I made faces like the faces on the rocks, and I twisted myself about like the twisted ones, and I lay down flat on the ground like the dead ones.

I was very surprised by how much I ended up enjoying this book, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but this was tons of fun and I couldn’t put it down. It’s folk horror that managed to be terrifying but not too much at the same time, don’t get me wrong it’s spooky but I also think it’d be a good read for people who want to read horror but don’t want to be completely grossed out or scared out of their minds.


The story revolves around a woman named Melissa, she goes by Mouse, and her redbone coonhound, Bongo, as they travel to her recently deceased grandmother’s house to clean it up for resale. However, she discovers her grandmother was a bit of a hoarder and the house is stuffed full of junk that will take her a while to clear out. As she cleans up she discovers her “step”-grandfather, Cotgrave’s, journal which tells of strange beings and happenings around the house and woods surrounding the area and she soon discovers there may be something going on.

I thought the story was very engaging and well paced, as soon as Mouse started discovering some odd things inside and outside the house I was hooked because I needed answers! I don’t want to go into a whole lot of detail involving the plot because I went in blind and had a blast, so I think you’re better off going into this without too much information. Mouse basically begins poking around and investigating the strange things she read in Cotgrave’s journal and more strange things happen. The general plot was very unique and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

As I already mentioned this is folk horror, which basically means it’s a horror book but involves folk lore and honestly it’s one of my favorites now because it was so intriguing. I really enjoyed how the stories and superstitions were introduced and weaved in with the elements of horror. I thought the horror aspects were very well done, there were parts where I was more than creeped out! However, that being said I still think this would be a great book for readers looking to get into horror or want to read one and not be completely scared shitless.

This is a well paced book, I felt there were plenty of little twists and enough action that it never felt like a chore to keep reading. There are also some parts where my adrenaline was really going because it was so tense and there was stuff going down! I would say they only time I ever felt like the story dragged was towards the middle where there are some diary/journal entries that just felt really slow and were honestly confusing to read through. This was fairly short, however, and apart from that I was enthralled with the story.

The writing was probably my favorite part, if I’m being honest. It is technically told in the style of Mouse talking to us directly, the readers, and telling us the events that have happened. It’s also absolutely hilarious and I really enjoyed the humor and sarcastic tone Mouse uses as she narrates. It made for a more than excellent reading experience.

“Although hell, what do I know? Maybe that garbage can was sitting right at the nexus of where our world touches another one, and he (Bongo) was baying and charging at it to let me know that eldritch abominations were breaking into our reality. Who knows anymore? I sure don’t.”

The other part of the book I wasn’t completely sold on was the ending. This was where it got a little too bizarre for me just because it was exactly that: super bizarre and a little confusing. I still feel like everything was wrapped up as nicely as it could be but I was still left with some questions, mostly regarding the supernatural aspects.


I always love when I can enjoy a plot this much along with the characters, both were done really well. I liked Mouse as the narrator, as I said I found her humor and sarcasm to make for a really enjoyable reading experience. I also felt like she was a relatable heroine and she made realistic decisions honestly especially considering the circumstances. I have to say though my REAL favorites in this book would have to be Bongo, the dog, and Foxy the ‘hippie’ neighbor. Bongo is the sweetest, dopiest dog and nobody would have been able to make it through this story without him, including me. And Foxy is just amazing, she’s an older woman in her 50’s-60’s that ends up helping Mouse out when things start to get weird and let me tell you she is not only hilarious and sarcastic but she’s also a total badass. I loved all of these characters to death, they had so much personality!

There are a few other characters that are seen but not too much, there’s Mouse’s dad who is also the sweetest old man, and Skip and Tomas who live with (or by, not too sure) Foxy. Skip is a Native American artist and Tomas is Hispanic and does a lot of handy work, they’re both very kind. And finally Enid the “Goth” girl who works at the coffee shop who helps out Mouse sometimes. I really enjoyed ALL of the characters regardless of if I saw them for a few pages or a few chapters.

