Reviews tagging 'Murder'

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

11 reviews

meganpbell's review

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adventurous dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

This is a downright disturbing and deliciously atmospheric work of folkhorror, from hoarder’s house to haunted woods, narrated with unexpected humor by a woman who just wants to keep her dumb dog safe. What I didn’t know until the very end is that this book is inspired by a 1904 classic horror short story by Arthur Machen, and while you can definitely enjoy this book without knowing the story, I felt like I was missing something once I knew!

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muireebrown's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

I found this book because I enjoyed What Moves the Dead. While this book wasn’t quite as good, I found it engaging all the same. There is sort of a mystery element that makes it compelling. It also sort of reminded me of The Old Gods of Appalachia meets a story by H.P. Lovecraft. I also enjoy any story with a prominent dog character, so bonus points for that. 
Spoilers:
The dog lives! 

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aparker89's review

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adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

Everyone knows that a hoarder's home is a nightmare in and of itself, but what if that hoard was hiding something even more devilish. When Mouse's grandmother finally passes away and her house needs to be dealt with, she doesn't know what to expect. She also doesn't know that there might just be monsters awaiting her arrival. Between reading her dementia addled grandfather's journal and dealing with a mountainous mess- what could possibly be worse. Well Mouse finds out... but thank goodness for hwr coonhound to keep her grounded through an adventure that can't quite be understood but definitely is a doozy! 

I still can't get over the fairy monsters in pure hillbilly fashion... they will be haunting my dreams for years to come!

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hathor140's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Me gustó el ambiente que logró generar Kingfisher. Me perturbó en varias ocasiones y a estas alturas eso es todo lo que puedo pedir de un libro de terror. Me gustó que siempre que pensaba que ya había visto todas las cartas, la autora te introducía algo nuevo. Tiene esos momentos de comedia en la peor de las situaciones que me divierten mucho. Te engancha al toque y se lee rápido. 7,75/10

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constellation_library's review

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dark funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

 If you guys have been paying any attention to the books I’ve been reading this year, The Twisted Ones is my THIRD Kingfisher title in March alone. I’ve got one more that I need to read before I’ve completed every book of hers I own. But more about that later. 

I was actually recommended this book by a friend of mine, and had been sitting on that recommendation for a couple years. After having been introduced to her work through Nettle & Bone, I decided that I was a fan. I’ve made my way through several titles, and finally decided to buy a copy of this one. The premise was too good to pass up. I also found out later that it is based on an old short story from 1906 titled “The White People” by Arthur Machen and contains some of the same elements used in that tale. The more you know! 

ANYWAY. 

The Twisted Ones is the story of Mouse, a freelance editor in her thirties who receives a call from her ailing father after the death of her grandmother. He asks her to clear out her grandmother’s house that’s been sitting empty for a few years in rural North Carolina. In Mouse’s family, you show up and DO THE THING when people ask it of you, even if it is done for your horrible dead grandma who hates you and everybody she’s ever met. So, she agrees to help her dad out since he isn’t healthy enough to do it himself, and relocates herself and her faithful, yet simple, coonhound, Bongo. When she arrives in Pondsboro, she and Bongo discover that her grandmother’s house is packed to the gills after decades of hoarding—stacks of bundled newspapers, plastic totes full of creepy baby dolls, bags of ratty clothes, boxes of coat hangers…everything you’d expect from a hoarder (except, thankfully, for animals and literal garbage). 

Mouse certainly has her work cut out for her, so she clears the way to set up camp in the only usable bedroom, which had once belonged to her grandmother’s husband, Cotgrave, and discovers a diary he had been keeping that reads like the ramblings of an abused man with quickly developing dementia—twisted creatures in the woods, the white people, a missing manuscript, and a vitally important Green Book that he believes his wife has hidden from him. Add to this strange tapping sounds in the woods, white creatures running through the trees at night, and a glitching cellphone that overheats the second it’s turned on and won’t hold a charge, and you have a very strange tale, indeed. Thankfully, apart from Bongo, Mouse isn’t entirely alone. Next door, there is a commune with Slick, Tomas, and Foxy, who knew her cruel grandmother and don’t hold it against Mouse, and in town there is a coffee shop with a friendly Goth barista who listens as things start getting weird. 

