Let the Right One In is probably one of the strangest novels I have ever read. Oskar is a young boy who lives with his mother in a housing complex in Blackeberg, Sweden. His father is an alcoholic and Oskar sees him only intermittently. At school, Oskar is friendless and is bullied cruelly by two boys in his class who take every available opportunity to make his life miserable. Until he meets Eli, a strange child who lives in the apartment next door to him and only comes out at night. Odd things are happening in Blackeberg - there is concern about people going missing when they go out at night. The police cannot make any sense of it.

Let the Right One In is dark, occasionally humourous, morbid and often grotesque. The characters, and there are many, are distasteful and unlikeable. The overwhelming feeling of the novel is grey, grim and forbidding, like November weather every day. The "good guy", if there is indeed one, is a 200 year old vampire that appears in the form of a child, engaging in despicable behaviour in order to survive.

The novel is far too long at 519 pages, with too many characters and overlapping storylines, and is in need of some ruthless editing as the story could be told in far fewer pages. Rather than being darkly entertaining, with humour to take the edge off of the grim events, Let the Right One In is often just disgusting and indulges in gratuitous descriptions of truly repulsive creatures or events.

There is some redemption shown in the true friendship and trust displayed between Eli and Oskar when they ultimately decide who to "let in", but it isn't sufficient to save this book for me.