The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

“I was on a bare, grassy hillside scattered with stones, and that was impossible. I could see for miles in every direction, and that, too, was impossible.
I started to laugh. It wasn’t that funny. It was just that if I laughed, it wasn’t serious. I’ve heard that people who get shot laughing sometimes, they’ll tell you they’re fine even when they’re holding their guts in with their hands.”

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

When I started The Twisted Ones, I had a similar feeling as I did when starting The Hollow Places. Then I read that these books are slightly connected, and that T. Kingfisher wrote The Twisted Ones first. I’m only mentioning this because I noticed when I was reading other reviews on these two books that people seem to love the one they read first more, regardless of the order. And for me it is the same. The Hollow Places hit me in the gut; it frightened me to my bones and left me with more nightmares than I cared for. I will never, ever think of school buses without thinking of that book. But that is what makes such a great book. Ones that make you really feel a ton of emotion. And I have massive respect for T. Kingfisher because she writes some damn good, scary horror.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy The Twisted Ones. I really did. It was a great novel, and I loved the characters so much, but it wasn’t as scary to me, didn’t really make me feel the same way the other book did. When you read these books, especially close together, it’s hard not to draw similarities between the two, but in the end, they are very different books, and they are both really well done.

Mouse is a freelance editor. When her grandmother dies, her father calls her and asks her if she can go down and clean out her house for him. To see if it’s worth saving or if he should have the entire place bulldozed to the ground. Mouse agrees, thinking it won’t be so bad. But her grandmother was a hoarder. The house is pushed full of useless things, like boxes full of hangers, a room full of porcelain dolls, old microwaves and basically everything needs to go. Despite the amount of work it will be, Mouse lets her father know it’s doable and she begins to unload the house.

But it’s not long before she senses something is different about this place. The house, the surrounding woods. When Mouse stumbles across a strange display in the woods hanging from the tree, she reports it to the police, and while it’s dismissed as possibly a prank by a teenager, Mouse is unsettled because deep down, she knows it isn’t. At the same time, she comes across a journal kept by her grandmother’s dead husband, Cotsgrave. In it, he details strange creatures in the woods. While his ramblings sound almost maniacal, there’s this hint of truth to him that leaves Mouse even more unsettled.

It’s not long before she starts to see things in the woods, stumbling across places that shouldn’t exist. With the help of her neighbor, Foxy, Mouse begins to unravel the truth of the place that has existed beyond this world, for a very long time.

I loved Mouse’s character so much. She was smart, thoughtful and brave. She also offered a lot of moments of comic relief- a reaction to her fear, I imagine. Foxy, an older woman with nothing to lose, balanced Mouse so well, and their friendship was really incredible and strong. I really love the strength and bravery of T. Kingfisher’s characters. I also love how incredibly she writes across so many different genres, how she draws inspiration from other stories and makes them her own. She’s an incredibly talented writer, and I’m looking forward to seeing what stories she comes up with next.