“The Twisted Ones” by T. Kingfisher

Oh this book.

I got curious about it because it has received high praises on many blogs and one of my coworkers at the bookstore loved it too, so me and two other coworkers decided that it should be the first book for our book club. But… (sigh). I really thought I would like it.

Genre:

Horror

Pubbed:

2019

Goodreads summary:

When a young woman clears out her deceased grandmother’s home in rural North Carolina, she finds long-hidden secrets about a strange colony of beings in the woods.

When Mouse’s dad asks her to clean out her dead grandmother’s house, she says yes. After all, how bad could it be?

Answer: pretty bad. Grandma was a hoarder, and her house is stuffed with useless rubbish. That would be horrific enough, but there’s more—Mouse stumbles across her step-grandfather’s journal, which at first seems to be filled with nonsensical rants…until Mouse encounters some of the terrifying things he described for herself.

Alone in the woods with her dog, Mouse finds herself face to face with a series of impossible terrors—because sometimes the things that go bump in the night are real, and they’re looking for you. And if she doesn’t face them head on, she might not survive to tell the tale. (Goodreads)

My thoughts:

The Twisted Ones surprised me because I thought I would really like it. It’s a horror novel about a young woman who drives down to North Carolina from her home in Philly with her dog to clean out her horrible dead grandmother’s house but finds her step-grandfather’s journal while doing so that mentions weird beings in the woods behind the house.

It sounded promising. I liked the narration style at first because the narrator speaks directly to the reader since the protagonist, Mouse, is writing about her experience in a journal or something. This style felt weird to read at first because it’s as if the narrator is aware that you’re reading her story. It felt more confrontational, like a face-to-face conversation. But I got used to it.

I also liked the suspense as weird shit starts to happen and Mouse slowly becomes aware of what’s really going on, and the other characters Mouse meets. Well, only Foxy because Foxy is a badass and totally awesome. The setting also appealed to me and helped to make the story seem scary because it sounded too much like where I live (although my house isn’t secluded like Mouse’s grandmother’s) and have lived (my grandmother’s house in Jamaica; I’m convinced there are ghosts there that only come out at night and in the day when you’re not looking). And I also liked that this story was inspired by Arthur Machen’s short story “The White People,” which I’ve never read but almost did. (I borrowed a book of his short stories from the library last year but didn’t get to read it before the due date. After completing The Twisted Ones, however, I went back to the library to borrow it.) Plus, I often like stories with the “something weird in the woods” trope. This one had an almost haunting feel to it that reminded me of Cabeswater in Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Boys series. It’s a place where anything can happen.

However, after a while the story began to lose its appeal and I was tempted to give up on it as I lost interest. If not for Foxy, I probably would have done so. Basically, Mouse pushed my patience to the limit. Weird shit was happening. Weird creatures running across the yard, weird creatures hanging out in the woods, weird shit mentioned in the step-grandfather’s journal that seem to be real, weird random-ass hills that pop up outta nowhere, and Foxy and her peeps even tell Mouse weird shit happens around these parts and still Mouse took FOREVER to accept it and stop making excuses for all the weird shit she sees. That really annoyed me.

The excuses she made for all the weird shit was obviously to insert some humor in the story, which worked for me at first but became grating later when it’s obvious that something supernatural is going on and the protagonist should either do something about it or just leave. I knew she wouldn’t just leave because there were more pages to read, but her reason for going off into the woods with Foxy wasn’t believable to me considering how she felt before and all that was happening.

That was probably the second time I almost stopped reading, but I pushed on to the end and felt annoyed when I got there. I guess I was hoping for some greater significance to the plot or for the resolution to be more interesting. Instead, it was all underwhelming.

Overall: ★★★☆☆

It starts out strong and is sometimes humorous, but the protagonist becomes more and more annoying as the story progresses (at least, to me she’s annoying).

Buy | Borrow | Bypass

Many readers like it and it’s not a bad read. I’d actually recommend it.

So this weird thing happened…

Probably a week or so ago. I was working from home (coronavirus locked down everywhere) when I saw something white leaping across the road in front my house. I jumped (because I IMMEDIATELY thought of this story) and looked out the window to see a deer standing on the lawn of the house across the street staring into the backyard there, which was random because it was the middle of the day. Its fur was matted and its side that faced me looked like something big grazed it or something. I almost thought it was a creature from out of this book because the deer looked so weird. But I quickly got over my scare and went back to work.