“Oh great, another god damn witch book,” is exactly what I thought when I opened the first page of HEX, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. I don’t know about you but I am pretty burnt out on witches and chicks walking around in oversized felt hats trying to read my aura and crap because they saw that season of American Horror Story.
But just give me a second. This novel successfully manages to pull off a tongue-in-cheek, pop culture laden, fun style with a genuine doomed sense of utter dread and hopelessness. Once I saw how it was written, with it’s quirky references to social media and GoPros I was like “Oh boy I get it you understand young people,” but then I killed a few chapters I couldn’t sleep that night. I keep seeing the witch in dark corners in my apartment and when I close my eyes I picture her sewn up eyes and mouth trying to whisper curses at me.
Heuvelt juxtaposes the modern style writing with the haunting, spooky historical background of the Black Rock Witch. It was her story, the story of Katherine Van Wyler’s struggle in colonial, witch-hunt-maddened, New England that kept me up at night. I think most times the scariest part of horror stories is what situation was the catalyst that caused supernatural antagonist to be so dangerous. That’s the part that haunts me about The Ring movie. Is the well. And how scared she must have been.
Originally written as a Dutch horror story the author custom wrote a new ending to fit with the North American witch hunt. Using colonial history as a backdrop for the modern day story the reader is taken in and out of comfort zones in their own backyard. For many people it's easy to relate to this conservative, small town where there's a terrible secret. It goes from humor to fear to humor to fear to humor to only being able to read it in the daylight because your boyfriend is sick of you having nightmares after reading at night and of you kicking him in the nuts while you sleep during said nightmares. I started only reading it at work in the safety of the fluorescent lights.
The ending is intense. I love it. Please read this book, you probably won’t be disappointed. After completing it I spent a few nights really thinking about familial love, parental sacrifices, mob mentality and how the internet has really changed everything, even horror stories. Although I know the technology in horror is really becoming a trope I'm still impressed with the creativity. I’m sorry but the way (this is not a spoiler it’s in the first chapter) they track the witch via smartphone is amazing and makes total sense to a millennia
Fun. Scary. Heart wrenching. What more could you want from a spooky book?
I'm sorry. I don't normally think reviews belong on this blog, which I wanted to be more events and musing based. However this book left a huge impression on me. I'm still thinking about parental love, mob mentality and the horrors of the human race every night. So deal with it.
