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HEX
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HEX
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HEX
Audiobook14 hours

HEX

Written by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Narrated by Jeff Harding

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

“This is totally, brilliantly original.” —Stephen King

“HEX is creepy and gripping and original, sure to be one of the top horror novels of 2016.” —George R.R. Martin

The English language debut of the bestselling Dutch novel, Hex, from Thomas Olde Heuvelt--a Hugo and World Fantasy award nominated talent to watch


Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay 'til death. Whoever settles, never leaves.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children's bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened or the consequences will be too terrible to bear.

The elders of Black Spring have virtually quarantined the town by using high-tech surveillance to prevent their curse from spreading. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town's teenagers decide to break their strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling into dark, medieval practices of the distant past.

This chilling audiobook heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice in mainstream horror and dark fantasy.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 26, 2016
ISBN9781427271259
Unavailable
HEX
Author

Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Thomas Olde Heuvelt (1983) is the international bestselling author of Hex, Echo, and Oracle. The lauded Hex was published in over twenty-five countries around the world and is currently in development for TV. Olde Heuvelt, whose last name in Dutch dialect means “Old Hill,” was the first ever translated author to win a Hugo Award for his short fiction. He lives in The Netherlands and the south of France.

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Reviews for HEX

Rating: 3.6080247283950615 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

324 ratings32 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Hex could have been epic! A centuries old witch, Katherine van Wyler, who has had her eyes and mouth sewn shut, was bound by chains but she still walks the earth. She shows up in random places, houses, and even at the foot of your bed while you sleep. She may stay for hours or even days and the one thing you never do is acknowledge that she is there. Wow, right?! That’s the best part of the story in a nutshell. So much could have been done to give this character the depth that she deserved but no, the story is really about the local teenagers and their unhappiness with their lack choices, restriction of the internet, and access to social media.The town is idyllic as far as outsiders are concerned but the citizens go out of their way to do their best to discourage any new families from moving in because they know that once you move to Black Springs you can never leave. If they try and leave they are overcome by a terrible urge to commit suicide. The kids who are born there never had a chance. They are bound by the choices made by their parents and are tutored on how to behave around Katherine. They are to stay away from her at all costs because if they get too close to her they can hear her whispers and they also drive one to thoughts of suicide.Despite having been told of the consequences not only to themselves but the potential for the entire town, a small group of teenagers take it upon themselves to start trying their own experiments to see if the curse can be broken or if they can bring the truth to the world so that they don’t have to live a “double life” anymore. Only things don’t go as planned and everything that they had been working towards start to fall apart with the worse kind of consequences. The paranormal parts were very tame and boring, soooo disappointing.Katherine had so much potential but it was completely wasted. She did nothing epic. If anything, she was really pathetic and I felt terrible for her for the humiliation she endured. There were times where I was just waiting for her to really rain down the terror but that never happened. The townspeople themselves were the most messed up part of this story. They have a facade of being decent human beings but when they are put in a position where they feel threatened they are the truly awful ones. Talk about a mob mentality. I was disappointed in Hex because I wanted to read a fascinating paranormal horror story and this book was so not.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very fresh concept, but resonates a lot with the way we live: in the shadow of terror.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This was fantastic. There is something to be said for a book that starts off with a seemingly harmless ghost (people threw dish towels on her face they've gotten so used to her) and ends with the complete breakdown of society and handles it all beautifully. This is one of those books that has a so much deeper message lurking underneath that initial premise that when you see it you're going to want to shake your finger at the author going 'Oh youuu...'. I just couldn't get over how clever how how damn spooky he managed this.The story consistently had me guessing, somehow certain of what was coming but always being wrong. This is a terrible habit I've got, if anyone who reads many of my reviews may know. I can't even help to stop it, I always try to guess where a story is going, and if I can I'm disappointed. With this one I eventually gave up trying to guess and just went along with the ride. Our characters were wide and varied, and let me tell you - none of them were without flaws. They were the people Black Springs were built on and it's interesting to watch how the fallout of everything affects them all. Everyone handles things in different ways and they'll surprise you. The only real issue I had was that I wish we'd seen more of the main female wife/mother figure. She was left in a dramatic position then we get only a bit of a glancing return in a climatic point for our protagonist.This one kept me from sleeping well last night so chalk that up as a great horror read. It also managed to give me those chills everyone is always seeking. The ones where you're sitting in an armchair but holy shit, your shoulders aren't pressed against the chair so something might grab them. Highly recommend this one, it especially put me in mind of great Stephen King horror. If you enjoy his work don't pass this one up.