Book Bites: ‘Don’t Let Him In’, ‘Beautiful Ugly’ and ‘Karla’s Choice’

Don’t Let Him In

Lisa Jewell, Penguin

**** (4 stars)

Lisa Jewell has done it again with this captivating, fast-paced, gripping read. It’s a dark thriller with a narcissistic, toxic man at the heart of this domestic suspense tale. Be warned, this book will have you feeling frustrated and wanting to shake sense into some of the characters. The protagonist, Nic, goes about leading double lives, preying on women with his good looks, easy charm, and perfect husband traits. Shortly after reading this book, I came across an interview with Jewell in which she described her own experience as a young woman when she was caught up in a toxic marriage with a controlling man, only to be left asking, “How could that happen to me? I am not stupid”. This book vividly captures just how easily it can happen to even the most confident, intelligent women. – Gill Gifford

Beautiful Ugly

Alice Feeney, Macmillan

★★★ (3 stars)

Author Grady Green’s wife, Abby, disappears one night without a trace, sending his life along a downward spiral. When his agent offers him a writing cabin on a remote Scottish island in a last-ditch attempt to get him to write another book and pay off his debts, he accepts. Only, once there, he starts seeing his missing wife. The inhabitants of the island – who are all a bit strange – lead him to believe he’s seeing things, and soon he starts finding bizarre notes, and experiencing things he cannot explain. Reminiscent of a Freida McFadden novel, the twist is one you don’t see coming but it’s not quite enough to redeem a shallow main character and a plot that seems somewhat self-indulgent for what feels unnecessarily long. – Sanet Oberholzer

Karla’s Choice

Nick Harkaway, Viking

**** (4 stars)

If anybody were to step into the shoes of the late legendary novelist John le Carré (born David Cornwell) and take over his most beloved character – brilliant, rumpled spy George Smiley – it should be the author’s son. And it is. Nick Harkaway (born Nicholas Cornwell) calls the latest of his eight novels, Karla’s Choice, “a John le Carre novel”, and sets the story in 1963 after Smiley has left the British intelligence service MI6, which le Carré dubbed “the Circus”. Harkaway wondered if he “could fit some sort of story into that 10-year gap” between two of le Carré’s other Smiley novels, he writes in an author’s note: “It was as if Smiley was there, waiting patiently, and I was slightly late.” Smiley has left the Circus and is coaxed back to solve a mystery that leads him, perilously, to his nemesis, Russian spymaster Karla. It’s a great book. Le Carré would be proud. - William Saunderson-Meyer