Twisted

This is a horror book—prepare to be creeped out. The author starts with the good intentions, strong familial values, innocuous settings, and seemingly normal events in the lives of normal people. Then he turns each good thing in an ever-increasing twist as the situation moves increasingly out of the protagonists’ control. It is this twisting of feelings we all share and fears we all conceal that is the heart of the book. The darkness under the bed is real, and the attitudes we hated in our parents live on in our very selves. Not only do the physical situations, such as giant centipedes, make the reader’s skin crawl, the characters’ mental anguish descends into hopelessness. Finally, the family flees the haunting only to find more horrific lodgings that draw and amplify the original evil. Even their eventual rescuer has huge problems of his own that threaten to overwhelm him.

The book is written well, the normal family is believable, the evil, as it manifests itself, has one watching one’s very thoughts and checking under the bed even with the light on. Even the resolution does not lessen the creepiness, and in that sense Twisted continues to make our fears twist ever more tightly inside us.