What I Loved:

Folk horror aspects
Plenty of small twists and tons of adrenaline pumping action
Great writing, very humorous and enjoyable
Even pacing, engaging story
Unique plot
Amazing, lovable characters

What I Didn’t Love:

Ending got a little too weird for me
I wanted a little more information on the folk lore
The diary/journal entries in the middle were boring and slowed the story for me

Overall I highly recommend giving this book a read especially if you’re a horror fan or looking for a great folk horror book. It’s a really well rounded story with an engaging plot, full of action, and with fantastic characters.

Trigger Warnings: Violence, Gore, Mention of Child Death, & Death

**** Huge thank you to Gallery/ Saga Press for providing me with a copy via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review ****

3.5/5 rounded up

Mouse is tasked with cleaning out her grandmother's house, and unfortunately for her, her grandmother was a hoarder. When she finds her step-grandfather's old journal however, Mouse worries that something more was going on. The journal is filled with what seems to be weird nonsense, but when Mouse starts experiencing some of what her grandfather described, she will find a whole different world of horror.

I have so many conflicting feelings over THE TWISTED ONES. I'm a long time fan of T. Kingfisher's work, especially the fairy tale retellings, and I love horror, so I was thrilled with this release. The first half is strong and full of creepiness. The journal excerpts gave me spine chills on multiple occasions. It's easy to relate to Mouse being skeptical about the entries at first and worried about her own mind as things progressed.

What threw me off so much was the second half. It turned into a sort of portal horror. While the concept was awesome, I'm not sure it was set up well enough earlier in the story for me to suspend my disbelief enough. Once they went into the city, I felt pulled out of the story and had a hard time getting back in. The only comparison I can think of is Kate Alice Marshall's Rules for Vanishing, but you know pretty early on that it's a portal horror.

Overall, The Twisted Ones is definitely creepy and unique. I'm very interested to see what T. Kingfisher does in her next horror book!

The Twisted Ones (2019) begins with mild consternation: Melissa, who goes by “Mouse,” has the thankless task of taking a trip to backwoods North Carolina, with her loyal redbone coonhound Bongo for company, to clean out her late grandmother’s home. “It’ll be a mess,” her father says, in a massive understatement. Consternation shifts to deep dismay: Grandma was a hoarder. It’s even worse than normal, since her grandmother was a cruel and vicious person, and something of her evil still infuses her house, like the room full of baby dolls that looks like a “monument to infanticide.” Luckily, Mouse finds one bedroom that is clear of clutter, the bedroom of her step-grandfather Cotgrave, who died many years earlier. (If you’ve read Arthur Machen’s 1904 classic horror novelette “The White People,” you should recognize the name Cotgrave here. It’s no coincidence.)

Mouse moves into Cotgrave’s bedroom for the duration, while she works on cleaning out the house so it can be sold. In Cotgrave’s nightstand she finds his handwritten journal. In his journal Cotgrave was fretting over a lost green book that he’d obtained from a man named Ambrose. He was also troubled by a phrase that was stuck in his head, like a song that will never stop replaying:

"I made faces like the faces on the rocks, and I twisted myself about like the twisted ones, and I lay down flat on the ground like the dead ones."

In fact, once Mouse reads this sentence in the journal, she has a hard time getting it out of her head herself. But as it turns out, the hoarding and the creepy journal aren’t the worst things about staying in her grandparents’ house. There are things in the woods surrounding the house, and they may not just stay in the woods. Mouse’s dismay at her situation evolves into terror.

The Twisted Ones is an inventive horror novel that takes “The White People” as its launching point and creates a modern-day sequel to it. Kingfisher takes Machen’s story in a different direction that I’m morally certain never occurred to him, but that I’m confident he would have appreciated. The Twisted Ones contains a more folkloric type of horror than its source material, and it’s lightened by the appealing voice and wry humor of Mouse, who narrates the story. Her job as a freelance editor informs many of her opinions about Cotgrave’s writing, almost distracting her from the journal’s deeper import.

Another source of both comfort and comic relief is Mouse’s hound Bongo. He’s a dedicated companion, loyal and loving, even if dimwitted at times, and he has an excellent nose.

"I had the impression that he was thinking very hard about something (or more accurately, that his nose was thinking very hard about something. Bongo’s nose is far more intelligent than the rest of him, and I believe it uses his brain primarily as a counterweight)."

