This dark, atmospheric fairy story is short but perfectly paced, weaving a tale of magic, folklore, and family identity. An unreliable narrator, through a long form letter left to a nephew and niece with limited real knowledge of the author, offers a life story and puts a different complexion on a family beset by tragedy. As a reader, you question the influence of the fairies vs the author’s mental health - is this a tale of abuse and repression, or fairies and sprites? Read on to find out...

A bewitching book that cast its spell on me and held me bound until the last page was savoured.
It is a dark, dark faerie tale, with pagan-esque faeries and strange rituals that I was never entirely sure were a figment of Camilla's feverish imagination, designed to cover up her willful behaviour, or whether these were her psyche's only way to make sense of the malevolent destruction in her life.
Some readers may not appreciate the ambiguity, but I was completely entranced by Camilla's relationship with the Pepper-man, her family dynamic, the relationship she has with Tommy Tripp and her wonderfully defiant attitude that is the thread that binds the novel.

Utterly wonderful and it will be interesting to see what Camilla Bruce treats us to next. My thanks go to the publishers and Net Galley for the advanced copy in return for an honest review.

Not your average fairy tale, this story is haunting and dark. A tale of magic and folklore, mixed with horror of the most human and terrible kind. I am struggling for the right words to explain what I thought about this book, the story is imaginative and unique but horrifying to read. A child and later a woman so traumatised by an abusive childhood, her mind has created a new narrative to cope with the way the world has and is treating her.
Written in the first person, flipping between the past and the assumed present, it's a weird style of writing but i thought it strangely worked A missing woman recounting her past and talking to her heirs as if she was there and speaking to them. The pacing of the story feels like a thriller and also a weird biography laced with magic and the supernatural, with insights into the possible truth of it all from an unhealthy mind.

The quotes peppered through the story from her therapist give an insight into some of the possible realities of the unbelievable story being told and leave you trying to read between the lines of each page to figure out, and imagine the root of the writer (Cassie's) delusions, the traumas that damaged her so, that this dark magic she talks about is a safer reality for her to live in.

As a reader the story was upsetting and disturbing but also compelling reading, I found myself turning pages with trepidation about what I might find next but unable to put the book down. A creative and chilling exploration of mental health problems, the damage of childhood trauma and abuse, this book left me feeling unsettled and sad, a dark and Gothic page turner, routed in European folklore.

I tried. I really tried.

I really wanted to like this book because of the reviews and especially the description. Granted, there are dark fantasy elements here that reminded me of Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, but I just can't seem to be absorbed in the writing - there was a swap in narration that was particularly confusing - and realizing I was only forcing myself to continue. It's a tough book but that never made me sidestep from any work.

DNF'd.

Thanks to the publishers for sharing this one. It was intense! Not really what I expected, but I was impressed and kept thinking about it for a while after I finished it. My full review appears on Weekend Notes.

You Let Me In, by Camilla Bruce is a dark fantasy full of faeries, magic, and danger.

Synopsis: Cassandra Tipp has disappeared. Bestselling novelist, and notorious in her neighbourhood, Cassandra has a dark past, one the whole town knows. Everyone knows of her and her infamous trial, acquitted or not she is someone they use to avoid.

Now she has gone missing and she has left behind one final story. She is ready to reveal the truth of her murder and death filled past, but at what cost? Was Cassandra really a bad person? Or was she really protecting the true culprit? Will you believe her story or will you dismiss it as insanity? The truth is relative after all…

Content Warnings (may contain small spoilers): Child abuse, murder, suicide.

So, I am doing a mini-review for this one since I gave it an average rating and, to be honest, found it to be quite a weird read. I love faeries, I love stories about them, movies about them and I love all the different depictions there are of them – my favourite, however, are the chaotic, dark and manipulative depictions. So, you can only imagine that when I saw this up on Netgalley I had to have it because dark evil faeries.

