Reviews with content warning for Fire/Fire injury - The Twisted Ones

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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aidareads's review

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dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

a solid 4 stars because it wasn’t bad, but i think i wanted to be creeped out and i wasn’t for the most part. still, it has very engaging writing style, and i loved foxy’s characterization. and i adored bongo. there was a lot of comic relief and fantasy tropes, so maybe that’s why it wasn’t extremely creepy. i still liked it tho! definitely an upgrade from the last books i’ve read lmao

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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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traa's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.75

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ilaxaria's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Loveable characters? Yes

3.75

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terapsina's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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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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theremightbecupcakes's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny informative mysterious tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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