received a free copy of this for review from NetGalley.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Some seemingly law-abiding citizens stumble across something valuable and decide to keep it even though they know it will be dangerous to do so. Oh, you have heard it? Yeah, it’s been around a while.

Zach is a former NFL player turned television announcer, and Steve is his old friend and investment manager. They take an annual hunting trip to Montana every year where their buddy Curt acts as their guide while they camp in the woods. The guys are having trouble enjoying their vacation since Zach has run up huge gambling debts in Vegas and needs cash quickly while Wall Street shenanigans have wiped out the savings Steve was managing for him. This has also put Steve into a very deep hole that might ruin his family.

Zach comes across the crash of a small plane with hundreds of kilos of cocaine in it, and Steve immediately seizes on the idea of taking drugs and selling them to as a way of getting out of their mutual financial crisis. Because there’s no chance that an organization capable of filling a plane with millions of dollars of drugs will ever come looking for it, right?

Despite Zach’s reservations they haphazardly start a scheme that involves keeping the secret from Curt. Things escalate quickly. Mistake piles upon mistake. And just like that Zach and Steve are in deep trouble and soon realize that they can’t even trust each other anymore.

The trope of an ordinary person finding a bag of money or drugs which takes them straight down the path to hell is one I generally appreciate. However, this one seemed pretty clichéd. It starts out with a very similar set-up to Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan and then quickly morphs into an attempt at doing something like Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. (And those are two way better books I’d recommend if you’re in the mood for this kind of thing.) From there we cycle through all the checkpoints you’d expect to cross. You’ve got your ruthless enforcer from the drug cartel, a dedicated cop, some innocent people getting screwed over, etc. etc.

There’s also the odd way that it veers into social commentary and existential angst. Many a good crime novel includes these elements, but the writing here just seems to swing wildly from following the plot to going off on tangents about the environment, the perils of capitalism, and the way everyday life can chip at the soul. Those are all subjects that can easily and naturally pop up in a book like this, but the way they’re presented here often seems clumsy and ill-timed.

The most original aspect are the characters of Zach and Steve. The set-up leans in the direction of treating the football hero Zach as the good guy led astray by the fast talking Steve, but we get a more interesting perspective as we learn more about them. Zach is actually more of a hypocrite and selfish guy then he first appears while Steve isn’t quite the Wall Street d-bag you’d assume from the beginning. The way they almost accidently create an escalating mess is a great depiction of how quickly things can fall apart for someone once they decide to cross the line.

Despite its shortcomings I’m still a sucker for these kind of crime stories, and there was some very good character work done as well as some nicely atmospheric stuff that takes us from the snowy woods to the streets of Las Vegas. It’s not bad, but I can think of several better ones.

Copy received from NetGalley for honest review. --- From the burb I thought this book would be better than it turned out to be. Two friends and business associates are on their routine hunting trek where they stumble upon a downed plane filled with cocaine in two coffins. With their decision to take the 'snow' and sell it for profit begins their treacherous journey to sell their loot. What ensues is a big comedy of error leading to ultimate tragedy.

I received this book from NetGalley for my honest review. This book did not draw me in, I did not like or enjoy any of the characters and I did not finish it because I could not "get into it".

Steve and Zack are on a hunting trip in the wilds of Montana with their guide, Curt, when Zack discovers a crashed plane with cocaine in it. Steve persuades him not to tell anyone and that they can sell the cocaine themselves to make a profit. They both need the money. Steve’s investment firm is going down the pan and ex-footballer Zack has gambling debts. So when Curt goes into town to report the plane crash they stay behind and begin to execute their plan.

One of the things I liked was that Steve and Zack were pretty inept in their dealings – they were about as good at being cocaine traffickers as I would be. This felt real and plausible but it left me wondering why it took the police struggled as they did to get to them. (There is a sort-of justification – the police want to catch the big-scale traffickers who chartered the plane – but that would be a major federal operation, not one police officer and a mobile phone.)

The quality of the characterisation varies throughout the book. It starts well – on the one hand you have Zack, who generally has good intentions but is weak and self-pitying. On the other you have Steve, who is manipulative and whose privileged upbringing leads him to overestimate his own abilities. Later on though, their voices seem to merge so at times it’s hard to tell which is which.

It would have been better if the author had made more of the shifting dynamics of the Steve/Zack friendship – what brings them together and what forces them apart, but this got lost in a lot of repetition of their backstories, driving around to no clear purpose and mutual recrimination.