However, this just didn’t hit the mark for me. The first part of the book is very heavy in terms of information, it borders on being an ‘info-dump’ and the writing is difficult to grasp. It is written in first person, addressing and detailing two other characters and their actions, in the second person. Once Cassandra actually begins telling her story it is much easier to read and the writing is actually very impressive with a nice balance between sharp and direct but also beatifully metaphoric. Once you are in the story it is well written, very strong and easy to read, I ended up reading this in one sitting as it is short and quick.

The other aspect I really enjoyed was the faerie magic and their portrayals, the idea that they are what they eat and they take on elements of nature without being its friend or protector. I found this incredibly interesting because the faeries are dark and evil and the idea that they physically take on traits from nature or from their food was compelling and unique, a depiction I haven’t before, at least not to this extent.

The story is one that can be read two ways, depending on what you believe as Cassandra is an unreliable narrator so you have to rely on your own interpretation. On one hand it can be read as a metaphor or allegory for abuse, on the other hand it can be read as the faeries being real. That was interesting and the ending is left pretty open.

But, I really could not get on board with the story as a whole. There wasn’t so much a mystery as there is interpretation. I was expecting a mystery/thriller novel that slowly revealed the truth – this is not that. Instead you are told Cassandra’s truth pretty much straight away, there wasn’t a mystery to unravel, some things aren’t completely revealed until the end but it wasn’t shocking or suprising to me, and that left it feeling a little flat.

Moreover, it feels as though you are meant to side with the faeries being real, which I did for the most part. This caused an uncomfortable atmosphere when reading the book because the relationship between the faerie (Pepper-man) and Cassandra was outright weird and strange. Even if the story is not about Cassandra being abused by a family member, she still is anyway by the fae. And then she eventually falls in love with him- I love dark, weird Grimm style stories but this just was too weird and uncomfortable for me.

Overall: This was not the mystery/thriller it seemed to promise and it was a very weird, uncomfortable read. However, it is well written once you get into the story and the general mythology of the fae was incredibly interesting. It is a clever book, but it was not for me.

*I received an eARC of #YouLetMeIn, by Camilla Bruce from #Netgalley #RandomHouseUK #TransworldPublishers in exchange for an honest review*

This will also be posted to my blog/GR and twitter on the 5th March- its publication date - links will be provided on this date as well.

I'm a sucker for an unreliable narrator, a literary trope that is difficult to do convincingly and well, but Camille Bruce handles it with ease. You Let Me In is a tale of family dynamics, mental health, fairies, forests, and murder, its darkness offset by Bruce's beautiful writing, reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, which in parts almost slides in to poetry. By the time I'd finished the first chapter I was completely hooked, and the ending is so cleverly written that it leaves you questioning everything you've learned throughout the book - I was left with little choice but to go back to the start and read it all again, which I was more than happy to do.

If You Let Me In doesn't end up on my end of year top five I'll be very surprised. A fantastic debut. I can't wait to read more from Camilla Bruce.

I absolutely loved this book!  It is the story of Cassandra Tipp, an elderly novelist who has been missing for a year.  When Cassandra's niece and nephew, her heirs, attend her home they find a final manuscript that Cassandra has written just for them.  The heirs must read the manuscript which contains a password that they need to enable them to inherit their Aunt's estate. And so begins a fantastic and twisted tale of faeries and family.  But was Cassandra's life really the dark faerie tale she makes it out to be or is her story all a delusion of a traumatised woman and potential murderer?  An unforgettable read and my favourite book of the year so far.

Recipe for You Let Me In: take the dark, folkloric themes of Pine or Lanny; mix with the lyrical, romantic style of The Summer That Melted Everything; add a relationship with the same disturbing overtones as those of My Dark Vanessa; combine with the weird atmosphere of two or three short stories by Kelly Link and Elizabeth Hand; and you have something unnerving, strange, yet rich and rather beautiful.

