Sameer Gudhate Presents the Book Review of The Helical by Ankita Panda

There are books that whisper to you, books that sing, and then there are books that lurk in the corner of your room like a shadow you can’t quite name. Ankita Panda’s The Helical: A Collection of Twisted Tales belongs to the last category. It didn’t invite me in politely; it stared at me with a quiet smile and asked, “Are you sure you’re ready?”

Fifteen stories. That’s what the cover promised. But calling them “stories” feels almost too simple. These pieces are more like trapdoors — you step on them thinking you’re safe, only to find yourself plummeting into worlds where coincidence feels sinister, morality gets slippery, and the human mind reveals its strangest corners. Ankita Panda, who brings both imagination and observation into her craft, doesn’t just serve thrillers, suspense, and horror — she serves slices of our own hidden fears, the things we pretend not to see.

I’ll admit, short story collections are often tricky for me. Either they’re uneven — one brilliant piece among many fillers — or they feel like hurried sketches. But The Helical surprised me. Each tale seemed to hold its own weight, its own voice, its own breath. One moment I was staring at a woman in red shoes and wondering whether I should ever trust footsteps in the night, the next I was lost in the whispers of an oak tree, realizing how much folklore and reality can overlap. Even the titles — “Don’t Answer the Mirror,” “The Tale of the Donkey Lady Bridge,” “The Vanishing Circle” — felt like little riddles daring me to unlock them.

What makes this book more compelling than your average “twisted tales” is Panda’s prose. It is lucid yet sly, deceptively simple but layered with tension. She doesn’t waste time with long descriptions; instead, she lets an ordinary sentence suddenly tilt, like a hallway light flickering, and suddenly you feel unsettled. The pacing is sharp — most stories build slowly, like a fog creeping in, and then strike with a climax that makes you pause, reread, and mutter, “Wait, what just happened?”

And here’s where I found myself reflecting: these aren’t just stories about supernatural horrors or strange coincidences. Many of them poke at the quiet darkness in human choices — the fragile morality, the way fate can twist without warning, the thin line between sanity and something else entirely. At times, I caught myself thinking about my own decisions, about the eerie unpredictability of people I’ve met, about how little we often know even of those closest to us. It’s unsettling in the best way, like being forced to confront a mirror that doesn’t quite reflect what you expect.

One of the strongest aspects of the collection is its psychological undertone. Unlike the cheap thrills of jump-scare fiction, The Helical leans into atmosphere. It trusts the reader’s imagination, which is always more terrifying than anything written outright. A whisper from an oak tree isn’t just a whisper — it becomes every whisper you’ve ignored, every intuition you’ve suppressed.

Are there flaws? A few. Not every story lands with equal force — one or two felt like they ended too abruptly, leaving me wishing for a few more paragraphs to let the tension breathe. But perhaps that’s the nature of a helix — it coils, it twists, it never quite gives you a straight line.

What lingered most for me was the feeling of time folding in on itself, how each tale wasn’t just a separate strand but part of a larger spiral. Reading this book felt like sitting in a train compartment at night, watching reflections in the glass, and suddenly wondering which side of the glass you’re really on.

If you love thrillers, horror, and suspense, this book will give you plenty to savor. But even if you don’t normally reach for that genre, I’d still recommend The Helical because its power isn’t just in the scares — it’s in the way it makes you think twice about human nature, about fate, about the bizarre helix of choices and chances we live inside.

So here’s my advice: pick it up on a quiet evening. Keep a warm lamp nearby. And when you turn that last page, don’t be surprised if the room feels a little different, as though one of Ankita Panda’s tales has slipped off the page and curled up beside you.

Because The Helical doesn’t just want to be read. It wants to haunt you.

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