Don’t Let Him In – Lisa Jewell

When a mysterious new man enters her mother’s life too quickly following her father’s death, Ash gets a bad feeling in her gut.  The more she digs, the more she realizes that this man, who claimed to be an old acquaintance of her father, is not quite what he seems, despite having ready answers for any of her probing questions or concerns.  A deeper dive leads her to the truth. and the scores of women he has scammed and families he has abandoned over the years.

Lisa Jewell’s latest, Don’t Let Him In, was a 2025 nominee for the Goodreads Choice award for Favorite Mystery & Thriller, which is somewhat surprising since there isn’t much of a mystery here and the thrills are rather light as well.  It is obvious fairly quickly that the men with the different names making time with the different women are all the same man and, once the jealousy was first introduced, it wasn’t much of a surprise to learn what role he played in the death of the protagonist’s father, which kicked the whole story into motion.  I was more in tune with the previous work of hers I had read, so hopefully this was more of a blip in the road.