Pretty much any book by British author Lisa Jewell is a guaranteed slump buster. While I haven’t always loved every book I’ve read (and I’ve read several: None of This is True, The Family Remains, The Night She Disappeared, Invisible Girl, The Family Upstairs, Watching You, I Found You, The Girls in the Garden), every single one of them has been an entertaining, fast-paced read. Jewell’s latest novel, Don’t Let Him In, is no exception.

Ash Swann’s life has taken a bit of a turn. Her father has recently died, she’s had a bit of trouble at work, and she’s moved back home to recover from both of these traumatic events. That’s when Nick Radcliffe enters her life– well, her mother’s life. He reaches out to the Swanns after her father’s death and before you can say “to good to be true” he has insinuated himself into their lives.

Martha and her husband Alistair live a quiet life with their three children. Martha has a thriving florist business, and Al has a busy job in the hospitality industry where “Sometimes he’s home all the time, other times they call him in at the last minute and he’s away for days.” Martha forgives him time and again because she never imagined that as a forty-four-year-old divorcee she’d meet someone like Al.

There’s a third voice in the book, this one belonging to a male character and set four years in the past. He’s very forthcoming about his marriage to an older woman, Tara, whose adult children disapproved of the union. Tara’s daughter, Emma,

doesn’t like me at all. Neither of Tara’s children does. I don’t care too much about that. I can’t say I particularly like them either. I don’t need to like them, and they don’t need to like me. The most important thing, the key to everything, is that my wife trusts me. And she does. Implicitly.

Careful readers will have no trouble figuring out how these three separate narratives and timelines connect. The fun in this story is really in watching women band together – spearheaded by Ash – to out a snake in the grass. Does it strain credulity? Yes. Did that matter? No. Don’t Let Him In is a fun time and I gobbled it up in just a couple sittings.