The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher is a throwback to old score horror like Rosemary’s Baby where it is more psychological horror. The author T. Kingfisher said one device of found manuscript is straight from a 1904 called The White People by Arthur Machen, who I’ve never read and probably most people have not read. What the novel does good is set up a horror mystery, that hooked me pretty easily. The pay off happen in the last 1oo pages, which I was satisfied with. The middle could have been a lot better and really test the reader with barely anything happens. The creatures are pretty scary when they are eventually revealed in the book. The book has a few zingers from the narrator who is remembering this as she’s writing it after the fact.

The Plot: Mouse a woman in her early 40, goes to clean up her grandmother’s house after her passing. Mouse escaping her love life and needing money decides to take on this task with her hound dog Bongo. Her Grandmother was a hoarder and the house is full of newspaper and china dolls. The house is way out in the country with not cell phone service. The house hasn’t been touched for a number of years, her grandmother was a difficult lady that the town revered. The mystery starts when Mouse finds and old journal from her step-grandfather she only has vague memories but they were not bad. The journal talks about her grandmother taking his original journal which he needs to keep the twisted ones away. With no cell service she decides to read this journal and grows obsessed with finding the journal that her grandmother hid. She find strange statues in the woods that are all twisted, with hills that don’t make sense. There’s things that go bump in the night and she finds a strange ritual involving dead animals hanging in a tree. She’s haunted and at her wits end when she’s ready to leave her dog goes missing and needs to find him and the journal to survive.

What I Liked: The creepy factor is high in this story, you feel the isolation in the writing. Mouse is a great character that is easily identifiable as she tries to rationalize the horror in her head. There’s a great scene when mouse find out here step-grandfather was driven insane by a song, she starts singing Jingle Bells since that is the least scary song in her mind. The creatures take a while to get there but they’re pretty scary, it did take a while for my mind picture to totally see them, since they are hinted as a lot or she will see a flash of them. The ending was pretty exciting and I could not put down the last 100 pages. The lore of the creatures was interesting and how it connected to the step-grandfather was scary.

What I Disliked: The middle was too long, half of the coffee shop visits needed to be cut, and did not contribute to the story. The lore was ultimately good but at first very confusing and too long.

Recommendations: I will slightly recommend The Twisted Ones, it’s unnerving horror that will play on your mind. It has a pretty action packed ending that is a lot of fun. Horror mystery is the genre for this book the horror is slow but building and the mystery is intriguing. I rated The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher 4 out of 5 stars. I was was circling 3.5 but the ending was really good with bumped it up to a 4.