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Top reviews from the United States

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Angela

This is a wonderful, creepy, unsettling, haunting novel...

Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2020

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...and if you love a good faerie tale, and a good mystery, I absolutely recommend it.

This book is dark, and unlike most mysteries, it won't answer quite all your questions. The version of the truth you'll get here is the version as each character perceives and experiences it. Camilla Bruce is not here to make you comfortable. If you're familiar with Kirsty Logan's writing, she gave this book a glowing review in which she referred to it as "defiant," and it absolutely is. It follows no formula, just one unreliable narrator's shockingly unique internal universe. It's an exploration of truth, reality, and mental health. It's also an exploration of faeries, and not the nice glittering kind.

I actively sought out an advance copy of this book (in addition to later buying a copy), because I was so desperate to have my hands on it. It took me a while to *get* the novel right after I read it. I stewed for about 18 hours until everything just *clicked*. And then I fell all over myself buying a hardcover copy (I exclusively buy ebooks unless I've fallen deeply in love with a book), writing a 5 star review on Goodreads, and telling my friends. This is now an absolute favorite.

If you like darkness, faerie tales, mysteries, or explorations of a character's psyche, I highly recommend this unique and beautiful novel.

Trigger warning for exploration of abuse and trauma.

Ever Petal

Dive Deep into the Human Mind

Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2020

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Well, holy hell, what did I just read?!?

You Let Me In by Camilla Bruce is what I would call a deep dive into the human subconscious after going through serious trauma, especially from a young age. So we have Cassie Tipp, somewhat notorious author, whose husband died a long while ago, and she stood accused but was later found not guilty. Two years later, tragedy struck again with her brother and father. Now she herself has disappeared. After a year, her 'heirs', a niece and nephew, are to go to her residence and read a manuscript she's left them which contains a password they can use to claim the rest of their inheritance. This manuscript tells Cassie's story, which is hella strange unless it's all metaphorical, in which case it's terribly sad and tragic.

The characters didn't quite seem three-dimensional, but they were definitely more than one-dimensional. Clicking with a narrator like Cassie is just plain difficult. Really, in a sense, it makes sense for the characters to seem dry when you take into context who the narrator is and that she's probably mad as a hatter. The depths of what she must have experienced, though.... Intense, even if she never was very expressive about it.

I thought the plot was genius. It's a razor's edge and readers will fall down on either side, no doubt. I choose to believe in the metaphorical side of things. I wasn't a huuuuuuuge fan of the setting and not knowing precisely where it occurred, but on the other hand, these traumas can occur everywhere, and that's kind of the point, right?

Recommending the book is difficult. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea. Readers are either going to think WTF or be moved to tears. As I choose to believe what Cassie's psychiatrist wrote, I recommend this to people who enjoy navigating the maze that is the human brain and its thought processes and behaviors.

NC_Mom76

Unique Tale

Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2020

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What an interesting story. I really enjoyed this. Unlike anything I have read in quite awhile.

Meghan Beldin

Good Read

Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2020

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This book overall was a good read. Personally I didn't quite understand where the story was going and it's not my genre but I think it would be good for someone who likes mythical and or fictional books.

Amazon Customer

MUST READ!

Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2020

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INCREDIBLE! Excellent writing. Could not put the book down. The Narrative gives a unique look in the psyche of a girl as she grows into a woman. Absolute MUST read!

Jennifer

Interesting but uneven

Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2020

This book is trying hard to be two things, to tell two different stories, simultaneously. The first is a fantasy story about a girl that has a faerie for a friend. A friend she calls Pepper-Man. A friend only she can see. The second is a story about abuse and coping mechanisms and whether we can believe what is in the narrator’s (Cassie’s) mind. The book begins when Cassie is a young girl. An odd girl who spends her time in the woods, and alone, as much as possible. A defiant girl who rages at her mother and resents her pretty, perfect sister. We follow Cassie as she grows from an odd child who talks to herself to an odd adult. Cassie’s choices make clear a few things: she is angry at her mother (and her mother well deserves it), she is resentful of her sister, she wants nothing more than to get out of the home she grew up in and she will do anything to achieve that goal.