It opens with an article describing the disappearance of Cassandra Tipp, a 74-year-old romance novelist. Cassie was reclusive, but somewhat notorious: she was accused (and cleared) of her husband Tommy's murder 40 years earlier; her therapist wrote a famous book about the case; her father and brother died in a suspected murder-suicide some years later. The narrative continues as a lengthy document Cassie has written for her named heirs, her niece and nephew Penelope and Janus. They must read this manuscript in order to obtain the password that will allow them to claim her estate.

In the manuscript, Cassie spins a fantastic story – a literal fairytale. She claims that, since the age of five, she has been acquainted with a faerie community, and in particular a close companion whom she calls Pepper-Man. This creature has been a constant throughout her life, and according to Cassie, his influence explains her difficult childhood, Tommy's murder, the deaths in her family – everything. It's up to Penelope and Janus (and the reader) to decide whether this outlandish story could possibly be true, or whether Cassie has constructed an elaborate lie. Cassie's therapist believed the latter; that she invented these characters to make sense of childhood abuse, and was so deeply traumatised she was never able to let go of the fantasy. But, then, there are things about Tommy's death that make no logical sense. And Cassie certainly makes a persuasive case.

You Let Me In weaves a brilliant, bewitching spell. At the very beginning, I found the style a little sugary; I wasn't convinced by the tone of the opening article; basically, I wasn't instantly sold. It was when Cassie began talking about the faeries that I found myself transfixed, and from then on, I didn't want to put the book down. The slightly florid prose really comes into its own when applied to tales of wood spirits flying through the night, enchanted stories delivered in jars, a man made from twigs and honey.

Cassie's account of Pepper-Man is horrible and gorgeous, sickening and seductive. Theirs is a symbiotic relationship, yet one formed so early in Cassie's life that she has no hope of escaping. Here, again, it reminded me very much of My Dark Vanessa, its strength lying in how easy it is to be convinced by the narrator's version of the story. Do you hope Pepper-Man is real because you believe in their otherworldly bond, or because you desperately want Cassie not to have been abused? Or both; again, they are inextricable.

This book is, I think, being undersold by its title (makes sense once you've read it, but at first glance seems more suited to a domestic thriller) and blurb (doesn't quite capture the richness of the story). I hope it finds its perfect readers, as it found its way to me. It was thanks to the author Kirsty Logan's five-star review that I did, and I have to echo her sentiment: when I'd finished it, I wanted to read it again.

I was lucky enough to receive an advanced copy of this book so thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity.

What’s it about -

Cassandra has always been able to see faeries, and chief amongst them is Pepper-man. He is a mercurial companion, sometimes giving and other times taking, but ever-present in Cassie’s life. This story takes the form of a memoir, where Cassie recounts a catalogue of tragedies where faeries are the only possible explanation. However, woven into her account is a separate narrative - one of abuse and pain and doing whatever it takes to see anything but the truth.

What I like About It -

The Narrative - The story is written in the first person and the voice of Cassandra is a compelling one. Unreliable or not, she is funny. She is succinct in her storytelling and never paints herself as a victim (this feeds quite heavily into your belief in the faeries).

The Style - I enjoyed Bruce’s writing and the translation captured the soul of the story very well. Specifically, I liked how the mystery unfolds. Bruce makes it so the more you know, the less you know and it makes for compelling reading. You get hints at what is to come - what has happened already - and you can do nothing but spiral towards the inevitable.

The Use of Allegory - Well, depending on your own perspective this book may contain no allegory at all. There was one particular phrase - a single line about halfway through - that tipped me one way over the other.


What I disliked -

Not much. Maybe the secondary characters could have been fleshed out a bit. Tbh I’m grasping at straws. It was a very enjoyable read.


TLDR - No handsome faerie princes here.

Throughout her life, Cassie is the only witness to the dark faeries' deeds. She has to survive her family and a murder trial.

I received a free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book is weird.
It is not a murder mystery, or thriller. It will not give you any answers.
Instead, it follows Cassie and her interactions with the faeries - these are not Disney Tinkerbells, they are real, dark, not-dead things that leech life.

