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Dec 06, 2010

Paul rated it:

I finally got my revenge on Sweden. For most of my life I’ve been bombarded with newspapers and radio telling me how Sweden is so much much very much absolutely completely better than Britain at practically everything. Here’s some random quotes from the BBC news archive :

“Sweden has probably the strongest freedom of information law anywhere in the world.”

“Sweden has one of the best staffed health services in the world. But as a parent, Sweden seems the perfect place to ha More...

69 comments like (161 people liked it)

Mar 23, 2010

Manny rated it:

You know that bit at the beginning of Amadeus, where Salieri has composed this very uninspired little march, which he and the Emperor play for Mozart? Then Mozart sits down at the keyboard and says, hm, that's not quite right, is it? And he messes around with it for a couple of minutes, until he's suddenly transformed it into "Here's farewell to the games with the girls" from The Marriage of Figaro.

Well, it's like that Låt den rätte komma in and Twilight. John Ajvide Lindq More...

29 comments like (144 people liked it)

Nov 20, 2011

Kat rated it:

Imagine for a moment that you were at an event, like the 1995 Rugby World cup where South Africa both hosted and won. Imagine being there in the heat of that moment - the cheer and ebulation. That light, almost unreal sense that the world has faded away and there is only that moment. Nothing else is important and you want to quietly capture the complete bliss you are experiencing and put it in a bottle somewhere. Hopefully at some future date you can take it out and rekindle those emotions a More...

17 comments like (50 people liked it)

Oct 08, 2011

Stephen rated it:

Soiled…soiled and a bit emotionally off-kilter.

That’s the best I can do to describe how this book made me feel. It’s dark, morose and...really…really...REALLY…creepy. Not strange sounds and creaking doors creepy. Creepy like that "overly affectionate" uncle who stares at you too often and always wants a hug that lasts for an inappropriate length of time. That kind of creepy.

This book oozes it.

The working class Swedish suburb where the story takes pl More...

30 comments like (74 people liked it)

Feb 08, 2012

Tatiana rated it:

As seen on The Readventurer

I can't even find the words to describe how much I LOVED this novel. But let me start by warning Twilight lovers that this book is not about sexy sparkly vampires and teenage love. If you are not ready to read about ugly realities of human life, do not open this book.

It is not an easy book to read. The story is complex and involves many characters, whose presence sometimes is just momentary. The action moves from one character to another very quick More...

9 comments like (33 people liked it)

Mar 31, 2011

Esteban rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

11 comments like (30 people liked it)

Feb 02, 2011

Kristen rated it:

Terrifying, engrossing and a book that encompasses many different topics. Not just a story about vampires; this book takes on such issues as bullying, revenge, pedophilia, prostitution, drug use, alcoholism and the sheer desperation of loneliness. Beautifully written and terribly disturbing. This book sets the bar for the genre.

4 comments like (31 people liked it)

Oct 27, 2010

Kemper rated it:

After watching the Swedish movie this book is based on, I thought it was an intensely creepy film and promptly got the book to check out the full story. I figured that the planned American film version would be a pale shadow of the original because there’s no way that a Hollywood movie studio is going to show that messed up tale in it’s original form to audiences in the U.S. Little did I know that even the Swedish producers didn’t have the collective nutsack to give us the full story on how go More...

11 comments like (54 people liked it)

Sep 06, 2010

Kasia rated it:

It's bumming me out. 50 pages in and I'm giving up. I don't think I can take this much gore any longer. It's disturbing. I need at least one likable character - someone to root for, only then I can take in gore, serial murderers, pedophilia and such. Without somebody to identify with, suffering through one violent description after another is no fun. This was no fun.

And now I'm fighting this urge: I want to crawl in under the table, wrap myself up in a blanket, stuck a thumb into my More...

20 comments like (16 people liked it)

Jan 01, 2009

Jeff rated it:

Having seen the film before reading the novel, I'm less impressed than I might have been had the experiences been reversed. I was engaged throughout, but compared to Lindqvist's screenplay, the novel felt bloated and overtly prurient (while Tomas Alfredson's film was more atmospheric, nuanced, erotic, morally ambiguous, and mesmerizing). Every episode cut from the novel during the adaptation process was absolutely necessary; and a character central to the novel (Haken) was whittled down to just More...

