Plot spoilersThe beginning was just pain creepy. He’s scoping out girls like a total creep. This goes to show that older people shouldn’t write as teenagers. Her high school students sounded like stuffy old middle aged adults.For ex: “It’s hard to generate action when you’re holding a tray that’s dripping spaghetti sauce.”Seriously? What teenaged way uses the word generate?Tracy was not likable as a character. She was cool and distant to guys, like she was better than them. And the whole she-acts-like-she’s-older-than-everyone-else-and-speaks-maturely thing was doing nothing for me. And it’s really stupid how he sought out a teenaged girl, who was a loner and who didn’t have a boyfriend to help him find his 2 year old kidnapped sister. This plot reeks of stupidity. And he’s all pleased because she seems mature, like a mature high school student is your ticket to finding your lost sister. Wth? Tracy was mean to her aunt, which was very ungrateful because she’d taken her into her home. She even went so far as to agree to go out with Brad for a coke to make the point that she was sick of the salty corned beef that she made. What a brat.And it’s pretty stupid how someone so mean just agrees to help this perfect stranger find his sister. It’s not like she’s a humanitarian or something. Somehow Tracy just knew that Brad really didn’t go to school and he was lying about everything, simply because he said he was taking a class on Shakespeare and that was only available in the summer. Righttt.“No, I’m not,” Jamie said. “You mustn’t go either.”I hate when authors are trying to be all grammatically correct and proper, and they end up having their teenagers sound like old people. Nobody says mustn’t.Having Brad refer to his little sister as lovely . . . yeah, not good. That’s a word a brother should never use when talking about his sister, and it especially sounds weird coming from a teenager. If a reader thinks a guy is talking a girlfriend when he’s referring to his sister, that’s when you know you’ve crossed a line.The friendship Brad had with Jamie was a little weird. When you throw out phrases like “gut-wrenching longing for Jamie” which is said by a guy about another guy, you’ve got a problem. Brad is sounding gay, and while there wouldn’t be anything wrong with that normally, there is when he’s the potential romance for the female lead. You need to revise your writing if your guy is sounding like he has a romantic attachment to his best friend. I mean, this isn’t rocket science. This is why adults should not write as teenagers. It does not work.I started thinking that Mindy was dead, because his mom accepted that she was gone, and Jamie’s mom thought he was crazy, and Gavin was crying when he held Cricket, and Gavin’s sister was saying he was hung up over her.The book completely fell apart from there, and steadily spiraled downward from there. Jamie was actually a girl; Mindy was really dead, and Brad had a selective memory and twisted facts around to suit himself. I thought the Twisted Window was just a stupid name; little did I know the whole story was based around it. Cricket’s home had a warped, “twisted,” window that made them think they were seeing things that weren’t really there, like the teddy bear. And Brad’s twisted views of everything sent him to another state to find someone to kidnap a girl when deep down he knew his sister had been killed. And Tracy just agrees to go to Mexico and live with a stranger and his family. Yep. Again I say, this plot reeks of stupidity. When I found out that Brad had ran over his sister, accidently mind you, but that he was still the one that had killed her, I was absolutely put off so far from this book. I am so sick of Duncan’s psychotic teenage characters and her random, farfetched, crazy plots. Who even comes up with this crap? Boy runs over sister, convinces himself that he didn’t, makes up a story that his stepdad kidnapped his sister and went to Texas and gets to believe it, and seeks girl that looks like his friend to help him. Wow. There just aren’t words. Oh, wait. There are. This thing sucks!