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Black Springs is a town with a secret that the residents have kept for hundreds of years. They have there own resident witch who roams around. The witch is bound with chains and has her eyes and mouth sewn shut. Anybody who wants to settle in Black Springs will be cursed and will never be able to leave.I have many books on my shelf but they are either thrillers or historical and I don't have many horror. I do enjoy a good horror and have seen positive things about Hex.The book would be a good place for somebody to start delving into the horror genre. The story however for me wasn't really scary. In fact I felt sorry for the witch who seems stuck in the town. The story is set in modern times with apps and mobiles. Hex is the towns app where the residents record where the witch is as she can appear anywhere. The young generation of the town use the modern tech to film the witch against the towns rules and torment her so things are going to go wrong. I enjoyed the majority of the book but didn't like the ending and I felt it was rushed. The last part of the book is how the story was going but I felt it happened very quickly and there were some elements I didn't enjoy. What I did enjoy was how the residents dealt with the witch from outsiders and how they hid her in plain sight.Overall I enjoyed it apart from the ending, but the story wasn't scary but was compelling.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a solid, fairly scary novel. As with all of the best horror, the thing you're scared of isn't exactly where the danger lies.There were a couple of things that highlighted the fact that the author isn't from the United States (for one, he refers to "pensioners" (p 86 in the hardcover edition). Only those accustomed to a social safety net for the elderly would refer to retired people as "pensioners."), but for the most part, he hit the right notes. About two-thirds through, I made a realization about Katherine that, if things attached to her just burned away when she disappeared, then the stitches and chains would have just burned away, too, if she hadn't wanted them there and I'm very glad Olde Heuvelt addresses this by the end of the novel, and in an indirect rather than a cheesy, over-explanatory way.Normally I just skim acknowledgments, but I recommend reading them in this case. They're sappy as always and filled with oblique references to people I don't know, but there's also some interesting stuff there about the novel and how the English edition came to be.I wish I read Dutch so I could see the differences between that version and this one. But not enough to actually learn Dutch.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very interesting.****CONTAINS SPOILERS****Steve is a husband and a father who lives with his family in a seemingly normal town called Black Spring. But this town is different from any other town. This town is haunted buy a 300-year old witch. Her eyes and her mouth are sewn shut and the people that live in the town are not only haunted by her presence but trapped there by it as well. When a group of kids play a prank on the witch things start to escalate quickly and the townsfolk start showing their true colors.This book is a fascinating look into mob mentality and mass hysteria. Although it may be classified as a paranormal horror novel, the only element that is paranormal about it is the witch herself. The rest of the horror comes from the townspeople themselves.it is said over and over again in the book that the townspeople got what they deserved and rightfully so. The witches retribution turned out to be no more than people's hatred and utter contempt to see the ugly side of life. I have to admit that I hated the ending. I read the English version and to my knowledge the Dutch version has a different ending than the English version. However as I said I did not care for the English version ending. It is amazing to think what someone will do when they are faced with a horrors that took place in this town, but even on the brink of madness to let your own son and wife died in a horrible fire and be the sole survivor is a terrible thought in and of itself. I guess mass hysteria can be very ugly but someone's own fit of madness can be even uglier when we hone in on it.Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy this book. I will definitely keep it from my library and probably reread it sometime in the future. I just simply did not care for the ending because I can't imagine abandoning my family like that.I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes a good horror novel. Good and creepy. Like this gets under your skin in a way that you just can't get out of your mind. And it may even make you look at society a little different from now on.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    DNF. The story started out delightfully weird but the first few chapters were 95% quoted dialog and I wasn't feeling it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book may well be unique in terms of a haunting. The setting is not a haunted house but an entire village, and the ‘ghost’ is that of a witch which has corporal form yet the ability to wander at will. Something of a slow burn in places it’s received a few mixed reviews, though fans who love not to be rushed and like Stephen King, might get on well with this. I hated every moment I had to put it down. Written in mostly omnipresent head-hopping viewpoints, the novel suffers from an overuse of cliches, but the story blows these minor issues aside. There’s so much subtext here, dealing with all we know about violence and fear, and of how humans don’t need true evil to misbehave. The revelation of evil is inspired, and the ending is a simply perfect conclusion, pulling all threads together. I’ve seen reviews from those who feel otherwise, but it comes down to what the reader wants from a horror story. I’ve yet to find such a book that truly scares me. Some have come close to disturbing me, but for me, that’s not quite the same thing. Hex does neither, but I loved this book, found it insidiously fascinating. This story will always be with me, as will my copy, and that’s what the best books have — an unforgettable quality. Would make an excellent film if done well.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    For my last spooky season book of the year, HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt from @tornightfire, offered up all the child and scares that I was hoping for. Holy crap, this book was intense, and did not hold back or shy away from going where I did not think it was going to go. Hands down, my favorite book this spooky season. Will absolutely be picking by Heuvelt’s Echo when it is released next year.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I absolutely enjoyed the hell out of this book.

