Story for the Week
The first twins I ever met were my cousins. On my dad’s side, there are ten cousins, and we spent a lot of time together at our grandparents’ house. It never seemed out of the ordinary to me to know a set of twins because I have never known a life without twins.
To some of my friends, it was a strange phenomenon. I remember having pictures of both Chris and Connie in my wallet. They were wearing the same striped blue turtleneck, had their hair styled the same, but I could easily tell them apart. They are my family after all. But one of my friends was flipping through my photos one day and asked why I had two pictures of the same person. I told him I didn’t and that they were twins. He kept flipping back and forth between the two, convinced I was trying to pull a fast one on him. I was confused by the fact that he couldn’t tell the very obvious (to me) difference.
Twins run in the genes somewhere, and there are several cousins who have twins of their own. (Red hair also randomly pops up in the gene pool, but that’s a different story.) When I was pregnant with Corinne, my father joked that maybe she would be twins. My mother-in-law, who is an identical twin in the first set of triplets ever born in Trinidad, hoped I would have triplets. I told both of them to keep quiet because one was enough.
But I know quite a few other sets of twins, and I’m not counting the ones who were fertility treatment twins. (If you add those in, the number goes up exponentially.) When I attended church camp as a camper and a counselor, there were Andy and Gina. When I went to college, my roommate’s brother roomed with John who was an identical twin with Rudy. Ironically, those two sets of twins also share a birthday.
When I started working after college, my boss had twin boys—Justin and I’m-sorry-I-don’t-remember-Justin’s-twin’s-name. My brother-in-law’s mother also is a twin. So I can think of six sets of twins just off the top of my head. I’m guessing there also are friends that I don’t even know are twins.
Twins seem to randomly appear in my life, which honestly, I think is kind of cool. Good thing I’m usually pretty good at telling them apart. 😏
Book Review
⭐⭐½
2.5 Stars for Let Him In by William Friend
240 pages
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Publication Date: October 3, 2023
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press.
Publisher’s Description
Alfie wakes one night to find his twin daughters at the foot of his bed, claiming there’s a shadowy figure in their bedroom. When no such thing can be found, he assumes the girls had a nightmare.
He isn’t surprised that they’re troubled. Grief has made its home at Hart House: nine months ago, the twins’ mother Pippa died unexpectedly, leaving Alfie to raise them alone. And now, when the girls mention a new imaginary friend, it seems like a harmless coping mechanism. But the situation quickly develops into something more insidious. The girls set an extra place for him at the table. They whisper to him. They say he’s going to take them away…
Alfie calls upon Julia―Pippa’s sister and a psychiatrist―to oust the malignant tenant from their lives. But as Alfie himself is haunted by visions and someone watches him at night, he begins to question the true character of the force that has poisoned his daughters’ minds, with dark and violent consequences.
Whatever this “friend” is, he doesn’t want to leave. Alfie will have to confront his own shameful secrets, the dark past of Hart House, and even the bounds of reality―or risk taking part in an unspeakable tragedy.
************
Main Characters:
- Alfie – “widowed” nine months prior when his partner Pippa died suddenly (they never married), faced with raising their 8-year-old twin daughters in the house that Pippa grew up in
- Julia – Pippa’s twin sister, a psychiatrist
- Cassia & Sylvie – Alfie and Pippa’s twins who have started seeing a man in their bedroom since their mother’s death
William Friend’s debut novel had soooo much potential. And then it ended.
The story is told from the alternating perspectives of Alfie and Julia, both dealing with their grief after losing Pippa. At the same time, they struggle with how to help Cassia and Sylvie, who have started seeing a man in their bedroom. Julia assures Alfie that it’s a totally normal manifestation of their grief. Alfie begins to believe that the girls think “Black Mamba,” as they call him, is real.
The story begins with the girls coming to sleep with Alfie in his bed night after night because of a man in their room. He assumes they’re having nightmares after their mother’s death, and eventually they go back to their own room. When they start telling him about Black Mamba appearing to them as a snake or a bird or a fish, he grows increasingly concerned and seeks Julia’s help.
Julia is challenged by her own grief and doesn’t feel like she has the capacity to help the twins deal with theirs. She lost her own twin, after all, when Pippa died. When she hears about Black Mamba, though, she feels an obligation to help and implies that his appearance is somehow her fault.
I was sucked into this story. The author did a great job of dropping hints of what might be the source of Black Mamba and what really happened to Pippa, continually referencing “the accident.” I assumed the book would take a somewhat mystical turn since Black Mamba definitely has some mystical undertones. There are also references throughout to other people who have died in the house, Pippa and Julia’s parents’ “religion,” and their father walking around the house shaking a rattle.
And Alfie seems to become more than a little unhinged. I thought for sure this was a case of the house having a supernatural element—almost like the hotel in The Shining or the game in Jumanji—especially since Pippa and Julia’s dad died in the house when they were children.
But then….
***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS***
I really thought that Julia and Pippa, and their parents by way of their religion, had conjured Black Mamba when Julia and Pippa were children. Their dad was always walking around the house shaking a wooden rattle, became unhinged himself, and committed suicide. This is never explained.
Julia keeps implying that this is all her fault, so then I thought they had somehow banished Black Mamba when she and Pippa were young, and somehow Pippa’s death brought him back. There’s a sub-plot about photographs never being displayed because they open some sort of spirit world. Also never explained.
Then I was convinced that Alfie was somehow possessed by Black Mamba because the twins said he looked a little like their dad, but that doesn’t appear to be the case either. They kept referencing Pippa’s accident, which I assumed early on had been the cause of her death. The accident was her coming home drunk from a night out and hitting her head on the bathroom mirror. At one point, I actually thought Alfie killed her because he admitted they were arguing at the time. But she just needed stitches. She died after being bitten or stung by something while playing with the twins, and she had an allergic reaction. So the accident is kind of irrelevant.
Julia’s mother suffers headaches, joint pain, and chronic fatigue, but she is able to set up candles all along the stairwells in a three-story house and then climb a ladder into the attic when the power goes out. And then Black Mamba just vanishes that night after she talks with the twins. They never talk about him again until the last few pages when the twins “tease” their Auntie Julia.
Nothing about the ending of this book made any sense. Two-and-a-half stars because it started well, but it’s a hard miss for me.
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