Genre: Thriller
Release Date: January 5th, 2023
Pages: 384
Publisher: Avon Books UK
My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Publisher’s Synopsis:
“Mila is on her way to sister’s wedding at a beautiful mountaintop retreat with her husband Ethan.
But when their directions send them down a narrow, steep road, Mila begins to think something is wrong.
Then the car engine stops and won’t start again.
Stranded in the snowy mountains and with night closing in, they make their way back down the road to where they saw a sign to turn off to an abandoned ski resort, with windows boarded up and the eerie sense they shouldn’t be there.
With few choices left, they break into an old cabin to spend the night out of the cold.
In the morning when Mila wakes, Ethan is gone.
She is all alone. Or is she?”
My Review:
I’ve been stewing on this review for a few days because I had mixed feelings after reading this and I wanted to be sure that I was being somewhat objective and not just giving gut reactions. But I’ve settled on three stars, maybe 3.5 stars, for my experience with this story.
On the one hand, I loved the horror movie way that the plot begins to unfold. After being stranded at an abandoned settlement, creepy and sinister things begin to occur. I felt transported into the situation and the eerie atmosphere created a claustrophobic tension. Even if this part of the story did get a little repetitive at times, I still felt unnerved by it all. I enjoyed trying to solve the mysteries along with Mila.
The flashbacks from the sisters’ lives gave us insight into Mila’s motivations for appeasing her sister, even though they did nothing to make me like this character. If anything, they made me feel for her sister more.
But the second half is where things started to fall off for me. It becomes more of a domestic thriller, rather than a psychological horror story. I think this disconnect is one reason I lost the connection I felt with it. It just seemed like two completely different stories with such a dramatic plot shift. I loved the survival, almost supernatural aura of the first half of the book, and after losing that intensity I felt my interests waning.
Nevertheless, I still think it’s a decent mystery/thriller, and I think that readers will probably fall somewhere around a bell curve with this one. I didn’t expect the direction that this story went, and I almost wish it didn’t. Even if this particular story isn’t a favorite of mine, I did like the writing style in general and would consider checking out other books by this author.
Disclaimers:
Huge thank you to Netgalley and Avon Books UK for gifting me an early copy of this amazing story! I voluntarily read and reviewed this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
This post may contain affiliate links that I may earn a small commission from with no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support 🙂
Have you read this book? Planning to add it to your TBR?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
I love a good book discussion. 🙂
Leave a Reply