I continue the Lois Duncan excursion with THE TWISTED WINDOW, a story about a disturbed boy who meets a cynical girl and they wreak havoc on innocent people’s lives. Ah, teenagers. Misguided, naive, mentally ill teenagers. The thing about the other Lois Duncan book I’ve read for my project, SUMMER OF FEAR, is that while it had good pacing and a nice amount of suspense, it was based in a supernatural threat, so it never felt like it was plausible and therefore affecting of me. THE TWISTED WINDOW, however, had a very real threat in it: what manipulative vindictive parents can do to their kids out of bitterness towards their former spouse. THE TWISTED WINDOW therefore made me far more uncomfortable at times.Tracy is a junior in high school. She recently moved to Texas to live with her aunt and uncle after her mother’s brutal murder. Her father, a successful movie star, sent her to live with her aunt and uncle because he didn’t think that L.A. was terribly safe for a teenager who wouldn’t have her father around that often. Tracy, however, saw this more as a snub than a parent’s concern for his daugther’s well being. Soon she meets another new boy in school, Brad. Brad is handsome, mysterious, and passionate, and he only has eyes for Tracy. But soon he tells Tracy his tragic tale of woe. You see, he’s in Texas because he’s looking for his baby sister Mindy. She was kidnapped by his evil stepfather Gavin, and he wants to bring her back home to New Mexico so she can be with him and their Mom once again. He wants Tracy to help him find Mindy and bring her home. So instead of, say, calling the police, Tracy and Brad start acting like a couple of secret agent KGB spy types and locate the girl Brad says is Mindy, who is living with Gavin’s brother and sister. Through sneaky team work, Brad and Tracy snatch the girl and start driving for New Mexico. But soon thereafter, Tracy realizes that perhaps Brad’s story doesn’t hold true as much as she thought it did… Now, first of all, I will say that something I felt that THE TWISTED WINDOW did very, very right was portraying mental illness in regards to 1) being raised in an emotionally toxic environment and 2) the aftermath of a trauma so terrible that grief replaces all room for rational thought. So the character of Brad and all of his motivations was spot on and I applaud Duncan immensely for it. However, Tracy is an idiot. Like, even if Brad is being truthful and is being completely 100 percent rational in his claims, you should still probably call the police and let THEM handle something like this! Or at the very least, try and see if you can talk to his mother, who you would THINK would be out looking for her daughter as well instead of just sending her teenage son. But no, Tracy is so resentful of her own parental situation she is willing to believe Brad’s strife because he feels her pain too or something. In the words of Latrice Royale, inspiration and goddess, “Good God, get a grip girl.” I found Tracy ludicrous and ridiculous, and I don’t care if she’s only a junior in high school. I would like to think that most juniors in high school can figure out that maybe this is a job best left for the police.I think another point that I want to mention about this book goes back to difference in themes between it and SUMMER OF FEAR. While SUMMER OF FEAR dealt with flat out witchcraft, THE TWISTED WINDOW takes on themes that are grounded and realistic. The greatest tragedy of this whole story was the way that parents can manipulate their children in regards to their former spouses/ the kid’s other parental figure. In this case, both Brad and Tracy’s moms so poisoned them towards their father figures that horrible things happened for all involved. The fact that this kind of terrible manipulation happens in real life and does ruin lives is far scarier to me than a witch who burns wax figures in her room.The pacing was a little off, and the end wasn’t so much happy as just an end, but I think that THE TWISTED WINDOW was pretty okay. Depressing, but pretty okay nonetheless.
What do You think about The Twisted Window (1991)?
The book is great, the characters are engaging and intelligent, and to answer the person whose review is for no apparent reason highlighted; The reason she helped Tracy is that she liked him. That simple. And no all teenagers talk like cretins. I don't.
—Martine
Found this on the thrift store bookshelf, and my daughter wanted it. I quickly told her i wanted to read it first as it reminded me of books I liked to read at her age. I'd never read this particular one. It's kinda strange, as many Lois Duncan's were in the late 1980's. But it was good, and very nostalgic as I read about Webster being on TV and numerous other pop cult references from the 80s like snacks, slang, etc. That was lots of fun for me, but I'm sure my daughter won't be as entertained. Lol
—Angie
This is my third Lois Duncan book and it's not my favorite. It's ok, but nothing special. In this one, a boy named Brad travels to Texas to get a girl help him save his little sister from the father who kidnapped her.Like another Lois Duncan ebook I've read recently, The Twisted Window has been slightly updated to make it more "relevent" to modern audiences. The main difference is that the characters are always using their cell phones, instead of (presumably) landlines & payphones. In a part I found funny, they mention that a car has a CD player, but later it somehow transforms into a cassette player. They obviously didn't take a whole lot of time updating this one. I'm actually annoyed with the updates because it doesn't really modernize the story. All that happens is that we have a dated-feeling book with mentions of cell phones. If you can, pick up an older edition of this book if you're planning on reading it.
—Holly
I really like the beginning of the book, the way it introduced the characters. The introduction was convincing, yet, if I were to reread it, it would have been misleading and unfinished because later in the book the main character totally shows his true colors. These true colors were the only scary part of the book, because the boy turns out to be a crazy person. Overall I wish the book had more suspense and action but I still enjoyed reading it. I think it wasn't written at a very high reading level so that was kind of boring.Genre: Horror
—Elizabeth Christensen
