Oskar lives with his mum in a high rise building in the western suburbs of Stockholm. It's the early eighties and he likes listening to Kiss on his Walkman, solving puzzles-including the Rubik's cube-and pasting grisly murder stories from the newspaper into his scrapbook. A victim of bullying, Oskar doesn't have many school friends, but is interested in the strange new neighbour next door. Eli introduces herself but she's a little strange-she smells bad, doesn't feel the cold at all, even in November, and from time to time her hair has a lot of grey. Soon after Eli's move to Blackeberg a child's body is found hanging from a tree. The media think a serial killer is wreaking havoc in the town and affecting everyone's lives, but they're wrong-it's a vampire.

This extraordinary and powerful novel is part horror, part comedy and mostly love story. A moving, affectionate and, at times, grisly portrait of the agony of growing up and finding love, Let the Right One In may be the most satisfying novel of the year.