Throughout the book there are hints, some subtle, and some head-smackingly obvious, that Cassie is not an entirely reliable narrator. I believed that she believed her own story, but it is clear that she is not telling the whole truth. Not even the whole truth as she knows it. It is almost like she knows that she is withholding information but really wants you to believe the story she is telling— of faeries and a hidden world that only she has access to. Unfortunately, for me, the coyness of the narrator at certain junctures, took away from the experience for me.

I flew through this book in only two days because it is a really easy book to read. Unfortunately, it was easy in part because it is missing a necessary tension.

Top reviews from other countries

V. O'Regan

A dark and delicious work of folk horror and faerie

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 6, 2020

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My thanks to Random House U.K. Transworld Publishers/Bantam Press for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘You Let Me In’ by Camilla Bruce in exchange for an honest review.

This debut novel is seriously one of the most fascinating and disturbing works of folk horror that I have ever read. I was totally hooked from the opening and it continued to impress me throughout. On publication I bought its ebook/audiobook editions as I certainly will want to revisit.

“This is the story as I recall it, and yours now too, to guard or treasure or forget as you please. I wanted someone to know, you see. To know my truth, now that I am gone. How everything and none of it happened.”

The plot revolves around bestselling romance novelist Cassandra Tipp, who had disappeared the previous year without a trace. She is a controversial figure, who as a child had been the thinly disguised subject of a bestselling work by her therapist and later in life was a suspect in two gruesome murders. Her long estranged mother and sister remain firmly convinced of her guilt.

She has left her entire estate to her niece, Penelope, and nephew, Janus. Yet there are conditions before they can collect their inheritance. They have to go to her residence and together read the manuscript that she left behind in her study. Within it is a password that will release the estate to them.

Penelope and Janus follow these instructions and we read alongside them. The manuscript details two interwoven stories. One is of a girl touched by the faeries, who allows them into her life and is granted entry to the Otherworld and receives their magical gifts. Yet these gifts carry a price. The other is of a girl cruelly abused by those she should have been able to trust.

Which story is true? Is Cassie a victim of trauma, who as her therapist believed retreated into an elaborate fantasy world peopled by beings of folklore and legend or is she truly living between the worlds? Is she a reliable narrator or an unreliable one?

This is a very dark and atmospheric tale that is quite shocking and gruesome in places. Camilla Bruce is a very gifted storyteller and her descriptions of the faeries reminded me of the otherworldly artwork of Brian and Wendy Froud. She writes with respect for Faerie and an awareness of its allure and dangers.

Highly recommended to those who love sinister tales rich in folklore.

Joanne Sheppard

Dark, ambiguous story of trauma

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 21, 2020

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When I first started reading Camilla Bruce's You Let Me In, I thought it was going to be pure folk horror. An elderly romance novelist, Cassandra Tipp - once the defendant in a high-profile murder trial - has disappeared, assumed to be dead. When her niece and nephew arrive at her isolated home to find out the terms of her will, they find a letter which amounts to Cassandra's memoir.

What it reveals is a sinister and often uncomfortable story. As a small child, Cassandra falls under the spell of 'Pepper-Man', an adult faerie creature who attaches himself to her for the rest of her life. Pepper-Man is seemingly invisible to others, initially physically grotesque, and disruptive. His attentions are unrelenting and vampiric - quite literally - and it's Cassandra, naturally, who takes the blame for Pepper-Man's destructive mischief and for the physical injuries he inflicts on her.

And yet when, decades later, Cassandra is accused of brutally murdering her husband, a psychiatrist sent to assess her forms a very different view of what, or who, Pepper-Man might be. Clues planted earlier in the story suddenly start to make sense, and the elements of Pepper-Man's relationship with Cassandra that cause the most discomfiture in the reader are no longer subtext. Is Pepper-Man really the manipulative, oddly co-dependent faerie Cassandra insists he is? Or is he a manifestation of something, or someone, quite different and yet equally disturbing? He might even, to some degree, be both.