    I loved the characters (especially Tyler and Stephen), I loved the setting, I loved the modern take on it, I loved it all. It's goddamn brilliant.

    I have two, very niggling complaints. Once in a while, Heuvelt would bust out a phrase that really shouldn't have gotten by the editor, maybe once every forty pages or so. Each one would pop me out of the storyline momentarily due to its sheer incongruity.

    INSERT: After having posted this, I realized the author is from the Netherlands and that this was translated, so I'm guessing the above issue may, at least in part, rest on the translator.

    And also, once in a while, Heuvelt would slip into a God's-eye view of the town and the events and narrate directly to the reader as though they were observer. I get why he did it, but wasn't a massive fan of it.

    But, for the sheer fun of the story and delivery of the goods toward the end? My god, this was just an amazing novel.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I picked up HEX because of the blurb Stephen King gave it. I am a lifelong horror fan, and have even tried to write some fiction myself, and one of my favorite tropes of the genre is the small town with a deep dark secret that will ultimately be exposed. There’s something about a rural setting and small town life that is the perfect façade for a lurking supernatural evil. While reading HEX I found echoes of Shirley Jackson’s THE LOTTERY, along with HARVEST HOME, a ‘70s bestseller by Thomas Tryon that might not be as well known as it used to be. And I definitely got a PET SEMETARY vibe from certain parts of HEX. The small town in HEX is Black Spring, a little too on nose named community in the Hudson Valley that goes back to the days of the Dutch settlers, where in the 1660s, a woman named Katherine Van Wyler was accused of being a witch for supposedly raising one of her children from the dead. Part of her punishment was to have her eyes and mouth sewn shut lest she curse her accusers. But she was not gotten rid of so easily, and in the centuries since, Katherine has continually walked the streets of Black Spring, entering homes at will, placing all who gaze upon her under a curse whose full wrath will fall upon them if the sutures are removed, allowing Katherine to see and speak. The townspeople do their best to live with the situation, ignoring the witch who walks in their midst, and shielding her presence from the outside world. But the younger generation is increasingly unhappy with the status quo, and not content to simply ignore Katherine and her curse, thus setting in motion a series of actions which do not end well. Who is really evil, the witch whose whispers can drive the unwary to self harm, or the people who would make her choose between the lives of her two children, and sew her eyes and mouth shut? Did Katherine curse the people of Black Spring and their descendants, or is the curse a manifestation of their hate and fear, thus bringing it all on them and perpetuating it to the present day?I found HEX to be one of those horror novels where you just have to go with the flow; at first, I didn’t find Katherine and her curse on Black Spring to be particularly compelling – people just ignoring a witch and going on with their lives was not exactly horrific. And the opening section made the story feel like a slow burn, but before the mid section, the supernatural elements really start to kick in, and the finale is pure apocalyptic horror. I felt that my patience and persistence was rewarded. The creepiness factor definitely went up as the book went along. The book’s main protagonists are the Grant family, with most of the attention focused on physician father Steve, and inquisitive older teen son, Tyler, and the switch in POV between them, and other characters, can be jarring, as it often means a shift in tone. I also think this book is not for everyone. Most of the female characters are not rendered sympathetically, which is a big negative for many readers; Griselda Holst, the town butcher, for example, is fat and dense, and physically unattractive, which is pointed out nearly every time she appears in the book. Robert Grim, the head of town security, is another character with a less than pleasant demeanor, and some noticeably offensive remarks for females. The author, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, is from The Netherlands, and seems to have a breast fetish which includes violence toward said body part. Some of the images invoked in the all-hell-has-broken-loose finale may be very off putting. It all comes down to the reader’s taste in horror, and what they consider to be a well written tale of terror, or a lazy piece of hack work with cheap scares. Heuvelt originally wrote a version of this book that was set in The Netherlands, which has, in his own words, a more Dutch sensibility, along with a different ending. That’s a book I would like to read, but I do commend him on how well he seamlessly transferred his story to 21st Century America. Pulling off this kind of story in the digital age is not easy.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The latest in a string of really strong horror novels that I've had the pleasure (horror???) of reading over the last month.

