Ratings101
Average rating3.7
DNF. The story started out delightfully weird but the first few chapters were 95% quoted dialog and I wasn't feeling it.
I struggled a little to get into this book - but it was well worth pushing through. It was so well done, so devastating, and so tense.
Dark humor, dark content, dark human conditions. Dark, dark, dark. It was great!
So up until the last part of this book it was so good, felt like a such a unique concept that I haven't really read before, I almost couldn't put it down. Then the end just was a cluster fuck and I was left a little disappointed by it. However it doesn't take away from how amazing the beginning and middle bits were. Very creepy and spooky.
Hex feasts on the worst parts of humanity to tell an absolutely gut wrenching family drama.
The scariest parts were the horrible townsfolk. The last few chapters are filled with some truly chilling violence. There were a lot of questions I had throughout and none of them are really answered in the end. Bit frustrated with how the story was told. The author originally wrote it in Dutch and then rewrote the ending when it was translated to English. I don’t know if that impacted the story for me since I don’t read Dutch. 🤷♀️
Read for #RoaringWolfFrightNight book club on Fable
This book talked far too much about nipples for me to really get into it. Good and unique! But weird choices sometimes.
2,5/5⭐️
Dit voelde gewoon als een feverdream. Ofja een fevernightmare. Heel raar boek. Het einde was dan wel cool, maar alsnog raar
I came into this book expecting a creepy, horrific ride. And, by the end, this book delivered. There's very little as horrific as the nature of man.
I was disappointed by how slow the book moved through the first half, and also the sexualization of most/all female characters in the book, though I have to wonder if some of that was from translation limitations? There were still very blatant examples but it fit the nature of the teen boys we saw most of the book through.
That aside, the ending was satisfying, creepy, and honestly one of the better horror endings I can recall in recent reads.
My fiancé suggesting I listen to this because we are both from The Hudson River Valley, which is this novel's setting. I was a bit surprised by this choice, as this novel is the author's English language debut, and the setting is pretty damn accurate. I wonder if he lives there now?
I listened to this on my way home to see my parents. Highland Mills, Central Valley, and Harriman we're mentioned by name more than once, and all three are directly connected to my home town of 22 years, Monroe. West Point Military Academy, as well as 9W through Cornwall, Bear Mountain, and the novel's featured hospital, St. Luke's in Newburgh, are all places I've frequented as well. It was super cool and kind of eerie to read a novel like this about where I'm from.
The town of Black Spring has a problem, what kind of old town doesn't? This town's problem just happens to be a 17th century immortal witch named Katherine. Since they were able to sew her eyes and mouth shut she hasn't been too much of a problem, just creepy. And luckily she never breaks from her current schedule...
So because I always listen to an audio and read a physical book at the same time, I had this really unique experience of reading these two very similar scenes in two drastically different novels within like an hour of each other. Both this novel and C.V. Hunt's ‘Halloween Fiend' feature a fall festival that isn't really dedicated to their town's (I'll say) affliction, but at the same time kind of is. It was cool to see how each framed how their town responded to what they had been forced to accept as normal over time.
The climax of this novel does some really interesting things in its depiction of the degradation of humanity. Is it the witch causing it, or the town itself? Either way, they so easily are lead to depravity. Brothers, sisters, mothers, husbands...no one is safe and everyone is guilty.
Personally a 4/5*. Spooky, atmospheric, dark. It looks like there's a sequel to this but it's only available in Dutch? I'm confused.
Het boek neemt je mee in een wereld van een heks. Gevuld met horror en spanning. Het einde is vol met fantasieën en gruwel, maar had veel meer potentie. Al met al een heerlijk boek als de boeken van Stephen King verslonden hebt.
The premise sounded so promising, and there was so much that could have been done with this. But it fell flat for me. For over two thirds of the book, nothing happened. The characters were one dimensional and the writing felt stilted and unnatural (I am willing to forgive this, as English is not the author's first language).
There was also a gross underrepresentation of women in the book - honestly, I'm not one to insist on gender inclusion in every book I read, I'm not that sensitive to political correctness and not prone to the general outrage that permeates everything these days - but this almost seemed misogynistic.
Nope, no, nopity, no!
1.5 stars (because I finished it!)
The first 3rd was amazing! The second 3rd wasn't bad. And the last 3rd was odd. I ended up skimming. I can see how some people would just be head over heels in love with this book, but it isn't like that for me.
Wauw!! Wat een boek! Ondanks dat het in het begin moeilijk was om in het verhaal te komen geef ik het 4 sterren. Toen ik eenmaal in het verhaal zat wilde ik niet meer stoppen met lezen. Het was spannend, het was vies, het was modern en het was UNIEK.
De schrijfstijl van Thomas is fijn. Het boek las makkelijk weg.
Het boek gaat over het dorpje Beek dat in de greep wordt gehouden van de Wylerheks.
De Wylerheks is een vrouw uit de zeventiende eeuw en ze heeft dichtgenaaide mond en ogen.
Iedereen in Beek weet dat je nooit de ogen van de heks mag openen.
Dit boek heeft veel spannende momenten waardoor je niet meer wilt stoppen met lezen.
Het heeft de nodige plot twists en duidelijke inleiding en een eind van heb ik jou daar!
Ik raad dit boek aan iedereen aan.
I gobbled this up. I have tried to read the horror genre for YEARS. The reality is, the stories are rarely scary: they are gory (which is NOT the same thing) or they are atmospheric but boring. Or, they are thinly guised romance novels featuring creatures of horror.
This book is freaking scary.
It does take until the center of the novel for all hell to break loose. Until then, it's still a good ride. Those that compare it to early King- I agree. In fact, I think I would recommend this to fans of Stranger Things to read while we wait for season 2. It's Twin Peaks-ish.
It did bother me that the church was consistently referred to as the Crystal Meth Church. Once-okay, in the way that it is how a teen boy describes the church. Described that way every time it becomes offensive. I'm not even religious, but I don't want to watch anyone piss on someone's beliefs.
I give Heuvelt credit for very decent world building, character development, and scaring the hell out of me a couple of times. It just occurred to me! I would compare him, in all seriousness, with John Saul.
It loses a star for baiting me. At least once a chapter the author baited us with “This would be the last time they...” or “all this would change...” and blah blah blah. Show don't tell. And don't hit us in the head with foreshadowing. Readers are more clever than that.
Much of the novel lingers on the question ???What makes us civilised???? In the 21st century most people (particularly in the West) tend to think that ???civilisation??? is associated with altruism, generosity, mercy ??? in short, all the positive characteristics of our species. We also tend to believe that, in the present day, we are more altruistic, more generous, and more merciful than our predecessors in ???the bad old days??? ??? that we would not, we would never, allow ourselves to, say, be subjected to a surveillance state, or that we would treat prisoners with appropriate mercy, or that we would not persecute others without due cause. We tell ourselves those are things for the dark, wicked past, for the Inquisition and la Terreur. That is the past; we live in the present, and that darkness has no hold on us anymore.
But HEX shows us that this belief in our civilisation???s superiority is utterly false.
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