The implicit theme of the story could be said to show that even if you’re in a position of relative privilege, like an investment manager or NFL player or gangster, you are still a cog in an unjust system. If it had stayed implicit it might have been effective. However, all the characters articulate an eerily similar critique of predatory capitalism and the war on drugs. Clearly, these are the views of the author rather than the characters and in hitting the reader over the head with them he tends to irritate rather than inspire.

I liked the premise of this novel. There is some lovely writing in here, particularly the opening chapters in the Montana wilderness, and, by contrast, the author’s jaundiced perspective on the Vegas casinos. I just wish he’d given the characters room to think for themselves.

Thinking back on this book definitely brings a smile to my face. This was definitely a drama, however, the characters sometimes seemed like they came right out of a Keystone Cops silent movie. I seriously had to shake my head at times for their stupidity and greediness. They could be so dumb.

However, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. There were a few spots when I think there was a little filler inserted, but overall, a good read for me.

Lots of action & many twists, I sped right through this one.

Thanks to Mandevilla Press and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

Snow is a page turner ! It is a desperate story that has you "rooting" for the underdog to have a change of heart. A story of greed. It is a pessimistic story line but it will keep you reading...

As a very well written story I throughly enjoyed reading this, I found the descriptive writing beautiful and the dialogue believable. However I did not really enjoy the storyline or subject matter but this is, I feel, a purely personal opinion. I found the storyline to be very tense and this may just be a case for me of being the wrong story at the wrong time. I would not hesitate to recommend this to others as it is a well written novel of it’s genre .

This book was a difficult one to rate. While I didn't care for the subject matter (drugs), the author's writing style kept me interested and wanting to know what will happen next. You wanted to know what was going to happen to Zack and Steve and who was going to catch them first. I think the police could have tried a little harder to find them. The end was underwhelming, but they seemed to get what they should have. I would read this author again.

A compelling novel about the power of greed. The protagonists, a successful Manhattan broker and a former NFL star, fall victim to the lure of quick easy money. The story is all downhill from there. This is one of the most depressing books that I have read. However, it is nonstop action and I could not put it down.
The author has strong feelings about the problems with modern society: environmental collapse, materialism and drug addiction. I am inclined to read more of his books, but I don’t know if I can handle the negativity.

Oh no. The suspense would have been ok. The plot sounded good, but this wound up like a movie that gets worse and worse till you feel like it was a D grade and not a B grade. (I like several B grade films.) I couldn't connect, nor like, or feel anything for any of the characters. They lacked in every way. Lack of morals, brains, heart, just completely lacked. I wound up having to re-read because I'd fallen prey to skimming. That was due to my inability to connect to this story. I really tried, but this isn't my cup of anything, including tea.

My copy came from Net Galley. My thoughts and opinions are my own. I agreed to leave an honest review of my own free choice.

Quick decisions are unsafe decisions. - Sophocles

This was an okay story. I've read many different versions of it over the years and this wasn't my favorite.

The story starts in Montana during the winter. Steve, a New York investment broker, and Zack, an ex-NFL linebacker now sportscaster, are on their annual ten day elk hunt with their favorite Cheyenne hunting guide, Curt. The three men are good friends and enjoy their time "away from it all" every year.

Zack is out hunting and comes across a downed plane. When he brings Steve back later to look at it, they find it's carrying a huge load of cocaine.

And that's when decisions start being made that will affect all three men - disastrously.

The story travels from Montana to Colorado to Nevada with an assortment of letter agencies, law enforcement, plus a drug cartel involved.

This was a basic story with one-dimensional unlikable characters. My favorite part was actually the descriptions of the countryside and cities.

If you want a quick read that you don't have to think much about, this would fit. It's not terribly written, just rather uninspired.

I received this book from Mandevilla Press through Net Galley in the hopes that I would read the book and leave an unbiased review.

I found this book to be reasonably suspenseful, if you can overcome the complete lack of sympathy for any of the characters whatsoever, not to mention the absolute ridiculousness of the plot. If you are prepared to believe, even in a small way, that it's likely that reasonably intelligent and successful men would make so many obviously bad decisions, then by all means read on!

Each of the main characters are out for themselves, without any real redeeming qualities, with the sole exception of the half-Cheyenne guide who they betray and who then tries to hunt them down, along with the drug dealers, police, DEA, and seemingly everyone along the way.

