Thank you so much to NetGalley and City Bound Books for my copy of SNOW FALL by Andrew P Foster in exchange for an honest review. It published June 23, 2020.
Unfortunately, this book just wasn’t the one for me. It felt very disjointed, choppy and unsettling in its flow. Perhaps that was what was the plan, but it just didn’t jibe with me. I think this might appeal more to someone else with different reading tastes than me.
Also, it takes place at Christmas, but I didn’t get the Christmas feels from it, (which I know that’s not necessarily what the author was going for), but typically there’s something to it.

This took a bit of getting into but once it hot hoing it was a rollercoaster of knowing what would happen...and being wrong time and time again. Characters are believable and nothing is obvious. There was also an undercurrent of deeper thinking about life and love. Great book

This was so interesting and at first I did not think I would like the book because it was from a man's point of view and it is something I so rarely read. But this was so fresh, new and addicting

I wasn’t sure about this book. While the description sounded good. Something just didn’t sit right with me, I found it creepy and uncomfortable sorry

This was an interesting read following Phillip and his son Chris moving to a seedy area of NYC after the death of Phillips wife Ellie in a plane crash. Their move to LA several years before had always suited Ellie more than him and his heart was with family and the early days of their romance back in New York, This is where the couple were at college together, studying theatre arts. He feels close to Ellie here, which I found interesting since it was a long time ago that they lived there, and LA was where they were last together. Phillip’s sister Eileen found their apartment, her job for a real estate tycoon gives her the inside knowledge.
Not long after they arrive Phillip starts to receive letters addressed to Ellie - although Ellie never lived here. He finds so many different things to concern him. There’s the suggestion of an affair, a safety deposit box, and most worrying, a pornographic picture of a young girl. None of this makes sense to Phillip, and I started to feel for him. I was worried about what Ellie had been involved in. I was also worried about Phillip, it’s hard enough grieving for someone, but to find they were keeping secrets from you at the same time is so damaging. There are long passages where Phillip thinks about his life with Ellie, and this is not really for the reader. They’re about him trying to come to terms with what he knew about his wife or whether the woman he loved really existed at all. There is a twist I didn’t see coming but it was more about the psychology of these characters, how they developed and got through the difficulties they were facing.

Wonderful book! Great storyline and interesting characters. Thanks for the advanced copy. Can't wait to read more by Andrew P Foster

A great mystery and thriller book. I would recommend reading it. Thank you to NetGalley for your allowing me to read this book.

💫 Book Review 💫
Snow Fall by Andrew P Foster

A debut author brings a murder mystery with a whole lotta confusion. I hate having to write reviews like this but as this was a gifted copy for an honest review, I’ll have to do it.

First the good: complex characters, fantastic premise and the makings of what could have been a heart wrenching story. The chapters are short so it’s easy to flip through them.. and even though I didn’t like so many of the people in the book, I still wanted to know how it would tie together.

It’s the story about a man (Philip) who loses his wife in a plane crash (Ellie). In order to begin a new start after she dies, Philip takes their young son Christopher to NYC to begin again. As the story unfolds, the reader is taken into the underground world of pornography, drugs, murder and acting. I think that was part of my problem with the book.. there was just too many things happening that I didn’t have enough time to catch up.

It sounds as though this will be a series, so I wonder how it’ll continue.... perhaps I will give it another chance with book 2 when it comes out. Maybe it dives more into the complex topics that it introduces.

Snow Fall by Andrew P Foster takes place in New York, during Christmas of 1984. Philip Sanders has just lost his wife in a plane crash and has to pick up the pieces and move on for himself and his young son Chris. The characters are very complex and have moments that are both deeply moving and raw. Sooner rather than later, Philip gets caught up in a mystery! A few twists and turns will keep you guessing and WOW that ending! Can't wait to see what's next from Mr. Foster!

The author has a way of writing that draws you deeply into the story. His description of grief is so true and authentic. And I love his imagery - he writes in a way that you can almost taste what it is like to be in the theater, or enjoying a crisp downhill run on skis.