For as long as she can remember, Pepper-Man has been there, drinking her blood and leeching her life, every night. He was a dark creature, who did horrible things towards all people. As a young girl, Cassie works hard to be worse than her Pepper-Man to scare people off, to keep them at a safe distance.
It seems that only Cassie can see the faeries, as her parents and others from town dismiss her silly 'stories', replacing her truth with something they can digest.

The book follows Cassie as she grows up, gets married, and eventually gets charged with the murder of her husband. This leads to her childhood psychiatrist writing an in-depth book (with Cassie's permission) about his dealings with his young subject, who is completely given over to her illusions.
Now everyone knows that she is crazy, and guilty of murder.

Cassie is not a reliable narrator, but in her words, just because one thing is the truth, doesn't make another thing untrue.
She has survived the emotional abuse inflicted by her mother, and she has come to terms with her whole family hating her. She is quiet, but strong. She accepts what she cannot change, and lives each day with simple joy.

There is always a question over what is real. Are faeries real? Is there some abuse in Cassie's early years that catapulted her into a lifetime of fantasies.
It is beautifully written, carefully balancing on the edge of both, to constantly keep you guessing, and making either a possibility. It hints at something disturbing, but still keeps you invested in Cassie and Pepper-Man's story.

This was a fascinating, but surreal story.

Bruce opens her novel with an immediate info dump thinly disguised as a newspaper article. I had to begin by reading this through twice to settle the main characters back story in my mind.
As I progressed I found the Pepper Man to be a fascinating character and his relationship with Cassie is the most complicated I've ever read.

My opinions on Cassie swung wildly throughout the novel. She was helpless, innocent, cruel, obstinate, intelligent, naive, selfish but protective. To be honest I don't know how I felt! Pity was probably my strongest emotion.
Brother Ferdinand seemed more like a plot device than a full fledged character, I'd like to have read more of him. Mara and Mother were both well imagined, their relationships with Cassie give the reader good insight into our MC- she is all that really matters in this novel, Cassie. This is Cassie's story after all.

The descriptions of faerie were vivid and well written, my favourite parts of You Let Me In were the world building and time spent with the fae.

Told via articles, book excerpts and a letter written to (the reader) Cassie's niece and nephew, You Let Me in tells two sides of the same story- it's mostly left to us to read between the lines. You won't find the answer in this book, you choose your own.

Will you believe in the Pepper-Man?

This was weird. And I’m not sure it was the good kind of weird.

Cassandra Tipp, successful novelist, has gone missing at 74 years old. No one knows where she could have gone, or why, but she leaves behind a document for her relatives with specific instructions in the case of her disappearance. These instructions are Cassandra’s story, detailing her life meeting a fairy friend as a child and cumulating in the reason behind her disappearance. But is Cassandra telling the truth?

The plot itself is confusing, with fairies and families and magical realism and an unreliable narrator that ultimately left me unclear what was going on. I can’t deny this was well written, it’s incredible atmospheric and whimsical throughout, but by the end I was just kind of left wondering what was the point? It feels very unresolved and nothing is explained in enough detail for me. It’s all left a little too much to the reader’s imagination, which personally feels lazy. I need some logic and realism in my fantasy, and found this really didn’t suit my tastes.

Fans of magic set within a contemporary or realistic setting will enjoy this, but personally I need more a solid grounding in my fantasy, with some actual world building and explanation. This was definitely a case of it’s me, not you.

You Let Me In is a very difficult book to label in terms of its genre. Is it fantasy, horror, crime, thriller? In truth it is all of those and more, a gothic kaleidoscope of styles melded together and straining against conventional definition. The beauty of this book is that what you get is, to a large extent, what you want. Perspective is the watchword, take a step to the left and the fantastical elements drop away and you have harrowing psychological horror. Step back, expand your vision, and the horror calms replaced with a tale of raw survival. Every page is a roiling maelstrom of emotion, mostly the worst kind but not always.

