The Twisted Ones is a novel by T. Kingfisher, aka Ursula Vernon. She based it on Arthur Machen’s short story The White People.
Finished on: 15.2.2025

Plot:
Mouse’s grandmother just died. They were never close, the grandmother being cold and cruel, but Mouse promises her father, who can’t travel, to clear out the house in North Carolina. Taking her dog Bongo and her computer to do some remote work, she settles in the house at the edge of the woods. Once there, she not only realizes that her grandmother was a hoarder, but also discovers a diary from her step-grandfather Frederick Cotgrave. In that diary, he talks about the „Green Book“, and mysterious goings-on around them. Mouse finds herself experiencing some mysteries herself.

The Twisted Ones is an absolutely fantastic horror novel. It has great characters, is creepy as fuck and has a really good dog. I loved everything about it.

Machen’s writing has been on my radar for a while but I didn’t get around to reading any of it yet. With The Twisted Ones, I’m not only happy that I already bought a lot of Vernon’s back catalogue, but Machen has definitely moved up on my reading list as well. That’s just how good this book was.

The Twisted Ones really creeped me out. It gave me goosebumps, my eyes glued to the page as Vernon kept finding new ways for the house, the woods, the Green Book and the White People to be terrifying. There was a lot going on, but it was never too much.

Mouse was a wonderful protagonist. I loved that we got an older protagonist (as in Nettle and Bone) who is settled in her own skin. Even more, I loved that we got a dog (again as in Nettle and Bone). Bongo made me realize how rarely book characters seem to be dog people, and how rarely good representations of what it means to have a do gare in books. Vernon probably has a dog of her own, because as a dog owner, I can confidently say: yeah, that’s how it is.

The warmth that comes almost automatically with dogs (at least to me), and that is underscored with the idiosyncratic characters that Mouse meets around her grandmother’s place just go to emphasize the truly unsettling nature of the things Mouse encounters in the woods and in the Green Book. I am glad that I am not prone to bad dreams, because The Twisted Ones is the kind of book that can keep the entire nightmare industy in somebody’s head running for a while.

Summarizing: If you’re looking to be scared, look no further.