Either way, it's impossible not to feel desperately sorry for Cassandra, who one way or another is certainly very much a victim of Pepper-Man's abuse and of her parents' emotional neglect. There are clearly parallels between Cassandra's ties to Pepper-Man and the relationships some people continue to have with toxic, abusive people who formed attachments to them as children. When Cassandra's decisions are questionable or outright unpleasant, it's easy to see that her behaviour is fuelled by trauma. It's also easy to see why her genre of choice, when she becomes a writer, is escapist romantic fiction.

You Let Me In is written in a slightly distanced style, in which Pepper-Man and his faerie kin are the only vividly described characters, rendered with a vibrancy that the other characters lack. Cassandra's home town, or even her home country, are never named, and the story seems to take place in an oddly timeless period. In this sense, the whole book feels, appropriately, like very dark, adult fairy tale, in which the villain looms large in Cassandra's life while everything else fades into the background.

Overall, this is a cleverly-written, literary psychological horror story, full of hints, clues and ambiguities that I found myself pondering for a long time after I'd closed the book. I did find the story disturbing on some levels, as Cassandra is such a young child when Pepper-Man first appears, but equally I'd be interested to re-read it and see if, on a second reading, my conclusions about what is happening to Cassandra were the same.

CJ Cooke

Phenomenal

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 21, 2020

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Ugh Camilla Bruce’s debut novel YOU LET ME IN is PHENOMENAL. I bought the ebook (to avoid my postie having to make unnecessary deliveries during Covid) and even though I hate reading on Kindle, it was basically attached to my hand for a couple of days while I immersed myself in the world of this stunning story. It is super weird, a fairytale wrapped in a nightmare and dripping with blood and moonlight, which is completely my thing 🦇 It’s super rich in folklore and faeries and wildness. I felt for a while like the strange twilit realm of this story seeped into my own, which says a lot about this author’s skill in enabling her reader to buy into even the most strange, otherly possibilities. And there are layers to this story that compelled me to devour it - the trauma narrative was so beautifully and vividly captured. I had no idea where the story would end up, but the ending is pitch perfect.

Mark Tilbury

An original supernatural thriller

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 16, 2020

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I nearly didn't finish this book. I got to approx 15% and was in two minds about continuing with it. It was the way the story was being told though that kept me reading, and the more I read, the more I enjoyed it.

I didn't realise before starting the book that the story involves fairies. And, before you think of Tinkerbell or other nice fairy folk, think again. This depiction of fairy life and why they exist is nothing like you'd expect. It's much darker.

Cassandra Tipp is believed to be dead after being missing for a year. Her heirs are given instructions to go to her home and read a manuscript to unlock their inheritance. Cassandra became a wealthy woman after being a successful author for a number of years.

The manuscript explains how Cassandra was treated in a psychiatric unit because of her association with fairies, then accused of her husband's brutal murder. The memories held within the manuscript are really interesting, and at times really disturbing.

This wasn't the book I was expecting, but I did end up enjoying it. It's a really original concept for a supernatural thriller that I'd recommend if you're looking for something interesting and different in the genre.

*And just an extra note. Quite a few parts of the book are formatted to look like newspaper articles reporting the murder of Cassandra's husband, and her trial. They are in a paler text and smaller font than the main body of text, and quite difficult to read. I found this a shame as they add to the story, but some readers may skip them.

Kaffmatt

Recommended- remarkable ‘take’ on mental health issues

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 18, 2020

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This book is weirdly compelling. I had to continue reading to find out what the truth was behind the most unusual storyline. It is deeply disturbing and sheds light on mental health issues- in this case psychosis.
At the offset I was disappointed with what I thought was a ‘fairytale’. I’m not a fan of that genre but as the plot progressed it became very clear that something truly awful may have happened to the main character in childhood. The author drops hints throughout the telling. However, there’s also strong evidence of make believe. The author cleverly created a twofold hypothesis. Each idea could be true.
I’ll not divulge any further details of the storyline. I urge readers not to be put off at the beginning. The book is very well written and highlights the author’s remarkable imagination. I was certainly left questioning the outcome, long after I finished reading.

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