Twisted Abel by T.L. Hodel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there lived a young prince in search of a princess…. pfft, just kidding. This isn’t that story.
Twisted Abel
I may be a prince but I sure as hell didn’t need no princess. My brother fell down that hole, and look at him now. Tied down with a ball and chain. No thanks. I prefered to fly solo. There was no one but me and the blood and screams of my victims. I was a free agent.
I was also bored as fuck.
At least until I saw her. The beautiful blue and green eyed angel whose music sang to my soul. What I didn’t expect was to be the hero in her story.
Well shit… maybe I did need a princess after all?
My mother used to tell me to close my eyes and the monster in my closet would disappear. Well I’ve had my eyes closed for awhile and the monster was still here. But the longer I sat in my cage watching Abel laugh at others pain and misery, the more I wondered if Hercules really was the hero?
What about the hydra? Did anyone think of his friends and family? Who stayed behind to console them? Did anyone bother to talk to him first? And could one monster save me from another?
Even the villian of the story needed love, right?
And they all lived happily ever after… probably.
Dark, Chaotic and Impossible to Put Down
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: ❤️💙💚🖤
Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Chemistry: 🧪🧪🧪🧪🧪
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘📔
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏🌍
Character development: 😋😉😎😮😍
Characters and Plot Summary
After meeting Abel in Unhinged Cain, I honestly wasn’t sure how T.L. Hodel was going to convince me to care about him. Abel is Cain’s identical twin, but where Cain is calculated and controlled, Abel is impulsive, chaotic, and completely comfortable embracing the darkest parts of himself. Their relationship is already fractured after Abel’s attempt on Kirby, and Abel is left to his own devices until he crosses paths with Aspen.
Aspen’s history made me immediately sympathetic to her. After losing her mother to a drug overdose at seven, she was raised by relatives involved in a cult and eventually ran away when the cult leader decided she should become his wife. Her neurological condition, hyperalgesia, adds another complicated layer because physical pain registers as pleasure for her. I thought that detail was particularly interesting because it could have easily become nothing more than a shock-value plot device, but instead it helps shape how Aspen understands herself and how other characters perceive her.
Abel initially sees Aspen as someone he wants to hunt, but his obsession gradually becomes something completely different. I particularly enjoyed watching him realize that the woman he expected to become another victim was becoming someone he actually wanted to protect. I am excited to see in the next book if Abel ends up being a more “Dexter” like killer and follows his brother’s path with only killing very bad people who deserve it. That path kind of makes his chaos and love of torture a bit more palatable.
Highlights and Limitations
The biggest surprise for me was Abel himself. I expected to dislike him even more than I did in Cain’s story, but his internal commentary completely changed my reaction. He is absolutely deranged, yet his bizarre observations and easily distracted personality made me laugh at moments when I probably shouldn’t have been laughing. Several other readers picked up on that same contrast, describing him as both incredibly dark and unexpectedly funny.
I also liked that Abel doesn’t suddenly become a completely different person just because he falls for Aspen. His relationship with her changes what he wants, particularly when it comes to protecting her, but he isn’t magically transformed into a conventional hero. That made their romance much more believable within the intentionally extreme world of this duet.
The scenes involving the copycat killer and the revelations surrounding Aspen’s past added another layer of suspense. I did think some of the later developments moved faster than I would have preferred. The second half felt rushed, particularly when it came to the copycat storyline and some of the final conflicts. There was one scene in particular where Aspen knew exactly where she had to go, but I had no idea how she knew that.
I also appreciated the contrast between the brothers. Cain is methodical and controlled, while Abel operates almost entirely on instinct. Seeing Abel eventually understand why Cain became so attached to Kirby gave their fractured relationship more emotional weight than I expected.
Final Thoughts
I went into Twisted Abel expecting to tolerate it because I wanted to finish the Buchanan Brothers duet. Instead, I ended up enjoying it significantly more than I expected. In fact, I preferred Abel’s story to Cain’s, which genuinely surprised me considering how strongly I disliked Abel after his actions in Unhinged Cain.
This is absolutely not a romance for everyone. It is extremely dark, includes disturbing violence and other difficult subject matter, and readers should definitely check the trigger warnings before starting. Even the positive reviews repeatedly emphasize just how dark the book is.
But if you already enjoyed Unhinged Cain and can handle exceptionally dark romance, I think Twisted Abel is a fascinating conclusion to the duet. Abel is one of those characters who should be impossible to like, yet somehow his ridiculous inner monologue, unexpected humor, and increasingly protective feelings toward Aspen made me completely invested. By the end, I was genuinely surprised by how attached I’d become to this completely maniacal man.
As a duet, Unhinged Cain and Twisted Abel worked beautifully for me. Cain gave me the controlled darkness, while Abel brought the chaos, humor, and sheer unpredictability. I definitely wasn’t expecting Abel to win me over, but somehow that is exactly what happened.
Quotes
“My overbearing brother decided to split up our awesome duo, so now I was free to do what I wanted. Try and kill his girl once, and suddenly it was the end of the world.”
“Was she fucking singing? This was DC at night. A city where an active serial killer was stalking the streets.
Was she trying to put herself in danger? The murders were all over the papers, and here she was, acting like she was taking a goddamn stroll in the park.”
“Was I sorry that I tried to kill his girl? Fuck no. I’d try again if given a chance. He knew that just like I knew he’d slit my throat to protect her. The only question when that time came, was which one of us would be the quicker draw? And that time would come. I could feel the clock ticking down.”
“I played with him for a bit last night and may have cut off some skin, but those weren’t pieces—more like scraps. And I would never do something like that in the kitchen. That was where people ate. What kind of monster did she think I was?”
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