These moments of lightness balance the chilling horror, which creeps up on the reader as much as it does Mouse. I read the last ten percent with my heart in my throat.

The most difficult section of “The White People” is the lengthy and hallucinatory quoting of the Green Book; The Twisted Ones has a counterpart to this tale-within-a-tale approach as Mouse dives more deeply into dissecting Cotgrave’s journal. It felt a little lengthy and difficult to unpack, though it’s not nearly as difficult to wade through as the Green Book, and after re-familiarizing myself with “The White People,” this section became much more interesting and readable.

If you’ve ever read “The White People,” The Twisted Ones is a must-read. If you haven’t, I’d recommend giving “The White People” at least a quick skim (it’s freely available online) before jumping into this novel. It’s well worth your time for any fan of the horror genre … and even for readers who — like me — aren’t normally into horror novels. I decided to give it a try because T. Kingfisher (a pseudonym of Ursula Vernon) is a fantastic author with a talent for making fairy tales and other old things new again. It was an excellent decision.

I’ve been a dedicated reader of horror novels since I was in elementary school. A sad result of my overexposure to the genre is the fact that they never seem to scare me anymore. (I’ve already seen such sights, as the saying goes.)

I tell you this to provide some context when I say that T. Kingfisher’s The Twisted Ones is the first book in perhaps a decade that genuinely terrified me. We’re talking hands-shaking, uncontrollable whimpering, talking-back-to-the-book fear as I turned the pages. I never put it down—I had to know what happened next, even though I was scared witless. It is a magnificent work of Southern Gothic horror, and if you have any affinity for literary terror, you need to read it immediately.



But maybe with all the lights on. Just in case.

The Twisted Ones is the story of a woman named Mouse and her faithful, dumb as rocks hound Bongo. Mouse is tasked with cleaning out her venial grandmother’s house after her death, and it’s a grueling task. Her grandmother became a hoarder in her later years, and Mouse reluctantly agrees to do her best to get the property ready to sell. The place is located smack dab in middle of nowhere North Carolina, surrounded by deep woods. Mouse can’t get much of a cell signal out there, and her only company aside from her mutt is a radio she buys in the nearby one-stoplight town that seems able to tune in nothing but pledge week programming from the local NPR affiliate. While that would be horrifying enough on its own, it’s what Mouse finds inside the house that really gets the story going.

Her step-grandfather, a kindly man fading into dementia, has left behind an odd journal with bizarre things written in it: strange tales of creatures out in the woods and an old green book that was taken by his cruel wife and kept hidden from him. Mouse, who also seems to be a fan spooky reads, is hooked immediately, and can’t help but become wrapped up in his writings, even as she chalks the journal’s disturbing contents up to the slightly sad ravings of an old man losing his wits. At least until things start getting really weird, and she begins to encounter some of the horrible sights from the journal’s pages in the woods around the house…

The Twisted Ones is deeply unsettling and atmospheric. It starts off light and sunny and ends in a rain of blood and bone. Mouse is a wonderful partner with whom to experience the descent: charming, funny, and smarter than the average horror protagonist. She does her best to keep her head on her shoulders (literally and metaphorically) as things in the house begin to go wrong, so when she dissolves into panic, it hits even harder, because we know how capable she is. Bongo the hound is a perfect sidekick: he helps alleviate some of the terror just by being such a very good boy. Mouse’s neighbors, the sensible Foxy and her family, transcend the role of the utilitarian horror supporting cast, providing the requisite backstory for the “twisted ones” that so obsessed Mouse’s grandfather and believing her completely when confesses the things she’s seen. Foxy, the matriarch of the clan, keeps Mouse fed and later keeps her company as the monsters grow more bold, unwittingly becoming a participant in nightmare by following Mouse and Bongo into the very heart of all the horrors.



Kingfisher (who also writes under her real name, Ursula K. Vernon) engineers one fantastic scare after another. One scene in particular, involving the presence of a monster and the peephole on Mouse’s front door, has given me anxiety ever since I closed the covers. These are horrors unique and grotesque, visceral and terrifying: decaying skeleton monsters that patrol the woods; a deer carcass, twisted and vivisected, that turns into an ambulatory, shambling horror that would give Junji Ito nightmares. I shudder to picture them again, and I am not exaggerating for effect when I say that this novel legitimately kept me up at night.

