I love snowstorm thrillers and this didn’t disappoint- I read in a day and that tells you all you need to know!

I rated this book a 3.25. The story was good but the story got confusing and there were too many characters to keep track of. It was still a good book.

A snowstorm, a virus running rampant and fighting for your life is the way this story starts. There is also three plot lines that intersect in this thriller that will keep you wondering as to who might survive and the why of what is really happening.

This book was on fire. Completely unputdownable. A deadly virus, a snowstorm, a bus wreck, a stranded cable car, and some shady things happening at a remote mansion known as The Retreat. This rollercoaster of WHAT DID I JUST READ, will tie you in knots. You will be gobsmacked as the story unravels and the horror that exists with the turn of events. C.J Tudor takes it to an all new level of terror in this edgy thriller. Five stars all around

The nitty-gritty: C.J. Tudor's latest is an action-packed dystopian thriller that rubs elbows with the horror genre. Tense, scary and atmospheric, this was a fun one!

To call this story “crazy” would be an understatement, but perhaps if you’ve read C.J. Tudor’s books before, you'll know what I mean. This was my first book by the author, and despite a few issues, I had a hell of a time! Readers who aren’t afraid of graphic violence, characters getting killed off right and left, zombie horror and epic twists will probably have just as good a time as I did.

The story takes place in the aftermath of a terrible viral pandemic. Society has broken down and those who have managed to stay healthy live in fear of becoming infected. Most victims die, but some survive, although their lives are never the same again. The story takes place during a fierce winter snowstorm and alternates among three different groups of people who are all in dire straights and struggling to survive.

First there is Hannah, who is on a bus with other students, when the bus crashes into a snowdrift, trapping the survivors inside with no cell phones, food or water. The bus was headed to a safehouse called the Retreat, where those who don't test positive for the virus can safely quarantine. 

Next, Meg wakes up in a cable car, suspended high above a snow covered landscape. She doesn’t remember how she got there, and she’s stuck with a bunch of strangers. Even worse, there’s a dead body on the car, and the cable car has stalled, leaving them all stranded with no way to get out.

Finally, Carter works at the Retreat, a secluded mountain research facility funded by a man named Professor Grant, a brilliant virologist who established the Retreat in order to find a cure for the virus. But things at the Retreat are breaking down. The generator is failing, and the electric fences that keep out the Whistlers have gone down. Even worse, Carter finds one of his coworkers, a girl named Julia, dead at the bottom of the Retreat's swimming pool.

All three groups of characters are connected in surprising ways, and as events begin to spiral out of control, their storylines begin to converge. 

That’s about all I’ll say regarding the plot, as half the fun of The Drift is to experience the craziness for yourself. Tudor sets her story during a winter snowstorm, and this make the stakes even higher, because there is the real threat of freezing to death, especially for Hannah and Meg who are both stuck in their respective conveyances with very few resources. Add in all sorts of dangers, and you have the perfect recipe for a fast-paced thriller. What kind of dangers, you ask? Well, first we have the Whistlers, those infected by the virus who haven’t died and who lurk in the nearby woods. With their pale skin and emaciated appearance, Whistlers are violent and terrifying. Then there is the Department, the shady government agency that’s trying to kill anyone who becomes sick. There’s a character named Jimmy Quinn who has a deal going with Carter, and although he’s the ultimate caricature of a mob boss, I was so worried for Carter and his coworkers whenever Quinn popped up. Finally, you have the individual characters, most of whom cannot be trusted, and they might be the worst danger of all. Except—there's also that pesky virus that's extremely contagious, so the characters really don't stand a chance. 

I really enjoyed the three main characters, especially Meg and Hannah. Meg’s storyline is the most emotional, because of a tragedy in her past that she’s unable to recover from. Hannah just happens to be the daughter of Professor Grant, the man who founded the Retreat, so everyone thinks she can get her father to help rescue them, but Hannah also knows what kind of man her father really is. I loved this dynamic and it added even more tension to the story.

