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Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) 

By John Ajvide Lindqvist 

This story takes place in a Swedish suburb in Stockholm called Blackeberg

during the early 1980's starting sometime in October.

The main character is a 12-year-old boy and he

befriends a young girl that lives next to him. However, she is a bit odd

and he cannot figure out what it is about her that's so strange...

Oskar, is frequently bullied and doesn't know how to look after himself whatsoever. His parents are divorced and he lives in an apartment, which acts as the central setting to the story, with his mother. One night a strange couple of people, perhaps father and daughter, move into the apartment next door. Oskar cannot help but be curious and he sees that the windows have been blocked off and he only ever sees the girl after it's dark...

Oskar is out in the apartment complex playground by himself one night when he turns around to see a strange girl with dark, knotty, dirty, shoulder length hair standing on top of the jungle gym. She is wearing only a thin, pink, long sleeved shirt in the freezing snow and seems unaffected. She immediately tells Oskar that they cannot be friends and he acts as if he doesn't mind, but deep down he has no friends and wishes that he had at least one.

A few days go by and once again they meet at the playground. This time they argue, telling the other to leave but then they both finally give in. Oskar, who is playing with a Rubkis cube at the time amuses the young girl. She introduces herself as Eli, his next door neighbor. Oskar thinks she looks sick and she smells bad, but he's not complaining. He gives her the puzzle to take home overnight to solve and he doesn't really ever stop thinking about her.

The next day she comes back cleaner and she smells better, Oskar also notices that she looks healthier and her mood is somewhat happier. She solved the Rubkis cube in no time and she goes on to teach Oskar how to solve it quicker. Oskar begins to develop a liking to his new friend and they agree to see each other more often. 

The next day at school, Oskar researches Morse code so he can talk to Eli through the walls. He is once again beaten up by the boys at his school. They antagonize him and want to know what he's writing. When he doesn't give it up, they beat him with a whip-like stick. First across his legs and then they put a gash in his cheek. This bullying goes on for most of the story. 

Oskar starts liking Eli and wishes that she was his girlfriend. He asks her to go out with him, but she tells him that she's not a girl. Oskar is very confused but doesn't care if she's a girl or a boy, but she is actually neither. She agrees as long as things stay the same between them, basically just as good friends. Throughout their relationship, Eli teaches Oskar to be strong and how to stand up to people that are doing him harm. 

Although Oskar seems completely innocent in his role as a victim, he is obsessed with cutting out newspaper articles about current murders in the Stockholm area and he enjoys imaging his tormentors as the trees in the nearby forest and he stabs them with his knife repeatedly. Around the time he becomes friends with Eli, there is a serial murderer in the next town over. He knocks out his victims with Havoline gas, hangs his victims upside down, cuts their throats and lets their blood sift into a plastic container. What Oskar doesn't know is that the serial killer is actually the man who takes care of Eli, his name is Hakan and he kills people to try and feed Eli since she lives on a diet of blood...

As time goes on, Oskar and Eli's liking becomes love and they both help each other emotionally and complete one another. There is just one more thing that Oskar doesn't know about Eli - she's actually a 200 year old vampire who looks like a 12-year-old little girl. He learns this and it doesn't change much at all for him and he doesn't really care, he just knows that he loves Eli.

Still being bullied at school, Oskar decides to sign up for classes at the pool so he can become stronger against his antagonizers and he retaliates one day while out on a school field trip. His class is ice-skating and Jonny, the boy that bullies him most often, along with two other boys that act as his minions try to push Oskar into the ice, but he picks up a branch, small enough to swing but big enough to do some damage, and he hits Jonny in the side of the head. Jonny cannot hear and his ear is gushing blood. Meanwhile, the rest of the kids find a dead body frozen in the ice. It was a man that Eli sucked the life out of and Hakan disposed of, poorly. The man's name was Jocke.

Jocke lived in the same apartment building as Oskar and Eli, but she had tricked him into walking under a bridge to help what he thought was a helpless child. He was wrong and lost his life. Jocke had several friends including Lacke (his bestfriend) and Virginia (Lacke's girlfriend). Later on in the story after Jocke's death, Lacke and Virginia get into an argument causing her to leave. She is attacked by Eli and Lacke witnesses it. Virginia becomes sick and turns into a vampire a few days later although nobody knows it and she has a hard time coping. She eventually kills her self in the hospital with sunlight. Lacke is devastated having lost his best friend and now his girlfriend to some creature of the night so, he tries to find the thing that is killing the people closest to him. 

At this point in the story, Oskar is leaving his apartment to stay at Eli's because Hakan is dead. While trying to get some blood for her the plan went wrong and he was basically cornered into a situation that he couldn't get out of. He poured a liquid on his face that melted it and he was put in the hospital where he became a zombie. Eli later kills him to put him out of his pain. Eli sleeps in the bathtub covered in blankets with the room pitch black during the day because any form of sunlight will kill her. While she is there, Lacke, still looking for revenge finds his way into her apartment and goes to kill her. Oskar saves her and she wakes up and they kill Lacke together.

The next day, Oskar is at the pool taking a private class with the instructor when Jonny's older brother Jimmy and his friends come in. They trick the instructor out of building and they knock him out. They also kick out all of the kids. Jimmy is a drug dealer and all around bad kid. Because Oskar made Jonny go practically deaf in one ear he tells him that if he has to make up for it- if he stays underwater for three minutes then he will just get cut, but if he doesn't then he looses one of his eyes to a switchblade. Oskar is pushed underwater where he stays for a minute before he realizes that there is a commotion above the water.

Oskar is pulled out of the water and sees Eli, covered in blood. She killed Jimmy, Jonny, and their friends. Their bodies lie around the pool and at the bottom of the water. They love each other and decide that neither of them can stay there. At the end of the story, Oskar and Eli get on a train together and leave for someplace better. Eli has to stay in a cardboard box with holes to avoid the sun, but they communicate through morse code. Both of them have finally found someone on which they can rely on and love.  

The book is called "Let the Right One In" because in one part of the book, Oskar invites Eli to his apartment, but he doesn't formally invite her in through the door. Vampires cannot enter into someone else's house without being invited in. Oskar doesn't believe her and tells her to just walk in. The second that she does she starts oozing blood through her pores and out of her eyes and nose. Oskar screams and invites her in to stop her from bleeding and he realizes that he loves her and can't do things like that to her because of what she is. Therefore, he is letting the right one in.