I bought this book after seeing the cover on my Facebook feed. I’m a big book cover fanatic and I just love abstract covers. This one is so beautiful and I’m so delighted to be able to say that the story matched it perfectly. This spooky, grim, story is dark and twisted with just the right amount of angst for a YA novel. Below is the cover and blurb followed by my review.
The Twisted Tree by Rachel Burge
Part ghost story, part Nordic thriller – this is a twisty, tense and spooky YA debut, perfect for fans of CORALINE and Michelle Paver’s DARK MATTER.
Martha can tell things about a person just by touching their clothes, as if their emotions and memories have been absorbed into the material. It started the day she fell from the tree at her grandma’s cabin and became blind in one eye.
Determined to understand her strange ability, Martha sets off to visit her grandmother, Mormor – only to discover Mormor is dead, a peculiar boy is in her cabin and a terrifying creature is on the loose.
Then the spinning wheel starts creaking, books move around and terror creeps in . . .
Set in the remote snows of contemporary Norway, THE TWISTED TREE is a ghost story that twists and turns – and never takes you quite where you’d expect.
The Twisted Tree – My Review
We begin by meeting Martha as she travels to visit her grandmother. Martha is blind in one eye after a terrible accident involving the tree at her grandmother’s house. When Martha arrives at her Grandmother’s she discovers a strange boy inside and that her grandmother has died.
Martha has a rather strange ability which awakened after her accident and she has gone to her grandmother for answers.
I don’t want to spoil the book and give things away as this is a great tale that is worth reading. It’s dark and creepy and with the story mainly revolving around Martha and Stig, the author brings you right into the thick of things with dark shadows a disturbing creature that seeks to destroy them, flesh hanging from bones, razor sharp claws, and a tree that houses the souls of the dead.
The tree needs to be watered and the souls need to be kept safe, and the monster needs to be killed. This tense and gripping story has it all and at just the right amounts too. I enjoyed the flow of the books, the characters, and the interweaving of Norwegian. The old folklore is wonderful too. I wanted to know what the mystery was surrounding the tree and Martha and her grandmother the whole way through the book and I certainly wasn’t disappointed.
Released as a YA book, I think it definitely hits the target audience and the romantic tension between Martha and Stig is very well done.
All in all, another 5 star read from me and I look forward to reading more for this debut author.
Available now in Kindle and paperback from Amazon and all leading stores.
Until next time,
Keep reading and writing,
Amanda
Amanda J Evans is an award-winning Irish author and writing coach. Amanda writes adult romance that often crosses into paranormal and fantasy. Growing up with heroes like Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones, her stories centre on good versus evil with a splice of love and magic thrown in too. Her books have all won awards and her novella, Hear Me Cry, won the Book of the Year Award at the Dublin Writers Conference 2018. Amanda is also the author of Surviving Suicide: A Memoir from Those Death Left Behind, published in 2012.
