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.

calling1

Another Epic Horror from Abe Moss. At this point, I've read almost every word he had written, and every book has been awesome

Like a movie

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

Surprisingly good

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. At first I almost DNF it but the story gets really good after a few chapters. I never expected the direction the story went and I would highly recommend it. Narration was really good as well.

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!

His books feel like a movie.

This was my second Abe Moss the 1st one was Morsels. Both of them you feel like you’re listening to or reading a movie which ever one you’re doing. His writing and stories are both amazing! Definitely suggest checking this one or Morsels out!

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.

Worth a read, but can be hard to follow

I found it intriguing and the narrator does a good job making the character voices distinguishable. Definitely worth a read. The biggest problem is that the author uses entirely too many pronouns. There are entire scenes where the characters go unidentified and the listener is forced to determine the characters by context and the voices used by the narrator, which can make some sections hard to follow. There is also some ambiguity with some things not really explained and a couple of unreliable narrators (whether or not this is a problem will depend on personal listener preference). Overall, the positives outweighed the negatives for me more than enough to enjoy the story and think it worth my time.

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.