    The premise here is CRAZY and super original. The town of Black Spring has been cursed (haunted, occupied, pick a word) for 350 years by the Black Rock Witch. She shows up in their homes, walks the streets, stands silently in the supermarket, and is otherwise a fixture in the daily lives of the town's inhabitants. There are festivals, there are witch tours in the woods, there's even an app the townsfolk use to track her whereabouts by signing in with the time and current sighting. The local teens have made her a subject of taunting and bullying, and there's a town-watch that tries to keep people from moving in and becoming part of the curse.

    The first part of the book made me laugh cringingly just because of how .... normal it is for everyone to see this terrifying apparition constantly. A mother casually throws a dishcloth over the witch's face while she stands silently in a corner of their living room. The Council members hide her with an Easter Bunny cutout when she stands in the supermarket too long. It's still horrifying but there's a slightly unhinged and comic element early on. Then it just devolves into slow-creeping horror and eventually sheer terror.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    HEX was not what I expected. At all. It had some very creepy moments and for that reason I'm glad I read it, but I didn't find it to be the end all-be all of dark fiction like most of my friends did. I'm a little bummed about that because my expectations were high.

    I'm not going to get into the plot much as this book came out several years ago and everyone knows it's about a witch. She haunts the town, but her type of haunting mainly consists of showing up at weird times and places, creeping the hell out of everyone by just standing there, and then she vanishes. Okay, there's more to it than that, but that's the gist.

    As I mentioned above, there were a few genuinely disturbing moments and I could almost feel the stifling atmosphere at times. The few scenes that unsettled me were effective and creative. However, my enjoyment of them was often marred by breasts. That's right: breasts. What is the fascination with them in this story? Also, the poor lady with the high forehead. OMG, get over it already! Every single time this character was mentioned, so was her forehead. Lastly, I think the (I'll just call them) portents of doom, were overused and unnecessary. Owls all over the place looking at you, and peacocks...peacocking themselves about. Enough! Get on with it!

    I cared for almost none of the people in Black Spring, nor did they deserve my care. For the most part they were all terrible human beings. It's partly because of that that I LOVED the ending! From what I've read and my discussion with my online friend Lillelara, who buddy read this with me, the denouement was completely re-written from the original Dutch version. I think it worked wonderfully for an American audience, (or at least me),especially in today's world. (Lillelara was less impressed than I.)

    In short, I really liked the first half and I found the creepy times to be genuinely eerie and disturbing. The second half seemed to ramble, foreheads, breasts, peacocks, etc... The ending rocked. I don't know what else to say, other than I'd love to hear your thoughts about it.

