#Thomas Olde Heuvelt

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

Favorite Standalone Books

Round 1

Propaganda for Echo :

"local man suddenly gets a mountain as a boyfriend. unfortunately he would like his preexisting boyfriend back"

[your-dead-art-student]

Starting Thomas Olde Heuvelt's "Hex", the spanish audiobook, before going to sleep, may not be my best decision, but it is a good book omg

[aka-patsy]

If you like horror books and want a WILD fucking ride:

[kammartinez]

I stare at the night sky. The mountain ridges framing the narrow valley are contours. There is no moon but there is an astonishing number of stars. A solitary orographic cloud slowly weaves its way through the night. Above it, you can catch glimpses of the Milky Way. Normally, it’s an endless, breathtaking scene, but now it makes me shudder involuntarily. The universe seems like a cold and hostile place, not meant for human life. Just like all these rocky and icy stairways to heaven that we keep trying to ascend. In the daytime there’s a deceptive calm and a sense of security, but then, when the sun disappears behind the horizon, the isolation descends on you, the clammy certainty that if you scream, there will be no one, absolutely no one, to hear you.

-- from Echo, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (trans. Moshe Gilula)

[kamreadsandrecs]

There’s nothing more damaging to yourself than trying to mold your lover into your own image. Instead, I respect the fact that our differences empower us, and I see each hitch as an exploration—each quarrel as a new, unconquered peak.

-- from Echo, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (trans. Moshe Gilula)

[golden-bubblebee]

I finished my book! Help me pick out a new one! (The last one I read was 1984 by George Orwell, in English)

[mactiir]

from ECHO, Thomas Olde Heuvelt

[katieroo28]

Top 10 Books I Read in 2023 (Alphabetical Order)

1. The Collective by Alison Gaylon

2. Dykette by Jenny Fran Davis

3. The Harpy by Megan Hunter

4. HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

5. The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

6. Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

7. The Photographer by Mary Dixie Carter

8. Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

9. The Woman in Me by Britney Spears

10. You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann

I mostly read horror and thrillers but if you like any of these reviews, give me a follow on The Storygraph! I’ve been using The Storygraph since 2022 so I’m super glad it’s become more popular lately! It’s way better than Goodreads and now that everyone I know isn’t just exclusively using Goodreads, I’m excited to start weaning myself off of there completely.

[cestvreth]

One of my country's biggest authors is visiting my work tomorrow & the day after tomorrow and I am HYPED

[huandamonia]

My Thoughts on Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

I’m finally getting back into reading books again, and a part of what I want to incorporate into it is writing a thousand words about each book I read to help make sure I’m really engaging with it.

Spoilers, by the way.

How does a town deal with being haunted? Heuvelt provides an answer both horrifying and comedic.

The comedy comes from the fact that you can get used to anything if you live with it for long enough. Katherine Van Wyler has haunted Black Spring for over 300 years, and in those 300 years, the residents of Black Spring have figured out a reliable routine and protocol. You can’t help but laugh when Steve Grant, our protagonist, comes home and sees Katherine in his house and his wife goes “Yeah, I threw a rag over her face because it was creeping me out”. And then Steve and his wife and kids have dinner while a witch stands motionless in the other room.

One of my favorite things about the book is the world-building. How can the people of Black Spring live under such a dangerous threat? Hex has an answer for that. How does the rest of the world not know about the witch? Hex has an answer for that. Why don’t people just leave? Hex has an answer for that. Has anyone tried reasoning with the witch? Hex has a fun and gory answer for that. Just reading about all the mechanisms and protocols for how a town deals with a witch made the read worth it by itself.

Which is why I have mixed feelings about how Tyler’s story-line went. Tyler, Steve’s son, wants to perform experiments to figure out how the witch’s powers work. Things go awry, obviously. I like where this plot-line eventually heads as well, but I would have enjoyed Tyler being able to get one or two more experiments in. I wanted to know more about the witch, too.

That said, I understand the decision. “You don’t get to know” is one of the themes the book. No one is sure of what Katherine wants. Is the witch actually evil? Hex doesn’t have an answer for that, and that’s the point. We get a clue to what she wants when the seal on her powers is released, but even then, we’re still not sure how much she was actually going to terrorize the town before the town terrorized itself. She’s definitely dangerous, but there’s a question of whether she’s even doing any of this on purpose at the beginning.