T. Kingfisher has an outstanding command of language and can inflict a spike of terror with a single sentence. Her writing is beautiful and lyrical, as capable of describing pastoral natural scenes as providing chilling glimpses of clacking bones. Paragraphs packed with this much dread should be categorized as dangerous objects—they pile atop one another to the extent that the reading experience is akin to rolling a natural one on a sanity saving throw. It deals psychic damage without hesitation or remorse, wracking you with a delicious mix of southern gothic folklore and squishy body horror.

The Twisted Ones is, in short, a triumph of terror, and after reading it, you’ll never look at a deer the same way again.

This could have been a great novel if it was written by someone else. I really didn't dig the author's desperate attempts at sarcasm and witticism. It got old, stupid and repetitive very fast. Too many times she said "mental note" + something stupid, the main character had the sense of humor of a 10 year old and she just wouldn't stop trying to be funny to the point it was unrealistic--no one who sees something that scary and "twisted" in her window would start joking around.
Very annoying read and I can't help mourning this missed opportunity, considering the story and scary factor was so smart and original.

This book is hard to review - because while I was really glued to it, trying to figure out what is going on, now that I’ve read it....I can’t really tell you too much about what happened.

Let me explain.

The book is about a girl named Mouse, who goes to her dead grandmother’s house in North Carolina to clean it out. Turns out grandma was a hoarder, so the job takes a long time. In that time, Mouse begins to notice some very strange and frightening happenings, including finding an old journal of her grandmother’s husband, which details strange thoughts. Mouse quickly learns that the hills do indeed have eyes, and that she may be firmly in their sights.

So, yeah, basically there are monsters in the woods that begin to haunt Mouse. And I was super interested to figure out what was going on. So that’s good. But the explanation was so convoluted and twisting (puns!) that I could barely follow it. Which is disappointing.

There really wasn’t enough explanation of why and what specifically was happening, and too much focus on the mythology of everything. I would’ve liked more direct explanation “X did this, which made Y happen,” rather than “Oh a long time ago, someone said this, which was rumored to start something weird...”

Overall, it was interesting, and I may re-read the book to see if I digest more of it on the second go-round, but I found myself really confused at times. Maybe with some more smoothing and some tweaking, the story will get clearer and more defined.

DNF at 26% which, in hindsight, probably shouldn't be too surprising given the synopsis proclaims this book to be a horror novel on par with The Andy Griffith Show. The fucking Andy Griffith Show! Yes, that one!

I tried to give it a fair shot, but after 5 chapters it's mostly been a lot of description about a dead grandmother's hoarding, her decades-worth collection of coupons and other assorted sundry, and enough oh-so-precious dog antics to give Dean Koontz the world's biggest boner but leave me rolling my eyes. I had high hopes for this one, especially given Chuck Wendig's blurb, but this book has absolutely zero creep factor and what few interesting mysteries T. Kingfisher presents are buried under too many attempts at telling a cutesy narrative.

This one's an easy pass, and that's a shame because I actually was looking forward to reading this one. Unfortunately, there's nothing here to keep me engaged. This book is most definitely not for me.

I am a member of the American Library Association Reading List Award Committee. This title was one of the 2020 winners. The complete list of winners and shortlisted titles is at <a href="https://rusaupdate.org/2020/01/2020-reading-list-years-best-in-genre-fiction-for-adult-readers/">

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley!

EVERYTHING about this book drew me in. The cover, the title, the summary. And man, I was NOT disappointed at all. The storyline is SO unique. I've never read anything like it, and I probably never will again.

You need this book. What you need to know; it's a horror novel. it's twisted. and it's amazing...

This book scared me so many times. Redicolous dog Bongo made this book a hit in my eyes.
It was one of the best horror stories read in recent years.

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher is every bit as dark and twisty as the title suggests. As Mouse tries to clean out her hoarder grandmother’s home after her death, she uncovers a terrifying secret that only becomes more frightening the further she digs into it. There are some truly spine chilling moments in this book as she begins to discover what’s really in the woods surrounding the house, and finds out that monsters are not only real, they want you to join them. Bonus points go to this read for one of my favorite literary dogs, Bongo. He’s a true good boy.

