Audiobook Review:

Don’t Let Him In by Lisa Jewell

Read by Richard Armitage, Joanne Froggatt, Tamaryn Payne, Gemma Whelan, Louise Brealey and Patience Tomlinson

Published: June 2025

Summary from Goodreads:

Confession:

This book was so good and so totally captivating. The best part were the very believable characters, and a story that will keep you on the edge of your seat waiting for the villain to get his comeuppance. The narrators all did an excellent job as well. This full cast audiobook was the best experience for this book.

Richard Armitage steals the show with his chapters as Nick or Al or various other names. His voice is just dripping with charm and charisma and you just want to believe everything he says. He was perfect for the part. Both Joanne Froggat as Martha, and Tamaryn Payne as Ash are excellent as two of the woman whose lives are upended by this man. These three make up the bulk of the books points of view with a few others thrown in here and there and done by the other voices. This audiobook was a delight to listen to and one I soon won’t forget.

This author writes villains so well. She really gets into their minds and just makes them so believable. I really felt sorry at times for this man, who I’ll call Nick although he goes by many names. I could totally see why so many women fell for him. I do think at the time Nick really believes that he loves them and wants to do what is best for them, even while he is doing things that hurt them. I was really glad that his point of view was included as it really helped to see how he thought and why he did what he did. He is a sociopath, and he has rather a vindictive streak when it comes to even the tiniest of perceived slights against him. Watching his world slowly fall to pieces around him was also a bit of a thrill.

Both Martha and Ash were very compelling characters. Martha is a woman who is just trying to live her life as she perceives it, when her husband starts acting even stranger than usual. Ash is a very troubled young woman who sees something in Nick that just rubs her the wrong way. She is the catalyst for Nick’s downfall and it was really interesting to see her piece everything together with very little information. Nick is an enigma, without a presence online, but as she keeps digging, Ash does eventually discover what is really going on. The differences in these two women’s perceptions of Nick were very important to the story.

The story itself was fascinating. It does start off a bit slow, and there is a back and forth in the timeline that got confusing at times, but by the time you get to the end of the book you are just amazed at the twists and turns this story takes. I did have one small issue that kind of bugged me though. I don’t feel like we ever got a good explanation of what Nick did with all of the money he stole from these women. He took all this money, but yet he seemed to be perpetually broke. What happened to it? But other than that, it was a solid story that kept me totally captivated.

If you enjoy believable psychological thrillers this is one you need to add to your TBR. This is a story that could very plausibly be a true crime story, or a documentary on Netflix. The characters and the story will keep you on the edge of your seat and the twists will surprise you.