Don’t Let Him In is a slow-burn, multi-layered psychological thriller that explores deception and how well we know the people we love.
The story follows three women—Nina, recently widowed; her suspicious daughter, Ash; and Martha, a middle-aged mother who feels alienated by her husband’s absences. After Nina’s husband dies in a suspicious train accident, she begins a relationship with the seemingly kind and attentive Nick, while Martha grows increasingly wary of her husband, Alistair. As Ash digs into Nick’s background, she discovers he’s a manipulative con artist with a history of deceiving women under multiple identities.
The book has an intricate structure, interweaving multiple timelines and viewpoints. The POVs alternate between Ash, Nina, Martha, and Nick, giving readers an insight into every angle of the story—which makes it easy to follow and predict what’s coming. Nick’s perspective is especially intriguing as readers get a very deep glimpse into his inner workings of deception, scheming, and his “psychopathic” lack of moral compass. The narrative jumps back and forth between the past (mostly Nick’s POV) and present, filling in pieces of the puzzle and the connection of the women as it unfolds. This mosaic-style storytelling adds a lot of tension and psychological suspense to the story and helps to keep readers engaged!
The three female protagonists are all flawed, complex, and well developed. Aside from Ash, who comes across as the wisest and most intuitive of the women, it’s easy to become frustrated with the women in this story as they’re easily manipulated and gaslighted by Nick/Allister. For this reason, you’ll have to suspend your disbelief at their gullibility and disillusionment in order to fully empathize with them. Fortunately, most of them “snap out of it” later on and begin to see reason.
The relationship between Nina and her daughter Ash is especially compelling. Despite Ash’s insistence that Nick is hiding something, her mother’s perfect image of him refuses to be shattered. Ash’s mental health backstory plays a big part in this, and readers may question her sanity at some points in the story despite finding her very likeable. Nick is an extremely compelling character whose mind you can’t look away from. Unfortunately, by the end of the story, there are so many villainous traits crammed into his character for him to be taken too seriously—con artist, murderer, stalker, cheater, polygamist.
The pacing isn’t even in this book, but the story is constantly moving forward and adding captivating pieces to the multilayered narrative. Jewell is a genius at building suspense, and this book is no exception—but this book falls a bit short in its final execution. There are no major surprises or thought-provoking lingering questions afterwards. Instead, everything is neatly laid out, and the conclusion pans out exactly as you may expect. Also, the extensive amount of page time that is spent in Nick’s head doesn’t match up with the abrupt conclusion where his perspective is almost absent.
Overall, Don’t Let Him In is a gripping and immersive thriller that excels in character depth and its building of psychological tension. While the climax feels a bit contrived and the villain somewhat overdone, the novel still manages to keep readers furiously turning the pages with its intricate and highly engrossing storytelling. Readers who enjoy multi-layered thrillers with compelling female leads and deep psychological glimpses into a villain’s manipulative mind will love this one!
