Twisted Ones

3.5/5

The story starts off in such an interesting way as Mouse attempts to wrangle the mess left behind by her grandmother. I really liked the setup, the buildup of the house being slowly cleaned up and organized and small oddities that started happening over the days that she spent there.

I think her dog also brought a fun humor to the story and kept things grounded throughout. He was certainly not the smartest dog but definitely full of charm!

I think the notes left behind by her grandfather were one of the best parts. It felt real as he struggled to remember all the details of what he had learned. I wish there was more to this than was written. I had really hoped the Green Book was found, or at least pages of it to fill in more blanks. There was just so much that was unanswered even by the end that I had really wanted to know more about.

It was frustrating to be taken into such a cool magical space only to have none of your questions answered. I really liked the buildup of the story but the final 1/4 was just a bit disappointing. It felt rushed and I just wanted to stay there longer to understand and learn more. The premise was solid but the execution just didn’t quite work as well.

It was also rather odd that so many people seemed to be actually aware of the odd beings in the woods and did nothing about them. Not just in the neighborhood but apparently in other countries and cities. It felt less special in that sense that apparently it was common and yet not talked about. This just didn’t feel right.

Overall I enjoyed the buildup and the creeping factor that slowly came. However the ending felt too fast and just didn’t live up to the tension that was setup and fell flat for me. I just wish there was more time to build the world and the story and actually answer the questions that came out of the mystery.

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.

The Twisted Ones tells the story of a woman sent to the backwoods of North Carolina to clean out her grandmother's house. Her grandmother was a mean snake of a woman and turns out, she became a bit of a hoarder by the end, so the house is a disaster. But Melissa, known as Mouse, doesn't have much else going on, having just broken off a relationship, so she is ready to tackle the job with her dog Bongo.

Then things start getting weird. Tapping at the windows, strange noises in the woods, and an unsettling discovery after following a path. She finds her step-grandfather's notebook and it does more to confuse matters than to explain. Finally, her and the hippy grandmother from across the road become determined to solve the mysteries.

This book certainly started off fantastically! I couldn't put it down. The combination of Mouse's humor, her adorable coonhound and the impending doom that pervades it all was irresistible. It took a bit of a lull when she uncovered the manuscript. For some reason, it was her step-granddad's recounting of another book that was lost, instead of either just his book or the other one. So I found this part kind of dragged.

And I found the final scenes, to be honest, a little hard to follow. Not sure I understood all the descriptions, including the most menacing "monster". And it seemed to go on for a bit too long, with a vaguely dissatisfying resolution after all that.

But the first half of the book was great and the humor and the dog kept even the dragging parts eminently readable. So I basically enjoyed this book and am looking forward to checking out some of her other books.