I received a digital ARC of this book from Netgalley.

This was definitely the best horror novel I read this year. It's atmospheric, genuinely scary, and leavened with humor in the form of a ridiculous dog named Bongo.

Mouse was never close to her grandmother. The old woman was spiteful and abusive, and when she was put into a home and died, no one particularly mourned her. Except she left a house in rural North Carolina, and now, with Mouse's dad dealing with his own illness, Mouse is the only one left to survey the place and make it ready to be sold. How bad can it possibly be?

Pretty damn bad. It seems grandma was a hoarder, and the only inhabitable part of the house belonged to Cotgrave, her second husband. Still, Mouse figures a week or two of clearing out junk is worth it for the money that she should get after the place is sold. Mouse and her red bone coon hound Bongo settle in and start working, but it isn't long before strange noises in the night and Cotgrave's weird journal start to work on her nerves.

Cotgrave goes on and on about the Twisted Ones, and there's a strange carved stone in the yard. Then, while walking Bongo one day, Mouse finds a path that leads to a mountain clearing that absolutely cannot exist. There are more strange stones, and they seem to have a will of their own. They want something from Mouse, and it definitely isn't anything good...

Apparently this book was inspired by a story by Arthur Machen called "The White People." I haven't read the story, so I can definitely say that you don't need to be familiar with it to enjoy this. This is a fantastic story of folk horror, fairies, and a lovable dog.

This is a creepy one!

In fact it's a little creepier than I normally like, but Kingfisher has been on my author tbr list for a while, and I also live in North Carolina, where the book is set, so I thought I'd give it a shot when I got approved for an ARC. (Yes, I am dreadfully late, I do a shame.)

There are a lot of things that this book does really well:

-A really strong first person narrative
-Humor
-Puppy!
-Scare the ever living daylights of you and get inside your head until you feel like you'll never turn out the lights again and oh god is there something behind you?
-Really tight pacing

To sum up, if you like scary stories and creepy folklore and abject terror, this book is probably for you! It was quite a ride AND THE DOG LIVES GOOD DOG GOOD BONGO.

I first stumbled upon T. Kingfisher not quite knowing what to expect. Or, that’s not precisely true: I stumbled on The Seventh Bride thinking I was going to get one thing — dumb, light romance-adjacent fairy tale retelling — and then what I got was decidedly not that — smart, twisty, disturbing iteration of an already disturbing tale. I mean, most of this misapprehension was on me, because who is going to write a romance-adjacent version of Bluebeard with a straight face, at least that I’m going to run across and then think is a good idea to read. The Seventh Bride was really top shelf stuff, the kind of thing that made me make note of the author’s name. (I’m fairly disastrous with names, so this is a much bigger deal than it might appear.) So I picked up The Twisted Ones on the strength of The Seventh Bride, and I was oh so richly rewarded.The Twisted Ones is the sort of novel that infected my dreams, my evil, eldritch subconscious redressing my nightmares with imagery from the novel because so much of it is horror-adjacent to my own subconscious terrors. Yeesh.

A thirty something woman called Mouse returns to her grandmother’s home in one of the Carolinas to clean it out after her death. Her father, her grandmother’s son, is wasting from one of those unspoken tangle of diseases — maybe cancer with some dementia thrown in — so he doesn’t feel up to emptying his childhood home. Mouse’s grandmother was a hateful old hoarder, and no one much mourns her passing. Nothing about this set up seems a good idea, even to Mouse, who is our rueful, retrospective narrator. She’s constantly breaking in to say: yes, I know how bad this looks, and you’re reading this thinking I should have just cut bait, but that’s not exactly how people work when hip deep in a situation. It might seem a little like meta-textual fuckery, but she’s not wrong. Which is exactly the worst thing about it.

When I was a house painter, I spent a lot of time in people’s homes. Mostly, they were in habitation while I was working, the family mostly off set during the day as they worked or went to school. The house would have a kind of ringing emptiness, so when I was there changing the skin of the house, there was the impression of visitation. Working for hoarders is like this, but also somehow more full. They tend to keep themselves in residence while you work — lest we disrupt the fragile teetering equilibrium — but there’s another presence of the stuff itself. For hoarders, their house and its contents are a memory hoard, and you can feel the weight of that memory as you work in the house.