It is impossible also to give you a spoiler free overview of the plot given its delicate ethereality. Any attempt to elaborate is likely to destroy You Let Me In’s gossamer web of mystery.

What I can tell you is that this isn’t your traditional faerie tale of delicate woodland sprites, or mischievous imps. These faeries are dark and grubby, rooted very much in the real world. They are primal, feral things born of blood and pain. Hungry parasites lurking in the shadows, feeding from wounds they close but never heal. Covetous of the broken and abandoned, ever seeking an invitation in.

At their head is Cassandra’s friend and protector Pepper-Man, a horrifically fascinating character;

- 'He smiled at me, a toothy grin, his skin was gray and gnarled, black warts clustered at his joints, his long white hair hung nearly to his knees, ragged and dry as old hay. He was very tall. His fingers long.'

The story is fantastic, utterly mesmerising. This book is a door, behind that door there's a scratching and I was terrified but I couldn't do anything but open it page by page. A breadcrumb trail of questions and half-truths, leading where? Well that would be telling.

The themes are dark there’s no denying that and it could make for uncomfortable reading. There were moments of revulsion and it was heartrending throughout but there was a kind of happiness to be found if you rummaged in the wreckage.

The style of writing is one that could prove polarising, given the number of DNFs showing on Goodreads who mention it. It is written in the first person from the perspective of protagonist Cassandra Tipp. It’s a well suited vehicle for the narrative I found as it creates an intimacy with Cassandra, as if she she is telling you her story.
The bulk of the novel is written in a very blunt, matter of fact way. But there are passages of beautifully descriptive language and it is telling that these are found when Cassandra is speaking about happier memories;

- 'I remember cake on the porch, fat pieces of fruit embedded like jewels in the sponge. The setting sun before us bleeding a golden light that turned her hair into a coppery river, turned her milky skin a darker, softer shade'

The writing style doesn’t always work however particularly during the sections relating to excerpts from Dr. Martin’s books. These sections can be a little jarring and lacking in authenticity in that they read exactly the same as Cassandra’s voice. Though given her unreliable narration they may well be.

Including Dr. Martin there around seven supporting, human, characters. There’s no real characterisation of them but there’s no real need for there to be. We are given enough throughout the book to form grounded opinions on their behaviours and culpability in Cassandra’s development.

There are a handful of faeries of various types and builds, which again for the most part aren't super fleshed out but there's enough to hint at their personality and their own particular brand of menace.

In terms of pacing I had no issues. You Let Me In reads as a journalistic manuscript and so its more a series of thoughts and memories, action replaced by periods of intense emotion and macabre oppression.

There’s no solid conclusion by the end of the book it’s more a question of which reality, which truth do you accept? The ending will provoke introspection and discussion between readers of that I have no doubt, in this instance the ambiguity is very much a positive.

It’s an exhilarating read and it dragged me through the entire thing in a single day, which is quite an achievement given I’m not the fastest of readers. Genuinely this was my first ‘unputdownable’ book.

I’ll definitely be purchasing a physical copy upon release so I can re-read it and I imagine the second read to be a lot different, knowing what I now.

Who would I recommend this to?

If you are comfortable with dark, potentially triggering situations and want a thought provoking read this is for you.
I’d say You Let Me In is comparable to the dark gothic fiction of Shirley Jackson coupled with the claustrophobic horror of Stephen King and the alluring grotesques of Pan’s Labyrinth.

Thanks again to the publisher and Netgalley for the early copy. Thanks also to my wife Lori who suggested I request it.

What a bonkers story. It deserve a more dramatic word than 'bonkers' but bonkers is the one that keeps circling my mind as I'm stumbling out of this one.

Cassandra Tipp is a figure of infamy in rural somewhere. Once (or twice) an accused murderess, then an eccentric old bat who lived alone in the woods writing romance. A year later and her niece and nephew are carrying out the terms of her will, reading the manuscript left for them by this missing-presumed-dead relative.

