Pages

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Review: Let the Right One In

Let the Right One In: A Novel

Synopsis from Amazon:
Swedish author Lindqvist's debut, a horror novel, offers few twists that won't already be familiar to readers of modern vampire fiction. Oskar, a much bullied 12-year-old schoolboy living in a Stockholm suburb, notices that his next-door neighbor, Eli, has some peculiar traits: Eli only comes out at night, smells like death warmed over and is of ambiguous gender. Eventually, Eli reveals he's a vampire who survives by feeding off the neighborhood lowlifes. Occasionally, his bite accidentally turns victims into undeads who, unaware of their vampirization, go on rampages that end in spectacularly gruesome fates. As sweet as the pure and wholesome friendship between Oskar and Eli may be, it's the gory set pieces that propel the predictable plot.

My review:
I do not like scary books or movies.  I just get way to freaked out by them and have nightmares for weeks.  I also don't really like books about vampires and other supernatural beings.  I saw this book recommended by several people online and ordered it off of paperbackswap.com.  It is supposed to be scary, but I did not find it scary at all, although it did scare me a little bit to read at night (but I'm a wimp.)  The main character Oscar was a little bit annoying (mostly because he was a young boy), but I also felt sorry for him.  I got a little bit confused when the author described what happened to Eli.  This was one of those books that I could not put down.  It was long, but it was a fairly fast read.  I highly recommend this book.

2 comments:

  1. I recently got this book too because I've heard good things! I think it's also been made into a movie.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Is that synopsis from Amazon satirical? If not, it must be the worst synopsis of this novel that I have ever seen. I suppose I should go to Amazon and see for myself, but I'm afraid that might actually be what they have to say about it. =:-O

    Do you find that synopsis to be accurate?

    ReplyDelete