    I read this for my 2018 TBR challenge, (to read books I've owned for years and still not read), and I also read it for the TERROR IN A SMALL TOWN square in Halloween Bingo at Booklikes.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a terrific tale of witchcraft, haunted towns, and New England culture. Thomas Olde Heuvelt gives us the story of Katherine van Wyler, AKA the Black Rock Witch, who has been haunting the community of Black Spring for over 300 years after being accused of witchcraft in the 17th Century. The residents of Black Spring have grown used to her presence and have found ways to control her daily appearances by establishing the HEX organization that monitors her 24/7 using the advanced technologies of the 21st Century. Katherine's powers have been dramatically reduced due to her eyes and mouth being stitched shut. But all changes when a group of young, bored teens perform an experiment of their own that leads to drastic consequences and sheer mayhem in the town. Olde Heuvelt mixes superstition, grief, and moral panic that both terrifies and infuriates in this modern day classic.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    And so doom came to Black Spring.I liked this book quite a lot to start with, as the idea of the curse on the town and the way they had dealt with it over the last few centuries and into the present time was very interesting, but as the story progressed I found a few things grated on me.It was mostly told from the point of view of several of the town’s inhabitants, but would suddenly switch to omniscient third party, which was jarring. I also found the dynamics of the Grant family utterly unbelievable, which was a problem since they were at the centre of events.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Hex takes place in the small town of Black Spring, New York. The town has been under the curse of the Black Rock Witch since the 17th century, when the townspeople murdered local woman Katherine, accusing her of witchcraft. Since that time, her ghost has walked the town, bound in chains, with her eyes and mouth sewn shut. She has cursed everyone who lives in Black Spring to commit suicide if they leave town for more than a few days. So in effect, all the residents are stuck there unable to move away.

    The town has kept up with modern conveniences, including the internet, but has made it an offense punishable by death if any outsiders are told about Katherine. Unfortunately Tyler, local teen, and his friends are making a website dedicated to Katherine, in defiance of the rules. This causes problems that at first seem small, but soon escalate, drawing Tyler, his brother Matt, and his parents Steve and Jocelyn into the deadly consequences.

    The horror of this book operates on two levels. First there is the traditional ghost story with Katherine, who appears throughout the town, and whose whispers can drive a person to suicide. Second there is the story of what happens when a town is overrun with fear, and how a mob mentality can quickly take over seemingly civilized people. The town has been wired with high tech surveillance cameras to monitor the witch's position, but these same cameras can be used to monitor the local population.

    Hex is mainly the story of Tyler and his father, Steve. When the teens actions towards Katherine have unintended results, both Tyler and Steve attempt to set things right. The town's descent into madness seems inevitable, but you hope that they find a way to succeed.

    I enjoyed this book very much. It is definitely a different type of ghost story. I really liked the juxtaposition of the high tech with the old fashioned. It is a little bit hard to believe that the town has managed to hide Katherine from outsiders for so long. But they do seem to have the help of a government agency at "the Point" that helps maintain the secrecy.

    This book was originally written in Dutch and was set in a small Dutch village. I was a bit disappointed when I got the English translation that the story wasn't still set in the Dutch village. When the book was translated to English, the author took the opportunity to change the setting, and also to rewrite the ending. In his author's notes, he says it made for a better ending, but I still wish I could have read the original.