This was a very convoluted story about a wife and mother who is supposedly killed in an airplane crash but is found to be really more involved than previously thought. This novel has many twists and turns with references to the drug world, real estate, pornography and snuff films. This kept my interest throughout even though I had to read it twice as I hadn’t left a review the first time.

Phillip Sanders has the perfect life! He’s in love with his beautiful wife Ellie and a 4-year-old son, Chris. Sadly, Ellie tragically dies in a plane crash. Or so we are led to believe. But when Phillip leaves Los Angeles and moves back to New York he gets mixed up in all kinds of mysterious events. Then he finds some signs that maybe Ellie didn’t die in the crash, and instead she left him and Chris, which he really can’t believe. Unfortunately, the story goes a little bit crazy from there, too many characters, too many lines to follow, too many side stories. I did finish the story, but have to admit to skimming quite a bit, which didn’t seem to hurt the story at all. I wish the author had stuck to one storyline and followed it through. Thank you to NetGalley and the author for this copy of Snowfall.

Thanks to Netgalley and CityBound Books for giving me this ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

Snow fall started off on a great note. Philip is devastated after the death of his wife, Ellie. He moves to New York with his 4-year-old son and starts hanging out at his old haunts. However, he finds that NY has changed, and not for the better.

There are too many things going on in the book. I often felt that the author has bitten off more than he can chew. I couldn't connect with any character and the writing was haphazard.

The story had great promise but it seems to have been wasted. Maybe some good editing will do it a world of good.

One time read at the most.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. It has been published in June 2020.

"Snow Fall" by Andrew P Foster takes quite a fresh approach to the missing-person thriller subgenre, combining the protagonist's very personal investigation about his wife's disappearance with a larger-scale investigation into the world of illegal drugs, child pornography, snuff movies and real estate mafia.
On the one hand, it's interesting to read about the connections among these apparently very different worlds. On the other hand, that many themes were maybe too much to properly develop in one single novel, and the story suffers from never actually getting to focus on any of these very complex subjects.
There are a lot of characters and it's hard to keep track of all of them, or to get emotionally invested in any but a few.
I liked very much the protagonist, who never gets whiny (even when he'd have every reason to) and never indulges in self-pity.
I also appreciated how the protagonist's son is described: there's no room for the saccharine idealization of a young child here. Chris is one regular four-year-old, who can be sweet at times, and throw horrible tantrums at others. He never does or says anything that would make him sound much older than his age, like it so often happens in many other novels.
I disliked Marcie's character: she gave me creepy vibes from her first appearance, and I didn't really understand her motivations. I was very surprised and not particularly reassured by the role she was given in the epilogue.
The plot twists were not particularly surprising, but the story itself is action-packed and the writing style combines humour and pathos in just the right mix, so it was overall a good, entertaining read.
It would have been even more pleasant if it weren't so full of typos! I'm talking about several mistakes (misspells, missing words, words in the wrong order) in every single page, and the book is over 200 pages long. That's an awful lot of mistakes, and they're so frequent that they actually impact on the legibility of the text. Makes you wonder whether they even employ a proofreader.

This book blew me away! I was unable to but it down. Perfect, dazzlingly, very well written. The details the author described throughout the book was so amazing. The characters and storyline were fantastic. The ending I did not see coming Truly Amazing and appreciated the whole story. This is going to be a must read for many many readers. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! No spoilers. Beyond amazing I enjoyed this book so very much. The characters and storyline were fantastic. The ending I did not see coming Could not put down nor did I want to. Truly Amazing and appreciated the whole story. This is going to be a must read for many many readers. Maybe even a book club pick.

Plot: I'm really not sure. It started as a story about a man and his child who experience a loss after the wife dies in a plane crash and they move to New York City from their rich and famous life in LA.

Opinion: I started the book thinking it would be a sort of murder mystery and it seemed that way but then the writing shifted to more of a contemporary style. It's confusing because I really don't know what to expect on the way the story is set to unfold.

The writing itself is very disjointed and somewhat difficult to read. The writer describes the characters really vividly and gives you a feel like you know these people really intimately but the way the story flows itself is very stop-start-stop which becomes difficult to read after sometime. I don't know if that was a stylistic choice but personally I found it very exhausting. Aside from that, I have also struggled to truly appreciate the content because I really don't know what I was reading. As such, I have had to DNF(Did Not Finish) this book at 31%.

