Book Review: The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

The Twisted Ones

by T. Kingfisher (Kingfisher)

I picked up this book because I thoroughly enjoyed T. Kingfisher’s novella What Moves the Dead and her fans kept pointing at The Twisted Ones as her must-read title. It was described as exceptionally scary. I have to disagree. Despite the dreary cover and — yes — substantial horror content, I found this to be a cozy read. (Is cozy horror a thing? It is now!) I think one of those contemporary romance covers with flat colors and a sentence title like Mouse Cleans House would be a totally appropriate presentation for this book.

 

Mouse is an editor whose terrible grandmother has died. Her dad asks if she’ll clean out his mother’s house, knowing she was something of a hoarder. Mouse takes her hound, a pickup truck, and a work laptop to rural North Carolina and gets to work. I’m a sucker for story situations where someone has to organize a big mess and this book does better than any other book in covering details about the organizing throughout the story and having it all be plot relevant. So satisfying!

 

The reason I’m labeling this “cozy” is that Mouse is almost always accompanied by someone cheery, whether that’s her dog, the barista at the nearest cafe, or the neighbors she meets. Things get intense, but she doesn’t have to face the strangeness and danger alone. There’s also very little explicit violence on the page. Mouse’s character voice fits with the ultra-contemporary heroines of the types of romance novels I mentioned above (but with no romance plot). It’s fun. It’s often funny. It goes totally off-the-rails spooky, then sticks the ending.

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes or House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.)

 

( official The Twisted Ones page on Ursula Vernon (a.k.a. T. Kingfisher)’s web site for her adult writing )

 

Recommended by Garren H.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

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