There are enough beach reads available that I would not recommend spending good money for this one, I'm sorry to say. For myself, I received a reviewers copy courtesy of NetGalley, so thankfully I avoided that buyers remorse.

I really enjoyed reading this book. A rollercoaster ride that kept me hooked throughout. My only gripe was the ending. I would have liked an ending that was a little more forgiving.

The story was interesting and I could really visualize the place, the people, the action. My biggest issue was the pacing. At times it seemed to drag with too much spent on descriptions then in the next minute a very big event would take place over just a few sentences. It felt unbalanced. Nonetheless, a quick read with some good action.

This is a fast paced thriller with lots of twists and turns. It shows how even basically good people will do bad things when they are faced with money problems and stumble into a seemingly quick and easy way to end those problems. One unanswered question: was there a mule in DEA giving the cartel information? The use of a sportscaster and former NFL player teamed with a New York investment banker as friends and co-conspirators was interesting in that it brought two different perspectives and styles to the situation. Somewhat predictable, but never dull.

Interesting read. The characters in Snow are not at all likeable, with the exception of Curt, but the action is nonstop from beginning to end. For me, it was almost a comedy. I found myself wondering just what stupid decision Zack and/or Steve would make next.

This book was such a rush! It is not my typical genre, but I enjoyed it anyway—even though I nearly developed a heart condition from the intensity!!! I do believe that a few key points seemed unnaturally hurried, but I know that fast-paced story telling is part of this author's allure. I also think I would have liked a little more evenly distributed detail throughout the book even so. Many trivial parts had huge deposits of detail; sentences listing ten items, or vivid descriptions of the young ladies’ anatomies. (One glaring example is the huge, several page history lesson on how Las Vegas came to be. This was highly irrelevant and very perturbing at an interesting point in the thick of the drama. It added nothing to the story at hand..) Meanwhile, much of the main events’ descriptions were limited. This may just be routine, fast-paced-novel strategy—it certainly moves the plot along. However, I listened to the book, the way I do with all of my books (speech to text), and there were numerous times when I had to go back a page or so to see what I missed, because things suddenly began happening too quickly. There were also some logistics that just did not sit squarely with what might realistically happen or were not explained in a way that felt plausible. I read all of the amazing reviews in the preface before I read the book, and it did live up to those reviews. I was still a little disappointed, though, because it wasn’t up to MY literary expectations—and I know it is not meant to be a classic—but that is my honest opinion. (In fairness, to really give credit where it is due, as an ELA teacher, I know that this is the kind of book that can hook someone who does not usually read. Due to some of the mature content, obviously, I cannot recommend this book to my reluctant readers.)

I really enjoyed ‘Snow’, the first book I have read by the author Mike Bond. His writing experience as an author and journalist are evident, as is his passion as an environment when describing the setting of the Montana and Colorado. He even manages to slot into the plot the fight against wind turbines (one of the greatest challenges he sees the environment facing).
But more importantly than all of this, is that Snow has a great storyline which gets the reader to consider whether it is justifiable for ‘good people’ to steal from criminals when their needs and purposes are greater and more honourable than the criminals. There are a lot of twists and turns in the book (that one would expect from an author of this calibre).
The plot moves along at a good pace following the four main characters on their moral journey in the action packed book.
Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I’d recommend this book to all readers who enjoy a well written book with a backbone, excellent plot and well developed characters.

This book remains me a lot the Narco-Novelas my husband watch and I really really dislike but is my bad for asking a book without properly reading the description...
Besides the plot I really didn't like the writing style and I dislike the characters so in general I didn't enjoy reading this book.

I'd give Snow 3.5 stars if I could. While there was a lot of action in this story and I don't doubt that this could have happened, the poor decision making of the main characters took away from my enjoyment of the story.

Zack and Steve seemed like they didn't bother to think through the consequences of anything. First things first, if I found a plane, wrecked in the middle of nowhere and filled with drugs, I'm pretty sure it would scream cartel to me and I do not want any cartel people after me. Okay, I'm not in a story, but seriously.

The way they just ruined the horses, stole a truck....and all the hints about the DEA office being compromised, (but nothing was ever explored on that angle) kept pulling me out of the story to wonder why. It seriously could have been a much better story with a little thinking on several people's parts.

All that said, I would read another of Mr. Bond's books, if only to see if this was a one-off as far as his work is concerned.

I appreciate Mr. Bond and his publishers as well as Netgalley for allowing me an early copy.