The Twisted Tree: An Amazon Kindle Bestseller: 'A creepy and evocative fantasy' The Sunday Times

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So this one hsowed up on the newly added section of NetGalley last week and I was intrigued. The cover looked similar to the Frances Hardinge books that I keep seeing everywhere:

This book is well written and well thought. Every characters, stories, the pace, the setting, and every detail are carefully weaved and knitted into one wonderful and magical story. I love this book SO MUCH! It gripped me from the very beginning and I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN. 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. It soon turns out that something is lurking in the woods, something connected to the twisted tree in the garden. If they are to stay alive the pair will need to rely on each other and Martha’s new skill of being able to see things with her blind eye. Ah this had such a great premise! I liked the Norse mythology and the family history,I found that really interesting. I appreciated the strong female characters. I loved the atmospheric setting in a cabin by the woods in rural Norway. The story had some really creepy moments,whete you could feel the isolation, and the threat. But that was about it..

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This was a wonderful and relatively short fantasy/reality story. Martha was a great heroine and I loved the combination of fantasy, Norse mythology, creepiness and romance. That doesn't sound like it would work but it really did! Rachel has always been drawn to the macabre. As a child, she would write stories and draw pictures that her mum would take away because they gave her nightmares.

I really enjoyed this. The atmosphere that was created was absolutely brilliant and had me on the edge of me seat. The pacing was not too or fast but just right and the suspense created added to the intrigue. The plotline was interesting and went in a direction which I didn't really expect but really enjoyed. Another amazing book and will def become one of my favourites! I need a movie adaptation for this one! 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.

Visitors' opinions on The Twisted Tree

The writing style- This is linked to both of the above points. The way that the author pulls all of this together is done in such a natural way that it really draws you in

Also, I was really uncomfortable with how Martha being blind in one eye was handled. Martha falling out of the tree and becoming blind in one eye was her destiny, and there's a purpose behind her half-blindness. Being half-blind is a tool that will help her (again, not fully explained to my satisfaction). It just doesn't seem right to me to purposely decide a character will be half-blind, she'll be half-blind for a reason, and there's something "magical" about her being half-blind. It just feels really insensitive to me, using people's disability as a magical means to an end. Martha isn't half-blind for purposes of representation or diversity, she's half-blind because it helps the plot. I feel I should make it clear that I have not been a "YA" for quite a long time. However I have read and reviewed a few YA books over the past few years. The outline of this one appealed to immediately. In part I think this was because of the reference to Neil Gaiman whose books I love generally. It was the way the mysterious side of the story linked to the legends and the ghostly aspects which really made the book sing for me. The story of a girl who can tell things about a person just by touching their clothes made me shiver from the get go. Once this girl Martha gets to her grandmother’s cabin in the woods, I was on edge! And then there's the plot itself. As I said, there were elements to it that were pretty intriguing, but they just weren't developed enough. So there's more to this twisted tree in the garden that meets the eye. Ok, fine. But why? There's a link to Norse mythology, which was really fascinating, but it's just surface level stuff, and if you don't know Norse mythology, like me, then you'll be left with even more questions starting with "why?" And other questions like, what is the creature in the woods? Ok, it's X, but what is that? What does it mean? How and why did Mormor die? Because she seemed to know she would die, but there's no explanation as to why, or what happened. Why Martha's family, specifically? And what happened before they were given this task? There were just so many things that were underdeveloped, world building that wasn't fleshed out enough. I have read a lot of fantasy, and so I'm used to in depth explanations and world building that has an answer to every possible question. It feels to me that Burge didn't put enough effort into fleshing out her world building, and so I feel a little cheated.The insta-love was so cringey and unnecessary, but it's YA so has to have romance right?! Also, the love interest was called Stig, which just made me think of the book, Stig of the dump Every. Single. Time. 😂😂 I’m not going to tell you much more at this point as there is no way to tell you more without being a completely spoilers based review I received a free ebook version of this from Netgalley. Thankyou to both the publisher and Netgalley for allowing me to read this. My review is still honest! We meet Martha who is desperately unhappy after an accident left her blind in one eye and with a scar on her face. A bizarre result of this accident was that she can ‘read’ people from touching their clothes. She can sense feelings and memories and see a part of them when she connects with their clothes. Part ghost story, part Nordic mystery – a creepy and chilling tale steeped in Norse myth, perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman and Michelle Paver’s DARK MATTER.