Kingfisher, T.: The Twisted Ones

Der Autorin gelingt es sehr schnell, den Leser zu fesseln. Die Geschichte ist spannend und mysteriös und die absolute Stärke ist die überaus sympathische Protagonistin, die in einen Alptraum aus einer anderen Welt stolpert.Hinzukommt, dass sich die Autorin der ganzen Klischees des Genres offenbar sehr bewusst war, beim Schreiben dieses Buchs und gekonnt damit spielt und die typischen Hillbilly Genrefiguren vermeidet, die in anderen Büchern sonst solche Szenarien bevölkern.Das Buch versteh es langsam Spannung aufzubauen und nicht zu platt und mit billigen Schockmomenten zu agieren. Das Grauen zieht langsam über den Leser hinweg und beschert ihm manch beklemmdes Gefühl, bevor langsam enthüllt wird, was dort im Wald auf die Protagonistin lauert.Ein wirklich tolles Buch, das der Autorin definitiv einen Platz auf meinen zukünftigen Leselisten gesichert hat.

My, this is a scary one! Some of the images still stick with me, months after having read it. It‘s getting a bit too graphic for me later on, and I liked the atmosphere better when everything was still deliciously hazy and suspenseful - the whole business with what those tunnels really lead to in the end is just too pulpy for me I guess. But that‘s just a matter of personal taste, and I still enjoyed most of it very much and read it till the end.

I went into this book expecting a spine-chilling horror novel.Let me clarify, it simply is not. Rather it is not even a horror story, but rather a dark fantasy book with some horror elements.While the author is good at slowly building up tension and intruiging the reader by setting up a huge reveal, the story completely falls apart during the second half. It is also not ideal that the main threat of the story is not even that scary at all. The characters may be likable, but in my opinion the payoff is not worth the somewhat 380 pages of reading.The author also spends huge amounts of time describing the behaviour of the main protagonist‘s dog, which I found charming at first, but this habit swiftly became tedious due to it stretching out many parts unnecessarily.I would recommend this book to someone who is looking for a rather tame YA horror novel, everyone else can skip it without compunction. Not the most terrible read, but due to the second half only mediocre.