    I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    While on the surface, this is a supernatural tale of a witch and a town under a 350 year old curse, it is much deeper than that, and all the more terrifying for the reality. It is truly a tale of the descent into madness created by fear, the horrors of a terrified mob, and the dark things people are capable of. The very last sentence is a perfect, creepy ending that will stick with you long after you close the book cover. I'd give it 5 stars, but the author kills a certain character about 100 pages into the novel, and it's the kind of death that usually makes me stop reading a book. By that point, I was so emotionally invested in the outcome of the novel, I had to keep going.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I have decided I just cannot read horror any more, especially when the horror is rooted in ordinary people. I can get that by reading and watching the news.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very interesting.****CONTAINS SPOILERS****Steve is a husband and a father who lives with his family in a seemingly normal town called Black Spring. But this town is different from any other town. This town is haunted buy a 300-year old witch. Her eyes and her mouth are sewn shut and the people that live in the town are not only haunted by her presence but trapped there by it as well. When a group of kids play a prank on the witch things start to escalate quickly and the townsfolk start showing their true colors.This book is a fascinating look into mob mentality and mass hysteria. Although it may be classified as a paranormal horror novel, the only element that is paranormal about it is the witch herself. The rest of the horror comes from the townspeople themselves.it is said over and over again in the book that the townspeople got what they deserved and rightfully so. The witches retribution turned out to be no more than people's hatred and utter contempt to see the ugly side of life. I have to admit that I hated the ending. I read the English version and to my knowledge the Dutch version has a different ending than the English version. However as I said I did not care for the English version ending. It is amazing to think what someone will do when they are faced with a horrors that took place in this town, but even on the brink of madness to let your own son and wife died in a horrible fire and be the sole survivor is a terrible thought in and of itself. I guess mass hysteria can be very ugly but someone's own fit of madness can be even uglier when we hone in on it.Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy this book. I will definitely keep it from my library and probably reread it sometime in the future. I just simply did not care for the ending because I can't imagine abandoning my family like that.I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes a good horror novel. Good and creepy. Like this gets under your skin in a way that you just can't get out of your mind. And it may even make you look at society a little different from now on.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I think I have a very unpopular opinion of this book. I see a lot of "Love this book", "So good", "Amazing", etc reviews of this book. I, however, did not find this book to be any of those things. With the reviews of this book being scary and creepy and one of the best new writers I was expecting to be blown away but that's just not the case. Unfortunately I think it was the translation of the book from Dutch to English. There were so many strange words used that didn't make sense or the wrong tense of words used that it really distracted from the story. The first 100 pages seemed super goofy. I thought it was the author trying to be humorous and failing but I think it was the translation. The book did start to get eerie and creepy and scary but then it got a little too gory and messed up for my personal taste. I like psychological thriller horror more so than the gory disgusting kids and animals dying type horror. However I did like the social commentary of this book. I think if the translation had been better, or the writing was better, this book could have been utterly fantastic. I feel like this book is more about how we behave as a group, as a community. How the digital world has changed how we can behave and how what we think behind the anonymity of our computers and being part of a mob is what is wrong with our society. That we think we are in the right because we are in the majority or that we can do and say what we want cause no one sees the individuals but the group. When we feel wronged we wrong back and that isn't how we as a community should behave."One evil spawned another, greater evil, and ultimately everything could be traced back to Black Spring."
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    About halfway into this book I started to get a very bad feeling about it. Up until then I'd been enjoying the story for the most part...the characters were a bit one-dimensional but unfortunately that seems to happen in a lot of horror novels. And then as I kept reading the very bad feeling grew much, much worse.

    The last third of this book was perhaps the worst thing I've read in...a very long time. When I finished, I was viscerally disgusted. Now for some people that might be fine but I grew up on Stephen King and his books--no matter how dark they became--still managed to hold onto a kernel of hope. There was nuance in King's work that saved it from the tired, boring Humans Are The Real Monsters trope. The ending of this book was like the ending of "Pet Sematary" but like a hundred thousand times worse. I feel like good horror doesn't need to shock you just for hell of it and the "message" here was so ham-fisted, so simplistic and utterly without nuance that the grossness at the end was just completely gratuitous.