As the story progresses, the things in the woods become far more intrusive into Mouse’s life, and she discovers that her grandmother’s property has some otherworldly connections to a place full of carved stones and sentient effigies of bones and twigs that cross from one world into another. Will Mouse be able to complete her task, or will she flee with Bongo and never look back? 

What I Loved: 

Characters One of Kingfisher’s strengths (of which there are many) is her ability to create lovable, quirky characters. Mouse is no exception. She is a single woman with a steady income who lives alone with Bongo, her coonhound and certified Bestest Boy. Her internal monologue as she is experiencing the creepy happenings around her grandmother’s house vacillates between terrified, self-deprecating, and comedic. She is physically incapable of leaving well-enough alone, and it gets her into trouble more than once in this story. And, being an editor, she’s never met a book that she can just simply walk away from – hence her inability to set aside Cotgrave’s diary and be realistic about what’s happening around her. 

The character that really steals the show for me is Bongo, the sweetest boy who is also really dumb. He doesn’t do a very good job of using his last two brain cells, ending up in trouble more than once that Mouse has to try to save him from. 

As for the Commune next door, Foxy is a spitfire old lady, and she and Tomas and Slick play a vital role in helping Mouse make sense of the happenings in the holler and the folklore and myths surrounding the area. In downtown Pondsboro, the Goth barista, Enid, alongside the gentleman who works at the dump where Mouse takes truckloads of garbage from her grandmother’s, as well as Officer Bob, the cop who helps out when Mouse stumbles upon something viscerally terrifying in the woods, create a cast of side characters that really add a richness to the tale without there being so many of them that you can’t keep them straight. I’ve found that nearly every person that is named in a Kingfisher tale has more than a passing purpose, and I really appreciate that. I don’t want to keep track of people who are just background noise. 

Atmosphere Another one of Kingfisher’s strengths is her ability to build and maintain atmosphere. Her setting descriptions use the five senses and you truly feel like you’re right there in the story sitting next to the MC. The Twisted Ones was no different, and I felt like I could smell the mustiness of Mouse’s grandma’s house and hear the tap-tapping of the things in the forest. It’s completely immersive storytelling, and I cannot get enough of it. 

Plot – I really enjoyed the direction that this story went and felt that it made a lot of sense given the set up from the beginning. I’ve got a few gripes with it that I’ll elaborate on momentarily, but overall it was really structurally sound and everything was logical and made sense. 

What Could Have Been Better: 

Genre Bending – so, I’ve discovered at this juncture that Kingfisher’s horror is not like other horror that I’ve read. It doesn’t lean heavily into gore or things like child abuse or animal abuse, which I honestly love. It’s more of a genre bend between horror and weird fiction. It blends magic, folklore, spirituality, and parallel worlds. I’m about it. But I think that I’ve not yet read enough of her horror to expect those sorts of twists and turns. When what happens in this book happens, it sort of takes me off guard and pulls me out of the story. This same thing happened with A House with Good Bones. Now, when I go into the next horror/thriller of hers, I’m going to expect something like this. I wouldn’t say that the genre bending necessarily reduced the rating for this, but it was a stylistic choice that I didn’t expect and wasn’t sure how to receive. 

Pacing – The real issue for me with this book was the pacing. There were whole swaths of the tale that took passages from Cotgrave’s manuscript, and while the information contained therein was pertinent to the story, it was written in an older style of writing common in the early 1900s, and was a bit jarring to switch between that and Mouse’s modern voice. It felt like we spent too long in the manuscript. Additionally, when certain aspects of the folklore and the parallel worlds come into play, it takes so long to see the reasoning for it. She hems and haws a bit as she finds her way through that, and while it certainly was not bad, it did slow the story down a bit. Again, it wasn’t bad, but it could have been more straight and to the point. 