5 comments like (20 people liked it)

Feb 11, 2009

Nicole rated it:

I discovered this story when I discovered the movie. I enjoyed the film so much I wanted to know more. "Let the Right One In" is in some ways unrelentingly grim. There a lot of horrifying things in it that have absolutely nothing to do with the supernatural, especially if you stop to really thing about them. The horror itself is good too. I've read tons of vampire fiction and find this to be a truly refreshing take on the genre. In terms of the characters, I thought both Oskar and Eli More...

2 comments like (25 people liked it)

Jan 14, 2009

Belinda rated it:

Call this one "The Anti-Twilight." They had me at "the Swedish Stephen King." Um, not so much.

Easily the most *interesting* read in a long time. 4 stars instead of 5, or 3, because the story--just the pure story? Meh. In itself, only just compelling enough to keep me reading. But the characters--OH, the characters. I ached for every one of them. For a classic co-dependent like me, looking into the lonely, heartache-ridden lives in this book is pure agony... More...

1 comment like (18 people liked it)

Dec 21, 2010

Meghan rated it:

*This book is now in paperback under the title Let the Right One In*

The story of Oskar, a 12 year-old boy living in a suburb of Stockholm, who is bullied mercilessly at school, has divorced parents, an alcoholic dad, suffers bouts of incontinence, shoplifts for fun, and keeps a scrapbook of newspaper clippings dealing with murder. Needless to say, for one so young, Oskar has plenty of problems, but no one to talk to.

Life becomes a bit more exciting when a strange murder o More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Mar 07, 2010

smetchie rated it:

I can't stop thinking about the characters. Most of them weren't likable but I ended up caring for them anyway. In the way you care about your family even if they're screwed up and do really bad things. This book is gruesome, horrifying, sweet and tender. how strange.

8 comments like (9 people liked it)

Dec 21, 2010

Terence rated it:

I wasn't quite sure I wanted to write an actual review/reflection about this novel. I didn't "learn" anything from this book (except maybe how not to troll for victims of my or my master's vampiric lusts?), and other reviewers here (and elsewhere) have adequately summarized the story for the interested. But in light of the flood of vampire-themed schlock we've been enduring the last few years...

For those who care - Read this novel. It's very good. It's an example of what a More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Jun 04, 2008

Rebecca rated it:

I had expectations on this book, since I got it as a homework and my teacher was all excited over it. I didn't really expect it to be so unusual though, and with unusual I mean diffrent from it's genre. It's stamped as a vampire/terror book and when you hear that you often think about dark alleys, poles, vampire hunters and so on but this is totally different. First of all it takes place in a swedish suburb in the 80's and the main character (Oscar) is a normal swedish boy who gets bullied. Then More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 12, 2009

christa rated it:

I read an interview with Stephenie Meyer, writer of the "Twilight" series, where she said something about how she had taken liberties with the classic vampire story because she was writing fiction and there are no hard-fast rules about what vampires can or cannot do. So she did things like make their skin glimmer in the sunlight.

This is a laughable about of liberty -- not to mention creativity -- considering what John Ajvide Lindqvist has done with the vampire of his novel More...

2 comments like (10 people liked it)

Oct 19, 2009

Hannah rated it:

Let me preface my 3-star rating by saying that if this were the type of book I generally read, this would no doubt be 5 stars. As it is not, consider my 3-stars as the highest rating I can give this novel. By any account, this is a masterpiece of it's genre.

Let the Right One In is not for the squeamish. Not for the easily despressed. Definitely not for the teen looking for the next "Twilight". This is not your mother's "Dracula".

This novel is rele More...

39 comments like (7 people liked it)

May 25, 2011

Krys rated it:

I'm trying to figure out how best to talk about this one. I started reading Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist for a book group with my girlfriends. I did not choose this one, however, I have been looking forward to it for a while. It's supposed to be the scariest, best Vampire tale. Ever. Period. End of story.