    Ugh I feel like I need to cleanse my brain after this book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is one of those books that you will either really, really like, or really, really dislike. To say it is strange would be the mother of all understatements. The witch is in your face from the start and honestly you have to feel some sympathy for her for all she's been through. She seems harmless enough on the surface....but no one wants to push that envelope. The Black Springs town people have come to accept her like the rest of us accept cable TV...it 's just there. I thought some the towns people were actually much scarier and dangerous. The plot and pacing is really effective once you get past the halfway mark but maybe I'm immune to it...but I didn't see the "horror" aspect. You have to keep turning pages to find out what happens next...yes...it's one of those kind of books. I understand the audio version leaves a lot to be desired.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    ***This book was read for my own enjoymentHeuvelt’s HEX is a brilliant tale of the dark emotions that rule men’s hearts, and the devastation those emotions can wreak upon society. Black Springs is a town with a secret, a conspiracy so entrenched and so horrific that Outsiders are dissuaded from moving into the quaint mountain town. Black Springs is home to Katherine van Wyler, the Black Rock Witch. In the late 1600’s, Katherine was accused of witchcraft and executed. Since then, she has ghosted the town of Black Springs, once New Beek, a colonial Dutch settlement. To hear her is to be driven mad, compelled to suicide. Lost to the ashes of time, some brave folk managed to sew her eyes and mouth shut, leaving her to follow her timeless path around the lands. She appears and disappears, sometimes standing in one location for days. Pragmatic townfolk cover her with false pipe organs, or hollow Easter Bunnies, and never, ever get close enough to hear her soft, sibilant whispers. Westpoint was established to keep the secret contained. Later, the task passed to HEX, loosely supervised by the Point.There was a time when the curious wanted to communicate with Katherine. This failed and the Emergency Decrees forbade further attempts to interact with Katherine in any way. She is not spoken of to Outsiders. Penalties for disobeying the Decrees can be swift and harsh, even today.Enter Tyler Grant and friends. They push the boundaries of what the Decrees allow, skirting the edge of the acceptable. Until the day they go too far.Hex looks to the darkness in society, to how we shape our deepest fears, and so have the means to free ourselves from them. Too bad most people never realise this. We fear too deeply that which is unknown. Atrocity was visited upon Katherine, when colonists feared 'the work of the devil’. She was forced to make a terrible choice, then tortured, killed, and left a wretched trapped spirit. For three hundred plus years, the Black Rock Witch has been feared and shunned. She reflected back her own intense despair, leading others to kill themselves as she herself was forced to do. Katherine's 'retaliations’ against assault to her personage seem less truly malicious attack, and often psychic survival mechanisms. When a modern day man opens her eyes and mouth, inoculated against her despair by his own that runs just as deep, the unexpected happens. Yet that doesn't stop the fully expected from playing out as well.Katherine, truth be told, she never scared me. My heart cried for her on so many levels. I wanted to protect her, especially after Jaydon decided to abuse the witch, regardless of the consequences of those actions to others. No, what terrified me were the townspeople gripped by irrationality, making atrocious decisions that prove we really haven't evolved at all. It’s the 21st century, but it may as well have been the 17th instead. Terror brings out the truly nasty in people. It exposes prejudice and hatred. Bloodlust. I found I wasn't at all disappointed with the ending of the book. Call me callous or cynical, but sometimes, that's what is necessary. I really want to know how the orgnal Dutch translation plays out! This book was written by a Dutch author, originally in that language. I love getting translated books whose first language wasn't English because they are fascinating glimpses into how another culture thinks. Most Americans would not be so bláse about a witch chillin’ in the corner of the communal room. Apparently, the Dutch are highly pragmatic regarding such things. They feared Katherine, but so long as she seemed 'tame’, they didn't freak out. Too much. It was when her patterns changed that all hell broke loose.????? I can't recommend this book enough!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The premise of this book sounded so interesting. A witch from the 1700's is hexing a town who is attempting to cope with her by using cell phone apps and cameras to track her movements. Once you move into the town you can never move out. I was really hooked into the book for the first two hundred pages and then it stalled out. The last part of the book took a left turn and was just crazy. The pacing of the story was off and parts were not developed properly. I got what the author was trying to say about mob mentality but the end was a discombobulated mess. It's such a shame because there were some truly creepy moments. The book could have been so great but it never gelled. It was an innovative idea to mix an ancient curse with modern technology but it was derailed with the poor execution and development of the story.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The small town of Black Spring, New York, is cursed by the ghost of a witch, who haunts the town's residents with her terrifying appearance and her whispers that conjure thoughts of suicide. None of the residents can ever leave on pain of death, and all live in terror that she may one day be able to enact her ultimate revenge.What a great premise that drew me in right away. The small, isolated, besieged town is one of my favorite horror tropes. What I particularly liked about this conceit is the clash between the stuff of fairy tales and ghost stories--the witch, the woods, the children in peril--and modern life, particularly the use of technology to try to track and protect against the witch. However, the writing is fairly clumsy, which may be the fault of the writer, the translator, or both (the novel was originally set in the Netherlands but relocated to the US for the English translation, and the end was also changed, according to the author's afterword). There were plenty of times where I wasn't quite sure what was happening exactly, or why it was happening, or why people were behaving the ways they were. Olde Huevelt introduces some wonderful themes--the fairy-tale imagery, the notion that evil lies within all of us, the isolation of the small town--but he has trouble bringing it together into a cohesive whole. Too often, we are told about the townspeople's terror rather than made to feel it. It was a fun story, but I don't think it was quite a successful one.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    If I could give this book ten stars, I would. A fantastic take on the horror genre. I was scared the whole book as to what would end up happening and was completely blown away. It was not what I expected at all. I wasn't crazy about the very end of it, but I was completely satisfied with the way the witch turned out.A town is haunted. A dirty woman with her eyes and mouth sewn shut appears all throughout the town and the town knows to let her be. The last time they tried to cut off her stitches, people died. So now, if she is somewhere that outsiders can see her, they erect little tents or signs to cover her. Everyone knows the town is haunted, but only those that live there know how bad it is.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    There is no other way to describe this book than to state that it is as good as the -old- brilliant books of Stephen King, such as -IT-, -The Shining- etc. It has all of the good old school horror, the entire -town- turning in on itself and characters you can sympathise with. Since there are only a few characters who are actually allowed to -lead- the story with their own points of views, and with no Third Person, this book is solidly told by them. When they cringe, the reader cringes. When they start questioning their own sanity, their own reasonings for doing what they are doing, the reader can completely understand -why- they are. How they came to this logic and now why they are following through. It could be completely messed up logic, but it's understandable and -fits- the character.And makes the reader wonder if they would do exactly the same if they were faced with the exact same question. I won't give up much more about this book, as I don't want to slip into Spoiler Territory so I will summerise the story like this:A town is haunted by a witch who has her eyes and mouth sewn shut, who wanders around the town and at any moment may unleash her curse. And it is about the towns people, thinking that maybe this entire scenario can be changed, and who unleash the Darkness within.Extremely good, and I am currently poking everyone I know to read this book. I luckily got this book as a proof from the publisher, but I will be going out and buying the actual book when it comes out in smaller format.Please read and buy. You won't regret it if you like good old fashioned horror.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    DNF @ 19%!

