While clearing out all the stuff her grandmother had accumulated over her lifetime, Mouse stumbles across her grandfather's diary. How bad could it be? Pretty bad as it seems grandmother was a hoarder. Luckily there's also a cosmic horror element to help offset the true horror.Melissa's (known as Mouse) grandmother has recently died and her father has asked asked Mouse go clear out her grandmother's house. This book gave me the exact same feeling in parts. I can't watch those popular hoarding TV shows without feeling like I need to clear out everything in my house and Lysol the walls. To me, the true horror in this novel is the mundane situation Mouse has found herself in that kicks off the story: being asked to clear out her hoarder grandmother's house after her death. Kingfisher's other horror novel, The Hollow Places, I mentioned that horror is highly individual. I would skip this one and check out Kingfisher's Clocktaur War series or one of her fairy tale retellings instead. This was just slow and boring, the main protagonist was hard to engage with, and the folklore seemed scattered. As for the writing, it flows well enough and this was a pretty quick read if you can stay interested.My Summary (3/5): Overall I wasn't a huge fan of this book, I thought it was one of Kingfisher's weaker stories and prefer her fantasy books a lot more.

Mouse herself is pretty ordinary and a bit boring and makes a lot of poor decisions. Character-wise the stars of this story are definitely Mouse's dog and the old hippie neighbor lady Mouse ends up hanging with. As the story continues it picks up pace but also just gets plan weird as Mouse ends up venturing into an odd parallel, faerie-esque world. This starts out as a very deliberately paced creepy haunted house type of story. The whole thing was very forgettable and just poorly put together. However, I was determined to make this my scary Halloween read for the year so I pushed through. Once she gets out there strange things start happening around the house and she finds a strange journal of her grandpa's that she starts to read.I almost stopped reading this a number of times because I was just bored. Her grandma was a bit of a hoarder but Mouse needs the money from the house sale and is trying to escape a failed relationship, so she agrees to the plan. The premise is that Mouse gets a call from her dad who wants her to go out and clean out her grandma's house. I also felt like the main character made a lot of really dumb decisions without a lot of motivation to do so.

The pacing was inconsistent and the folklore was sloppily dealt with. This starts out as a slow-paced type of haunted house horror novel, then pivots more towards being a dark fairy tale.

I borrowed this on ebook from my library.Thoughts: This was okay but definitely not my favorite Kingfisher book. Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book.

The twisted ones ursula vernon