An anecdote: Due to a tangle of friendships and professional obligations, we worked once for a hoarder in a post-war expansion suburb. We went to pull a permit before we began work, and — I swear this is true — no less than three inspectors manifested, their faces full of thunderous disapproval. She had been in arrears to the city for so long, and so egregiously, that they were about to throw her in jail. My business partner and I did a little softshoe — we’re here to help, not hinder — but they were right sick of her shit, and had little to no faith we could fix anything. You really really have to be fucking up, as a land owner, for the civic system to escalate to that level. Mostly you can do what you want if you own land outright, America being what it is.

We would push into rooms and start the process of beating back mold and powdered plaster. In the afternoon we’d clean up, leaving things empty and drying. When you work in the average person’s home, they don’t want tools and drop cloths set down mid-work, to be picked up in the morning. Something about it is unsettling to homeowners, so we tried to keep a light footprint from the end of one workday and the start of the next. But at the hoarder’s house, we’d return in the morning to find a truly prodigious amount of activity in our absence, as the homeowner busied herself moving the mass of her hoard right into our workspace, trying to cover our disruptive rehabilitation with whatever her shit represented. This did not go well; there was yelling; we eventually cleared it back out.

So Mouse’s project of clearing out a hoarder’s house felt very accurate, to my experience, full up with not just the ghosts of the dead, but the strange fullness of memory and the indefinable tenor of any given person’s stuff. (I’ve also emptied houses after a person’s death or incarceration, and you get this weird sense of a person through their stuff. I have dozens of strange anecdotes that go nowhere about how people live.) Mouse finds a journal, which tries to recreate another journal, which details the supernatural experiences of both journal writers. Again, this could be just preciously meta-textual — a wry commentary on the Gothic novel and its bracketed and embedded narratives — but Mouse’s voice is so authentic, so perfectly pitched, that any literary assholery by me was well and truly disarmed.

Mouse’s voice is so forcefully written — and with such a ringing trueness — that I never questioned why she was staying in this horrific home full up with doll bones and the lingering hatefulness of an old hateful woman — not more than she did. The Twisted Ones reveals the horror slowly, a lapping reveal of the uncanny and the unearthly. The slow reveal is excruciating, the kind of storytelling that reveals the sinister behind the everyday, like the tok tok of what must be woodpeckers, or the almost-not-quite figures in stone. Kingfisher beautifully captures the itchy discomfort that city dwellers feel in the woods — even, and maybe especially, woods we encountered in our muzzy childhoods. She does a nice job with the sort of nosy and judgy experience of being in small towns, but then how such communities will fiercely claim people with even tenuous, distaff relationships in the right circumstances. She draws excellent portraiture of a long-eared dog, whose unflappable dumbassery was an odd comfort in the most horrible moments. All told, an excellent novel, and for sure I’ll be seeking out more of her work.

This book is nightmare fuel. The premise is so simple - woman clears out grandmother's house and discovers weird shit - but it somehow managed to be one of the more compelling, entertaining, and unsettling books I've read all year. The narrator of this book is one of the best things about it; she's got a very witty monologue going on that turned what could have been a dreadfully boring book into a delight. Because here's the thing, this book is slow. It ratchets up the tension slowly, and for a while, not very much happened, but it didn't matter, because Mouse's narration was so entertaining I didn't care about anything else.

This was a genuinely scary book. I have never been scared by a book before, but this one did it. I can feel parts of it still lingering in the dark corners of my mind, waiting to peek out when I'm trying to sleep. Apparently, The Twisted Ones is based off a short story called "The White People" by Arthur Machen, and Kingfisher does such a fantastic job adapting it here, and expanding the mythology of it all (also, if you're anything like me and you google Machen, be prepared to go down a Wikipedia rabbit hole of horror novelists and occult societies, it's weird shit).

I finished this book on October 31st. I shut off all my lights, opened my windows because the wind was moaning especially loudly, and huddled with my Kindle. It was an exquisite experience.