    Me and this book just didn't get on well together. I started originally listening to the audio book and the narrator was awful so then I started reading the book and it still didn't do anything for me. Instead of finding it funny or creepy, it came across as extremely cheesy to me. Maybe something was lost in translation or it's just me but I don't like it at all so I'm calling it quits.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
  • This is a story about the ghost of a witch who haunts & curses a small town in the Hudson Valley. It starts out strong and creepy; but so much, perhaps too much, happens so the tension becomes diffused. There also seems to be some translation issues where some sentences just don't make sense, or are un-relatable. There are sudden shifts in the narrative voice as well (e.g. switching from third person omniscient to breaking the fourth wall - which isn't necessarily reflected in the formatting of the text.
  • A modern horror story about a town on the Hudson haunted and cursed by a seventeenth-century witch. 'Hex' started out strong and creepy; but lost its intensity mid-way (so much going on... maybe too much?); and plots holes started appearing. The original story was written in Dutch; but revised and edited for an English audience. [I would really love to know how the original ending went; but as for the English version? Meh.]
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Whoa. Scary is subjective. Everybody's line is different. I love scary, but don't scare easily. This was recommended to me. For me, this was the equivalent of a thrill ride. It starts off a little quirky, almost whimsical which gives you the false sense of security that you've got this thing, no problem.Then it picks up steam. I would have read this thing in one sitting if my body hadn't given out. First book I've read in a long time that I couldn't wait to pick up any spare chance I got AND that gave me pause about closing my eyes and turning off the light.Well written and a rip-roaring read for any one who's a fan of horror, supernatural terror, ghost stories. Recommended, disturbing, not for the faint of heart.