention an imaginary friend, ‘Black Mamba’, who they see lurking in the shadows of their room at night.

I enjoyed the alternating perspectives, but preferred Julia’s since she felt like the more reliable of the two. Both had different creepy experiences in the house including one in which Julia mistakes a shadow man sitting in a chair in the dark for Alfie, only to realize he’s upstairs asleep. The descriptions were immersive and the reveals slow paced. The tension was steady but took a little too long to build for me personally. The end left a lot unanswered but alluded to the entity (or demon) winning, and Alfie being the one locked in the cellar. I would have preferred more clarification but perhaps that was the point.

For readers who enjoy the haunted house trope, suspense, and a slow burn.

Synopsis:

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.

He isn’t surprised that they’re troubled. Grief has made its home at Hart House: nine months ago, the twins’ mother Pippa died unexpectedly, leaving Alfie to raise them alone. And now, when the girls mention a new imaginary friend, it seems like a harmless coping mechanism. But the situation quickly develops into something more insidious. The girls set an extra place for him at the table. They whisper to him. They say he’s going to take them away…

Alfie calls upon Julia—Pippa’s sister and a psychiatrist—to oust the malignant tenant from their lives. But as Alfie himself is haunted by visions and someone watches him at night, he begins to question the true character of the force that has poisoned his daughters’ minds, with dark and violent consequences.

Whatever this “friend” is, he doesn’t want to leave. Alfie will have to confront his own shameful secrets, the dark past of Hart House, and even the bounds of reality—or risk taking part in an unspeakable tragedy.