Book Review: "You Invited It In" by Sarah Jules

I was quite surprised to find this on Kindle Unlimited because it looks and feels very similar to a book I read by Sara Gran called Come Closer and that, when I read it, didn't come cheap. You Invited It In is probably not your run-of-the-mill possession horror, but definitely has some familiar tropes to keep the reader involved with the text. One thing Sarah Jules gets right is that, especially with something that is based within folklore, it has to be familiar to the reader - for example: most of us know that vampires suck blood and/or kill people doing it. If you're doing a demonic possession horror and you're planning to be original about it - it is also best to formulate some back-and-forth with the reader so that they don't feel as though you're making it up as you go along. The lore is there to use.

Felix's wife, Jenna, died in a car crash about eleven years' ago. In the present, he still grieves often and is trying to raise their child, now 12-year-old Asher, as best he can. He often has help from his brother, Eli and finds friendship in Eli's dog - Specs. This seems to make up the 'family' no matter how scattered. Felix's family secret that he inherited from his mother is that both of them can see ghosts that never passed over to the 'other side' though Felix often keeps this piece of information hidden from others - only immediate family knows.

One day his brother is joking around about seeing an advert for a psychic online and they go through reading the reviews. Felix is horrified about this woman (Lilith) is doing to people, giving them false hope and taking their money. He decides to do the right thing and expose her for the fraud she is. He phones her asking her to come over, she gives him an eye-watering price and he reluctantly agrees - knowing he has to do something. He rehearses the situation with his son, making sure he knows what to say to her if she asks. The father and son seem to enjoy wanting to expose this deceitful woman. When she arrives, she acts as though she can sense something and by the time she leaves - Felix reports her to trading standards, requesting his money back.

The author has definitely establishes a sort of dynamic here between the father and the son, a trust which cannot be replicated by anyone else. Even Eli is not as close to Felix as Asher is and the reader is definitely made to understand that through what happens next. After Lilith leaves, Asher begins seeing something at the bottom of the stairs, the things in his room move on their own and ultimately - he will request to sleep in his father's room. His father too, has seen and felt things move and compress. The house has become a haunted piece of claustrophobia and the creeping sense of 'wrong' is something that the writer does brilliantly.

After wrestling with the tension, Felix makes the request that Lilith comes back to visit the house but she doesn't really reply - once she blocks his number, then she refuses to return his messages. Only when he drives up to her home is she forced to confront things she has never admitted before. That she is, in fact, a fraud. But this isn't before the writer leads us down the rabbit hole of dire straights - the 'ghost' or 'demon' has physically hurt Asher. It is pretending to be his dead mother, trying to convince him that his father wants him dead and that he should go over and 'be with his mother' instead. Of course, both Eli and Felix understand that this is not his mother and stop his from communicating with it.

The reality also comes in the form of leaving the home entirely. Eli requests that they stay at his house, but the entity has latched itself on to Felix. When he tries to ask his mother what to do, she tells him that for the entity to leave - it must have a host and the host must die. But at Eli's house, the accident Jenna died in is being recreated as torture. The odour of burnt rubber, the clogging of Eli's throat. His head slams off the floor and he is checked into the hospital. These constant pieces of drip-fed body horror we get from the writer are part and parcel to the whole story. It is part of the lore that, if you are a fan of the 'Conjuring' movies you will know in which the entity will try mental and physical torture, often with something very personal like a child.

When Lilith is finally called back into action, we learn a great deal about how the entity got into the home. As burnt flesh, twisted and contorted bodies beyond explanation and the horrifying yet climactic conclusion which arrives sooner than we think litter the novel, the writer keeps us on edge the entire time. At once we are in the present and in the past of every main character - especially Lilith. It is a fantastic, fast-paced conteporary horror which plays with the idea of grief, longing, disbelief and accountability in a whole new way.

***

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