The Twisted Ones is highly influenced by the Arthur Machen story "The White People" but not having read the Machen piece won't hurt your enjoyment of The Twisted Ones. Plus, the short story can be found online for those who'd prefer to be acquainted with the influence.
In Kingfisher's homage, the very open first-person narrator Mouse has been tasked with cleaning out her dead grandmother's house in North Carolina. Mouse is dutiful, and she goes (and takes her beloved rescue dog), but she really, really didn't like Grandma. No one did. And her step-grandfather died under mysterious circumstances. Although it initially seems like most of the creepiness will come from Grandma's house (she was a hoarder and loved old dolls), it's rural North Carolina--except for when it's not--that provides most of the scare. Grandma was so awful even the twisted ones avoided her. But they're definitely interested in any of her relatives.
Kingfisher ramps up the suspense and creep factor slowly, allowing Mouse to form some connections with the locals and to develop a strong supporting cast, essentially--and then things go off the rails. My co-reader said he was creeped out but never scared. I found some of the imagery incredibly effective, and this short book of cosmic creepiness was well worth the time. Short take: slow burn, great creepy tale involving doors that should not be, creatures that should not be, and destinies that should definitely be avoided. Side note: I really liked Mouse as a person. She was compassionate and determined and loyal.

4-5 stars, which were well earned in scares and thrills. It kept me guessing throughout the book and made sure to keep my attention and flipping pages. Very chilling, thrilling, and downright scary at times! Must read, grab your copy today!
Will make sure I highly recommend to others!

I found this story quite enjoyable. It never felt like it dragged, and never became at all boring. I loved all the characters, but wished that some had a bigger part in the story. It is what it is, though, and this was a very well-written romp. The setting was good, and the overall tone was lightheartedly creepy as hell. Strange way to put it, I know, but bear with me here. If it hadn't been for the constant humor sprinkled about, it might've just been too dark of a story. The humor lightened the mood just enough, but not so much that you felt comfortable. How many books have you read that had you chuckling out loud at one line, and then genuinely creeped-out a few sentences later? Love that. Perfectly balanced. It was different and unexpected. The scares were written in a way that I was genuinely surprised when something happened. I don't usually feel that with a book, so kudos to the author for pulling that off. It was a bit of a slow burn of creepiness for a good portion of the story, but the fast-paced final quarter of the book was a wonderful page-turner that refused to let you go until you reach the satisfying end. Highly recommended!

The nitty-gritty: Horror and humor combine in just the right amounts to make this fast-paced story a must read for fans of spooky and weird fiction.

Happy Halloween, everyone! I don’t think I could have picked a better book to review today. The Twisted Ones was an unexpected combination of creeping terror, humor and delightful characters. I know what you’re thinking, that is a weird mix of elements! But boy did it work for me. T. Kingfisher, in case you didn’t know, is a pseudonym for the award-winning author Ursula Vernon. I’ve only read a couple of her shorter works, but now I’m anxious to see what else she’s written.

Kingfisher sets her story in the backwoods of North Carolina, a suitably creepy setting for a story that gave me all kinds of nightmares. Mouse is a young thirty-something editor who lives in Pittsburgh. One day her father calls and asks her for a big favor: he needs someone to clear out Mouse’s deceased grandmother’s house in Pondsboro, NC. Mouse agrees and sets off on the long drive with her laptop and her trusty Redbone Coonhound named Bongo. When they arrive, Mouse gets the shock of her life: her grandmother’s house is stuffed from floor to ceiling with all sorts of junk. Turns out grandma was a hoarder, and now it’s up to Mouse to get rid of it all and put the house up for sale. 

But the house isn't the only surprise Mouse finds. There’s something weird about the woods surrounding the property. Mouse hears strange tap-tap-tap noises in the middle of the night, and there’s a large white stone with strange carvings on it near the house. One day on a walk with her dog, Mouse and Bongo wind up on what she thinks is an Appalachian bald, a hill cleared of trees and brush. The problem is, the land around the house is completely flat and there isn’t a single hill in sight. So where the hell are they, and how did this bald get here? Even weirder are the large, carved stones seemingly growing out of the ground, which seem to be "calling" to Mouse.