I would say my biggest criticism of the novel is that it is rather dated. As in, it literally dates the events of the story as happening during the 2012 election. And the story definitely feels like it was written exactly 12 years ago. The main way this hampers the story is in all but the final horrors that are displayed. Heuvelt wants us to gawk at what the people of Black Spring are capable of when they succumb to fear and mob mentality, but watching what American conservatism has become in 2025, Black Spring conservatism seems rather tame. When the teenagers get publicly flogged and the omniscient narrator describes how everyone regretted voting for this, my thought was “no they wouldn’t”.  I say this makes Hex feel dated, but it also makes Hex feel depressingly prescient. Dating the story to 2012, pre-Trump, does lampshade how much Heuvelt has absolutely called it. “Society hasn’t matured a bit from the witch-hunts 300 years ago” is the main theme of Hex, and it seems to be the main theme of life nowadays.

I will grant (pun somewhat intended) that the horrors shown in the finale do go hard, when Katherine’s seal is released, and all hell breaks loose.

What feels less dated but just as prescient is the book’s criticism of liberalism. Steve Grant and his compatriots love to look down on the rest of Black Spring, but God forbid any of them actually do something about it. They may object to the cruelties committed, but in the end, they have just as much of an interest in the status quo as the conservatives they admonish. Only Tyler seemed determined to actually make a change (which is another reason I’m a little bummed his experiments were cut short). At least Grimm felt guilty about doing nothing.

Steve, on the other hand, seems rather unaware of his culpability until the epilogue. Steve acts as the voice of reason for the majority of the book. Such a voice of reason, in fact, that it sometimes circles back to being unreasonable. I personally don’t believe in ghosts, witches, or even God. But if I was given undeniable proof of the existence of a witch like Steve, I would immediately be open to any other paranormalities, unlike Steve. Steve knows that the witch can live for hundreds of years, drive you insane with her whispering, teleport, burn anything that touches her, and kill people miles away under certain conditions. But he refuses to believe the witch is capable of necromancy. That is, until that necromancy could benefit him.

What Steve tries to frame as being rational I think is being in denial. The normalcy he’s created for himself in Black Spring is precarious, more precarious than he wants to accept. He doesn’t concede that the witch could raise the dead because that would be admitting that the witch, after 300 years, is still an unknown quantity. He can accept the existence of a witch; he cannot accept that he is not in control. And in the end, he does get control. He gets to control the fate of Black Spring.

I enjoy that the man who’s been horrified at the acts everyone else has been committing ends up committing the most horrifying act of all. Not dooming the town, no. He abandons his wife and his other son, Matt, for a chance of saving his favorite son, Tyler.

I also theorize that narcissism may be another theme of the book. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the son Steve is a little too quick to admit he loves more is the one that’s more like him (seriously, Steve would not have struggled at all with Sophie’s choice).

And those are my thoughts. Sorry if the structure is a little half-baked, it's been a long time since I've written like this. Hopefully I'll get better as I keep doing this.

[lilibetbombshell]

[this-is-malarkey]

have yall ever heard of Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

because this the exact kind of shit I imagined when the kid plays the recording into the other, sleeping kid’s ear of the girl with her eyes & mouth (?? it’s been a while) stitched shut mumbling cursed shit

Ominous howled rendition of "Silent Night" recorded in the woods at 1AM this morning.

[aka-patsy]

Reading Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt and it just gave a new favorite insult "what rock did your mother get knocked up under?" XD

[kammartinez]

Insecurity is also power. Doubts give you the opportunity to refashion the fundament under your life.

-- from Echo, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (trans. Moshe Gilula)

[kamreadsandrecs]

I stare at the night sky. The mountain ridges framing the narrow valley are contours. There is no moon but there is an astonishing number of stars. A solitary orographic cloud slowly weaves its way through the night. Above it, you can catch glimpses of the Milky Way. Normally, it’s an endless, breathtaking scene, but now it makes me shudder involuntarily. The universe seems like a cold and hostile place, not meant for human life. Just like all these rocky and icy stairways to heaven that we keep trying to ascend. In the daytime there’s a deceptive calm and a sense of security, but then, when the sun disappears behind the horizon, the isolation descends on you, the clammy certainty that if you scream, there will be no one, absolutely no one, to hear you.

-- from Echo, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (trans. Moshe Gilula)

[roseshavethoughts]

Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt #Horror #HorrorFiction #IAmReading #BookReview #Fiction

Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt Title: Hex Author: Thomas Olde Heuvelt Genre – Horror | Fantasy | Thriller Published – 2016 Links – Amazon | Goodreads ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4 out of 5. Starting off really well, what makes the premise of Hex so scary, for me, isn’t so much that the town is stalked by a centuries-old witch, but the fact that said Witch acted more like a spirit. Roaming from house to…