So that’s that! I gave this book 4.25/5 stars. Ms. Kingfisher keeps impressing me, even though I’m not a huge horror fan, and I can’t wait to continue reading her backlist. I’m moving on to the last book of hers that’s on my shelf as my next read: The Hollow Places. If you’ve read it or if you’ve read The Twisted Ones, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments! 


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trickphoenix's review

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

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thekeytotheend's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75


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talislibrary's review

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dark tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

This is horror, but somehow horror light, but the scary parts will give you actual chills. It's a weird mixture of folklore and horror, one which doesn't seem to work together until near the end, at which point they blend well. My first T. Kingfisher, and unlikely my last.

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booksthatburn's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

THE TWISTED ONES combines the mundane drudgery and strangeness of cleaning out a hoarder's house with the fantastical creepiness of a technically-not-haunted forest with twisted rocks and strange effigies. 
I appreciate the way that the framing clearly situates this as a story being told after the narrator and her dog have survived the events in question, it would be a monumentally more stressful story if I'd had to wonder whether the dog dies. The dread lies instead in the very large gap between surviving and escaping unscathed, and in the pages upon pages of descriptions of what was in this particular hoarder's house. It ratcheted up the tension by inches, as the intensity of the supernatural events increased periodically while the sheer volume and detail of the house's contents were a steady drip of very plausible weirdness. 

The main character, Mouse, is a great narrator, with the quirkiness of specificity bringing a great style to her asides and characterizations. Bongo (the dog) comes through so well in her descriptions, doing things that make sense for who he is as a dog, even (or perhaps especially) when such actions complement the narrative as a thriller. The secondary characters are detailed enough to feel like full people without distracting from the main events, and I like the group who helps her out towards the end (Foxy's my favorite).

There's a particular litany, both read and thought by Mouse, which gradually turned into an earworm in my own thoughts in a way that makes the horror even more effective. It made it feel like the book was escaping its confines, or at the very least it makes it alarmingly plausible that Mouse could be just the latest in a line of people who became stuck on that refrain.

The ending is terrifying, bringing together the more mundane horror of a hoarder's house together with the supernatural elements in a fantastically scary climax. It had felt like the collection of stuff and the creepy things outside were two separate worlds but the meeting between them was one of the scariest things I've read in a while. The final scenes at the house are absolutely chilling, leading to an resolution that feels just as right as it is weird and sad.

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madarauchiha's review

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

2.0

 ❤️ 🧡 💛 💚 💙 💜  my about / byf / CW info carrd: uchiha-madara 💜 💙 💚 💛 🧡 ❤️


I didn't like the tone of it. It was very quirky white girl with the ramona flowers hair who only exists in r/STDH forums. I had no idea it was supposed to feel tense or horrific until I read other reviews. I thought the MC was pretty much a character out of the Scooby Doo universe.

It didn't feel like much happened. MC cleaned the house, went on a hike or two,
read a diary, lost a dog, found the dog, and uhh got kidnapped? And then everything was resolved within a day.
I think more could've been added like investigative scenes of going to the local library to study missing people near her grandmother's home. Or have a few chapters edited out because it was a bit repetitive. The eldritch horrors didn't feature that much to me.

The surrounding characters just kinda... exist. The writing was passable. It's rather dry horror. It's a slow build, that's for sure. Ok so it turns out it's based off Arther Machen's story 'The White People' which explains the slow building, I think. Those ye olde fuckers sure like taking the long of writing stories.

I think what kinda irritates me is that Foxy gets a name but the Black barista doesn't. Granted the goth barista doesn't either but hm. Suspect to me. ... fake edit: ok so goth barista gets a name. Enid. still waiting on a name for the one Black character. Literally before they even appear the cop gets named but the Black character doesn't. ok... Spoilers he is immediately forgotten after that one scene. Well.

content warnings:
Minor: ableist c slur, animal hunting, anti indigenous racism, burns fire death, child abuse, eating disorders, insects, menstruation, murder, pregnancy, q slur in historical context multiple times, sexual content, snakes, spiders, stillbirth, vomit

Medium: toxic relationships, religion catholicism, 

Major: unsanitary hoarding situation, animal death, gore, police, body horror, confinement, prison, murder, fire, arson, demolition, dogs, 

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