When Mouse finds her grandfather Cotgrave’s old journal in a bedside drawer, she realizes she’s stumbled upon an unsettling mystery. Cotgrave’s fevered ramblings talk about a Green Book, someone named Ambrose, and “the twisted ones.” As Mouse pieces together clues from the journal, she realizes that Cotgrave was involved in something very strange and dangerous, involving eerie local folklore and some mysterious people called "holler people." Now all Mouse wants to do is finish her job and go home.

By far my favorite thing about this story was Mouse herself. What a wonderful character! The story is told in first person from Mouse’s point of view, so not only do we get to experience the weirdness of the house and the surrounding woods through her eyes, but her personality and humor leap off of every page. Mouse has a wry way of looking at the world, even when she discovers the horrors hiding in her grandmother’s house (piles of newspapers, a room full of creepy dolls, and mountains of junk stuffed into every nook and cranny) and later, the awful things in the woods, she still reacts to everything with a refreshing sense of humor. I loved her homey voice and her practical way of tackling challenges, and it was Mouse who kept the horror in this story bearable. I don’t know if I could have made it through without her voice in my ear!

I also loved the side characters, people who Mouse meets and befriends while she’s cleaning out the house. There’s Foxy, a woman who lives on the next property over and is a big part of Mouse’s adventure. I simply adored her, a wise-cracking older woman who dresses like a teenager and doesn’t take shit from anyone. Foxy’s seen things in the woods too, and immediately believes everything Mouse tells her about the strange goings-on. Then there’s Frank at the local dump, where Mouse hauls all the crap in the house, and a barista named Enid who offers much needed hot coffee and a friendly ear. All these characters were fully developed, even though some of them didn’t have a lot of page time.

But you’re probably here for the scary bits, right? Well, don’t worry. Readers looking for a chilling tale are in for a treat. Kingfisher’s story is full of atmosphere and creeping horror and even a few jump scares. I do most of my reading at night in bed, and I'll admit that wasn't the best idea for this book. The author also includes snippets of Cotgrave's crazy journal entries, which added a nice layer of creepiness to the story. I raced through this book because I was afraid to stop reading!

And I can’t finish this review without talking about Bongo. The Twisted Ones is going on my list of books with awesome dog companions for sure. Dog lovers will adore the relationship between Mouse and Bongo, and the author must be a dog person herself because she nails some things about dogs that had me chuckling in agreement (there’s a part about how Bongo loves to splash in muddy puddles but refuses to touch wet grass with his paws—dog owners will relate, I’m sure!) Bongo is nothing more than a really good dog in this story—Kingfisher doesn’t anthropomorphize him at all—but I think that made his story even sweeter. And here’s my usual spoiler when it comes to stories about dogs—Bongo makes it out the other side just fine!

The only misstep for me was the supernatural/mythological aspect of the story. The parts where Mouse is seeing weird figures in the stones, and later when she actually enters another realm and gets caught up in Cotgrave’s battle with the evil on the hill sort of lost me at times. I’m just not sure I understood everything that was going on, although the author certainly keeps things lively during these scenes with plenty of scary parts and frantic chase scenes. In her Afterward, Kingfisher tells us that she took inspiration from an old horror story called The White People by Arthur Machen, and now I'm very curious to track it down and read it.

Overall I had a blast reading this book. T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon is now on my “must read authors” list, and I can’t wait to see what she writes next. Also, I think I need my own Redbone Coonhound!

Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.

Bone Chillingly Good! - 4.5 stars...

I absolutely loved the originality in this story! It was a nice change of pace from the usual, everyday horror tropes. It is somewhat of a slow burner in the beginning as the main character, Mouse, is cleaning out her deceased grandmother's house but, there were plenty of creepy encounters and suspenseful dialogue throughout this process to keep my interest piqued and my mind on full alert. I was actually over here wishing that I could help her sift through some of that shit a little bit faster so she would finally find the "Green Book" that I was dying to read too, by that point.

If you're not into a little housekeeping, then stow your bins and put your trash truck in park, till about a quarter of the way in at least, and you'll find that cleaning becomes the last thing on your mind. Between terrifying animated deer bones that clack together like wind chimes as they're stalking around the house at night and twisted looking rocks with enough dark power to seduce you upon just a glance, The Twisted Ones will chill you to the core and make you wish that you kept some of that extra junk around to hide under.