Neither of Cassie's stories are happy. A traumatized child becomes an unstable adult and the questions mount up over the years marked by further tragedies.

This is a compelling one. There are a few choices that I'm unsure were effective for me, but to each their own there.

I would have preferred to meet the niece and nephew, to engage with them as characters in the story rather than as imagined characters in Cassie's story. If for no other reason than it'd have convinced me that this wasn't just a sad cry for help that no one will ever here because the writer is just dead in the yard somewhere and nobody has noticed...

I think that the recollection of Cassie's childhood is also just a little too good at keeping the cat in the bag, so to speak. I get there is an element of repression here, but I think a darker shade on certain characters earlier on would have made the eventual reveal a bit more meaningful. I'm not explaining that well, but it is hard to do without spoilers. So, moving on.

This is an instance of an unreliable narrator done terribly well and I really couldn't put it down.

I do wish I hadn't read this one immediately after <i>My Dark Vanessa</i>. If I were a better blurb-read-between-the-lines-er I probably would have inferred that we were going to be looking at simialr themes here and I'd have given the two reads a bit more distance. Though perhaps reading them side-by-side reflects meaningfully on both as these two authors present related narratives in two vastly different ways. And, both were challenging and beautifully moving.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the arc to review.

I found the way the book was written to be very clunky. The book is written in the first person, addressing the second person, and this was very distracting. I didn’t particularly enjoy the story. I loved the cover, but you know what they say.

Initially I was drawn to this book because of the cover but the story and characters quickly dragged me into the story. I love it, couldn’t put it down for long. Can’t wait to see what else comes from this author.

Compelling at times, You Let Me In excels at ambiguity.

It's hard to say much without giving the plot away and even then, it's left to each reader to make their mind up. There's hints and support for either of the options and I guess it could all come down to where the book is shelved, crime or fantasy.

The story is at times hugely engaging and I'll be interested to see more from Camilla Bruce.

I enjoyed the start of this book. We have (or rather don't have!) Cassie Trip, an eccentric and ageing author who has not been seen for a year. Her nephew and niece are carrying out her final instructions by visiting her house. They find a manuscript from Cassie with instructions that they are to read it to claim their inheritance. It is Cassie's life story and her executors read this as we do. I thought it had a good feel to it.

While a number of people appear in the book there really are only two characters of any real importance. Cassie herself and Pepper Man so named because there is apparently a slight smell of pepper when he is around. Is this a matter of "strange/imaginary childhood friends" or something much darker?... I'm guessing her nephew and niece did not expect the story that we are given. I certainly did not. We do know that Cassie had problems and fell out with her family for various reasons - what is her explanation of this.

The blurb for this book says more than once that it is an "extraordinary" book. It also states that it is dark and disturbing. I agree with these words. However, looking a little deeper, I found this simply didn't gel together into the powerful story that I was expecting from this synopsis. The book certainly shows a very vivid imagination though. As I said earlier the start got my attention and I was looking forward to the journey. It was quite an interesting read however it was never compelling for me.

The supernatural aspect is there with tones of legend and faerie stories. However I found it hard to escape the feeling that this was simply to do with a youngster who blamed bad things on their imaginary friend who was real honestly... It is hard not to give things away at this point and I really would prefer people to discover what happens for themselves. However I do think this is a book that will divide people. Without question some will find it great but I think it may be that a proportion of people for whom it does not work. Maybe I simply never "got it" as far as this book is concerned however I can't honestly say it worked for me.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for an early copy of You Let Me In.

I devoured this mysteriously bonkers book in one sitting. You Let Me In is a half mystery and half dark fairytale which centres around the story of Cass' tumultuous life told through a letter to her niece and nephew. I will say no more as it is best to go in to this book with as little knowledge as possible.

If you can suspend your disbelief and get lost in the truly bizarre and engaging story then I would recommend this as a great read for a winter's day.

4/5