The Writhing

By: Abe Moss

Narrated by: Hillary Huber

You never truly know your neighbors, or what goes on behind closed doors. Sometimes it's better not to. Sometimes the truth is downright haunting.

Alex watches from her bedroom window as the small, secluded town of Amberton sleeps: a bright, pleasant town with a dark, disturbing secret. Helen, her foster mother, is gone all hours of the night with no explanation. The neighbors, always friendly, always smiling, are also always watching. They know something Alex doesn't. Something she shouldn't....

When three outsiders become ensnared in the town's dark conspiracies, Alex witnesses for herself the nightmare hiding in plain sight. Together, haunted by their own pasts, these outsiders threaten to unstitch the town at its rotten seams, uncovering the gruesome truth writhing beneath the surface.

Contains mature themes.

©2019 Abe Moss (P)2020 Tantor

Somebody snatchers and a psychotic!

I don't know what this author was on but whatever he was smoking he did a good job on this book, very weird but good.. The narrator did a great job, brought all the characters to life.

Subverting my expectations at every turn!

I haven’t read many horror or suspense stories, as they tend to bum me out, but this one surprised me. The story took a lot of turns I wasn’t expecting, and I felt that the characters were all unique and interesting. I will say that the younger characters are a weirdly verbose at times, but it’s not too distracting. The narrator does a good job, but there are a few instances where I feel her inflections don’t mesh with the situations.

This book is definitely a compelling listen. I couldn’t put it down, as I always wanted to see what crazy thing would happen next!

Like a movie

Good book. Well paced. Good description. Very much like a movie. Easy to envision.
Narrator was great!

Abe Moss is the Real Thing

I've seen Abe Moss novels floating around on Amazon "Books You Might Like" lists for quite a while. Also on those lists are a lot dreck, so I never really paid them any mind. I saw that one of my favorite audiobook narrators, Hilary Huber was reading The Writhing and picked it up. What a pleasant surprise. Abe Moss is a great story teller and dare I say in the same league as heavy hitters like Ania Ahlborne and Ronald Malfi.

The story is a Body Snatcher-ish horror tale with great characters and a well paced story. I'm looking forward to more from Abe Moss.

Caught me from the first chapter

Love Hillary as the narrator. She is fantastic. Book is very well written and clever. New twist to horror. It’s easy to identify with the characters to hate and love your favorites. Well done. Finally, something I enjoyed listening to and kept my attention.

Disappointing, With Moments of Promise

I want to be careful, because I don't want to discourage readers who might really enjoy "The Writhing," from downloading it, but this audiobook didn't do it for me.

There is a lot good about the book. First of all, it's an interesting concept. I believe another reviewer said something to the effect that this book is "Misery" crossed with "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," and that's spot-on.

When taken on a scene-by-scene basis, Moss' writing is clear, enjoyable and unobtrusive (but only on a scene-by-scene basis; taken as a whole, there are issues with plotting, pacing and setting, which I'll discuss in a moment).

Hillary Huber's narration is the highlight of the production. She does a range of voices, male & female, adult & child, all distinct and credible.

Despite these plusses, the book's flaws (at least as I perceive them; your mileage may vary) downgraded the reading experience.

The plot, despite its intriguing premise, is all over the place. It takes a long, long time to get moving, with two seemingly unrelated threads eventually being not tied together, but squished together. The book gets more enjoyable toward the middle and end, but nevertheless continues to move slowly.

My biggest issue with the story (and this may be a non-issue for other readers) is the frustrating lack of detail in the setting. This doesn't extend only to the physical setting, but also to the time period in which the book takes place.

For location, we're only given the name of the small town in which most of the story takes place. Nowhere throughout the book to we get any kind of clue as to where this town is, except that it's probably in the United States. There are mountains and a river nearby. However, not once does the author mention a state, a region or even a mid-size to major city nearby. As a reader, I was discombobulated by this.

Worse, from my point of view, I was unable to determine in what time period this book takes place. For the majority of the book's length, there are very few news or pop culture references (i.e., politicians, popular music or TV shows, etc.) that could help determine the story's time-setting. Until the final pages of the book, the only clues I had as to the era were the mention of touch-tone phones and Spider-Man. I had the book pegged as being written in 1990 or so.

However, in the final ten minutes or so of the production, cell phones are mentioned several times. It seems like this book was written many years ago, and then quickly updated for publication. This lack of a substantive setting made it difficult for me to immerse myself in this novel.

At any rate, while I didn't hate this book, it just didn't do it for me. I'd advise readers to also check out some of the more positive reviews, because as I said earlier, I think this book might appeal to a different reader.

Creepy!

Didn't know what to expect from this title. I'm glad I chose to listen to it! Gory in places. Creepy in places. Shocking in places.
Entertaining narration.

Weird but Good

Not what I expected. We have a story of murder which morphs into some sort of story about jellyfish overlords.

I made it to the end

This was a tough one to get through. story was long and drawn out, and as others have said, it was simply all over the place. narrator was excellent. This is the 3rd or 4th book I've listened to where she narrated. Honestly, if it wasn't for her, this would have been in the DNF List.

A solid and weird horror story

This randomly popped up as a free recommendation, so I went in with no idea what quality to expect. Fortunately, it was a very nice surprise - I enjoyed it a lot, and would've been satisfied if I'd paid for it. It sustained my interest the whole way through, even as it evolved from the expected mysteriousness to something much weirder.

Just a couple minor gripes - one of the younger characters in particular feels like his language is written a ways above his age, and the book stretched my belief sometimes in just how long characters can keep going after various injuries. But these are pretty small things, the story is entertaining enough to look past them. Solid recommend.