Will I love The Twisted Ones?

I adored the simple set-up for this one.

Go clean out a relative’s house: simple, basic even. But that is the perfect trap to lull you into a sense of knowing what will come. The atmosphere here really nails the vibe of modern-day folk horror.

Mouse’s narration and humor hit perfectly for me, helping set off the building dread and making it all that much more effective when things got really spooky. And we can’t forget Bongo—I am a sucker for well-written animal sidekicks, and Bongo is top-notch!

I loved this book, which was a horror novel rich in folklore. I was drawn to the unique characters and the combination of horror, occult, and Irish folklore. I really enjoyed the transportation of these folklore traditions across continents, moving from Ireland to Northern Carolina.

I always feel that good horror is the sense of unease that develops throughout the story and lingers long after. It has been several years since reading this book, and the unease still lingers, and the repetitive line throughout ‘And I twist myself around like the twisted ones” casts a spell all of its own. 

T. Kingfisher could write stereo instructions and I’d read them. Her prose is straightforward and absolutely refreshing, but she does creepy in ways that will make you keep your lights on at night.

While The Twisted Ones isn’t the typical necromancer story, there’s some raising-the-dead shenanigans in it that will make your skin crawl—and also maybe pull on your heartstrings a little. In this novel, a young woman discovers dark secrets in her recently-deceased grandmother’s rural home that shed new and horrific light on what might have really happened to her dead loved ones.

Focusing more on psychological scares than… show more.