When Christa joins a tour group heading deep into the snowy expanse of the Rocky Mountains, she’s hopeful this will be her chance to put the ghosts of her past to rest. But when a bitterly cold snowstorm sweeps the region, the small group is forced to take shelter in an abandoned hunting cabin. Despite the uncomfortably claustrophobic quarters and rapidly dropping temperature, Christa believes they’ll be safe as they wait out the storm.
She couldn’t be more wrong.
Deep in the night, their tour guide goes missing…only to be discovered the following morning, his severed head impaled on a tree outside the cabin. Terrified, and completely isolated by the storm, Christa finds herself trapped with eight total strangers. One of them kills for sport…and they’re far from finished. As the storm grows more dangerous and the number of survivors dwindles one by one, Christa must decide who she can trust before this frozen mountain becomes her tomb.
I’ve read and enjoyed this author’s novels before so I was really happy when I received an ARC from NetGalley. This is also a closed circle mystery where the weather/environment is part of the problem (and also trying to kill them), which is also something I really love. And Coates really used the hostile environment to good effect, setting the stakes high from the start to make it very clear why the group aren’t trying to escape. The cabin they’re stuck in, and the horror unfolding of why those surroundings they were in, was done very well.
Christa, the main character, is immediately struck with grief from the start and is left mostly alone at the start. This was a great way to start everything off because the group had a good reason to avoid interacting with her too much (awkwardness) and she had a good reason not to interact with them, so she could be the silent observer and gave us a chance to get to know the characters. And then people started dying in fairly brutal ways.
The plot itself was more thriller than mystery but Coates does really well in writing the escalation, I think the pacing was done so well. I’ve read and enjoyed her horror novels and it’s for this reason, she knows how to up the stakes and build the tension and she does that in this book. I did sort of consider the twist very early on but I fully guessed it about 3/4 of the way through, though I still enjoyed the reveal came about. (Honestly I would have found the twist more surprising if Coates hadn’t gone the route she did).
I really enjoyed it and it’s a great winter read.