For the record, it's terrifying. So much so that I couldn't read it at night. It freaked me out too much. That said, it's not the vampire parts of the book that I fo More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 12, 2009

rachel rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

5 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 03, 2009

Tara rated it:

There's been a lot of international buzz about this film. The trailer was intriguing, so I went out on a limb to pick up the book, which was a bestseller in Sweden. Believe me, it takes a lot anymore to get me to even consider reading a vampire novel, but this is simply unlike any other work in the genre. I'd even hesitate to call this a "genre novel," although it is certainly horrifying. Indeed, it's possibly the creepiest, most unusual horror novel I've ever read. The most basic plot More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Dec 21, 2010

Leah rated it:

I first saw the movie with my brother...it drew me in and took me away...was beautifully shot with rich color and the characters were perfect. My heart went out to them...innocence and first loves along with heartache and growing pains. I fell in love with it all.

For Christmas my brother truly suprised me with this book and I couldn't wait to tear into it. Basically it reaffirmed my thinking on some parts of the movie that I was not completely sure on-filled in the blank spots an More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 03, 2009

Elke rated it:

Besonders beeindruckt an dem Buch hat mich der Schreibstil und die dadurch geschaffene Atmosphaere. Alles wirkt grau, trist und einsam. Die anonyme Wohnsiedlung und das kalte Winterwetter spiegeln perfekt die beklemmende Trostlosigkeit wieder, die im Leben der Charaktere, vor allem von Oskar, herrscht. Das alles aendert sich mit der Ankunft von Eli.

Obwohl - oder gerade weil - der Autor absolut nuechtern und sachlich schreibt und jegliche Ausschmueckung seiner Saetze vermeidet, hat da More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 31, 2008

Mike rated it:

I decided this was the perfect holiday rejoinder, grey Swedish tones and a dash of horror. I also wanted to finish it up before managing to get out to the highly-touted adaptation...

... but the book was even better than hoped, and all-around fantastic: grim and horrifying, then slyly funny and revealing, about the viciousness and loneliness of adolescence (and of a certain strand of alcoholism, and of the constraints of class); then a whole other horrible using the tropes of vampire More...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Jan 19, 2012

Brandon rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 10, 2008

Jenny rated it:

The book is easily as great as the film. I am no fan of the horror genre-- not a sworn enemy, just not a big fan. But I can hardly tear myself away from LtROi. The worst thing about it, really, is that I'm reading it a little too fast. Well, yes, it's also absolutely extremely grotesque, no amount of hyperbole could match the original effect, and that's hard to take. I don't normally read gross stuff, as I said, so I'm not sure how it rates in the genre, but judging from the other reviews on thi More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Mar 17, 2009

Shanon rated it:

Let me start off by saying that my favorite scene was the one told from the point-of-view of the squirrel. One of the few scenes I actually was able to giggle.

I am completely impressed with this author and his ability to weave a tale so descriptive, real, disturbing and yet enjoyable. I did not find any of the characters likable but was, never the less, pulled into each of their stories. Despite not being overly fond of the main characters I found myself cheering for Oskar and El More...

8 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 13, 2009

Matt rated it:

I've been striking out a lot lately when trying new books.

I don't consume much horror fiction. I can sink my teeth in Edgar Allen Poe and thrill to the chill of H.P.Lovecraft, but for the most part I find I don't have a taste for modern horror. But I've been trying to broaden my reading interests if only because I sometimes feel I've tapped out Sci-Fi and that I need some new blood.

I read this novel under the American title of 'Let me in'. I only got about 150 page More...

5 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 26, 2009

Megan rated it:

I really enjoyed this book. It was well written and creepy. I was able to sympathize with the characters, even if they did wicked things. I would have given it five stars if the ending was better. I'm looking forward to watching the movie when it comes out on DVD.

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2009

Sramosobriant rated it:

Hakan is to Eli as Renfield was to Dracula, only with a sick twist. He worships Eli, but it’s his sexual compulsion which drives the truly horrific, and the sickly comic, aspects of this story. He supplies her with blood . . . at a price, but his ineptitude leads to his capture. Even here, Eli takes pity on him, but her sympathy leads to a further twist in the story and Hakan becomes a zombie with an erection. This is new in vampire lit. It is also social commentary. Hakan is a pedophile who wil More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)