Recommendations:
Better flow to the story, i.e. pick a theme and stick to it. If the writer intends to make us understand relationships and loss then this should be the theme of the story, but if it is more of a mystery/thriller it should have that distinct feel. The manner in which he tried to mix the two themes falls flat in this book.

He should also have made the writing less static and more fluid. eg. Phillip starts thinking one thing, but then gets distracted and randomly moves to another thought in the middle of his previous one, and it's confusing to the reader because you literally have no clue what he is actually trying to put across.

All in all, good effort but I don't think I will be finishing this book.

I received an eARC of Snow Fall by Andrew P. Foster from City Bound Books and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!

This book held so much promise but unfortunately fell short for me. There were A LOT of moving parts to the story, it was difficult to get into and you don't get to know the characters very well at all. I give this book 2 stars.

My thanks to NetGalley and publisher CityBound Books for the ARC.
It took me a while to get into this book and to understand the main characters, but I did enjoy it.

It's two weeks before Christmas and Philip Sanders and his four year old son Chris, mourning the loss of Ellie in a plane crash six months previously, have moved from their Hollywood home to a an apartment in a seedy side of New York. Both Philip and Ellie were documentary produces and Ellie travelled a lot for her assignments; Phillip preferred to do the research side of documentaries. But now he has returned to where they both studied in theatre arts, where they married and where he likes to recapture images of their time together.
His sister Eileen found him the apartment; she works in real estate sales for a group of investors.
Philip explores his surroundings - the drug deals, the prostitution, the lack of policing and an abandoned building used as a crack house.
Then a week later he receives an envelope containing letters addressed to Ellie seeming to point to her having an affair, as well as a safety deposit box - Philip understands none of it, especially when he comes across a pornographic photo of a young girl..
A phone call from Jake Sculler Snr invites Phillip to meet him - he's a real estate tycoon, his son Jnr. being Philip's landlord. He knew Ellie and he knows Eileen. He's offered a weekend in Vermont in an executive chalet and there he meets ski instructor Kate.
Philip is questioning his life with Ellie and determined to find the truth as he chases-down her correspondences. When he really starts researching and, finding that Eileen and Kate know each other, some secrets and deceits start revealing themselves - did Ellie die in the plane crash or had she left him?. But nothing can prepare him for the whole devastating truth. Who is actually pulling the strings? What did Ellie get herself mixed up in?

I admit to having to skim-read some lengthy narrative passages where Philip muses on his life with Ellie but I thought the conclusion was good and thoughtful.

Snow Fall is the story of a man whose wife dies in a plane crash and the events that follow as he moves back to New York from LA with his young son. As the story progresses, he learns that the crash, his wife, and life as he knew it, may not have been what they seemed. If you like a book with a lot of moving plot points and changes around every corner, this might be the one for you. While that may be for some, I felt that there were too many pieces to this plot for me to get fully invested in the story. To name a few - the death of the wife/mother in a plane crash; landlord with a sketchy history, possibly related to the wife, trying to sell the apartment building where the main character lives; an intense drug scene; pornography; murder; and a failing acting career. I wanted to be intrigued by this mystery/thriller, but struggled to follow along.

Phillip Sanders loves his life, he has a beautiful wife Ellie and a 4 year old son, Chris. Ellie tragically dies in a plane crash ... but did she?! Phillip takes the opportunity to move to New York with Chris and gets caught up in a life of drugs and mysterious events occur all around him. Phill asks questions about Ellie to the neighbours, but who can he trust? Is Ellie dead? On a hunt to find the answers he bumps into people who know more than they are letting on.

I would give this book 2 stars and I really feel that's being generous! I just can't like or care about any of the characters. Phillip leaves Chris all the time, takes drugs and is utterly careless! Such a poor excuse of a parent and part of me wished he got killed off! There are a lot of characters in this novel and some only make a brief appearance, it's hard to keep on top of and not sure if everything was ever fully explained or completely told. I was bored reading it and will not read any further books by this author.