Spoilers Ahead! (marked in purple)
Ari’s parents think Lana ran away but Ari knows better: the Twig Man took her.
Legend says if you wander too far into the woods, he’ll snatch you with his roots and drag you into his lair.
Lana has been missing for a year but Ari hasn’t given up hope. Accompanied by Timmy, a new friend who also believes in the Twig Man, Ari braves the woods to save his sister.
With plenty of screaming and a creepy location, not to mention the potentially true urban legend, this book would have scared me as a kid. It wouldn’t have helped that pretty much everywhere Ari turns, he’s being watched by animals with white eyes.
I figured out Timmy’s story before it was explained but this would have blindsided me had I read this as a kid.
I absolutely loved that there was a glossary of Kurdish words after the story.
I was left with some unanswered questions, mostly relating to the people I met near the end of the book. Did the people who were missing age while they were with the Twig Man? How are they going to explain where they’ve been to the police? Given the length of time some of them have been missing, will their parents even still be alive? How are they going to adapt to a world that has changed so much in their absence?
“Beware the Twig Man, the Twig Man’s hex. Beware the Twig Man, or you’ll be NEXT!”
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Hashtag Press for the opportunity to read this book.
Once Upon a Blurb
Beware the Twig Man, the Twig Man’s hex. Beware the Twig Man, or you’ll be NEXT!
It’s been a year since nearly-twelve-year-old Ari’s older sister, Lana, ran away.
Except Ari knows what really happened.
She was taken by the Twig Man, the creepy monster that’s haunted the woods for one hundred years.
No one else will listen, so it’s down to Ari to save his sister.
But he had better hurry, as Ari finds himself next on the Twig Man’s list…
Schizanthus Nerd 