Carter’s storyline was probably my favorite of the three, however, and also the bloodiest. Maybe that’s why I enjoyed it so much! Carter and the others he lives with at the Retreat have a little bit of freedom, although there are dangers outside the walls. For example, in order to get food and other supplies, they have to ski down the mountain once in a while to trade with Jimmy Quinn, and those scenes were so tense!

So what didn’t work for me? Well, I think I’m sort of getting pandemic fatigue in fiction, because it seems there’s no end to pandemic stories. Here, I felt the pandemic itself was a little “hand wavy” if you know what I mean. I never fully understood all the details of the sickness, how it was transmitted and which people became Whistlers and which didn’t. In other words, the “rules” of the sickness were kind of a mess. I think a lot of readers won’t care, though, since the action and tension were so good, but for me, I had a lot of questions about the virus that were never answered.

The story is confusing at times, especially in the last half as the pieces start to come together. Tudor has a lot of elements to juggle, and while she did a great job overall, there are a lot of reveals in the last half that were very hard to keep up with.

My last complaint is that the story is sooo far over the top at times, it got to the point where each time someone died, I had to stop myself from laughing, it became so ridiculous. I do understand that’s probably what the author intended, but still, there’s a tipping point for me and The Drift veers into the absurd quite quickly. 

Despite all that, I had a blast reading this book. C.J. Tudor doesn’t hold anything back, so if you’re craving adrenaline-fueled storytelling with an overall creepy, dystopian sensibility, then The Drift is a must read.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

This is my 3rd book by the author, and what always amazes me about their writing is how atmospheric it is. I could feel the cold, the snow, and desperation. There are three points of view that the story is told from, and as I kept on reading I saw how they came together, and intertwined with themselves. There were many "unlikeable" characters, but they were unlikeable in a way that you wanted to see where their questionable decisions would take them.

Thank you to the publisher for allowing me this early copy of the e-book. I have read from CJ tutor before and I was excited to receive a copy of this book. However, I think I was not the target audience for this book. We are following three different timelines of three different events that happened and it’s centering around a pandemic setting, which is still too fresh for me as a reader to enjoy some thing of this caliber. If you do you like reading about pandemic things and that doesn’t frighten you then I will give this a try. CJ tutor has a very interesting writing style and I think most people could enjoy this book as long as they know what they are getting themselves into. I did not know what I was getting myself into, and I think that hindered might enjoy them at the book.

When I first read the synopsis for The Drift, I was initially put off by it. Why? For one, I am suffering from post-Covid burnout. That means I am actively not reading books with pandemic themes running through them. But something about this blurb made me take a second look at it, and that second look made me want to read it. Forget about the pandemic theme; I was genuinely interested in the scenarios and characters portrayed in the blurb. I am glad I did because this turned into a great horror book after a rocky (somewhat confusing) beginning.

There are trigger warnings in The Drift. They are gore, death, blood, body horror, detailed injury, gun violence, violence, murder, child death, suicidal thoughts, medical content, medical trauma, car accident, animal death, rape, suicide, terminal illness, torture, grief, abandonment, pregnancy, addiction, and body shaming. If any of these triggers you, I recommend not reading this book.

The Drift is a fast-paced book set in modern-day and future England. The plotline for The Drift could have been clearer to follow at first. Not going to lie to you all, but I had an issue following the timelines (there are three different ones) and the main characters. But the author does eventually tie them all together, but until then, it isn’t evident.

Getting back on topic, The Drift follows three people – Hannah, Meg, and Carter. Hannah is a student at a prestigious academy who is being evacuated to a place called The Retreat with several other students. On the way there, there is an accident, and everyone on board is killed except for Hannah and five other students. Desperate to escape, Hannah realizes that the virus that has killed half the population and keeps mutating is present in one of the dead. But there are more significant problems, such as a blizzard burying the bus, wolves, and several people on the bus hiding explosive secrets. Will Hannah and the other survivors make it out?

Fast forward ten years later, and the pandemic is still going strong. Meg, a former detective, is woken up and finds herself stuck in a cable car with other strangers while a snowstorm rages outside. When it becomes clear that no one is coming, the group of people starts turning on each other, with tensions ending in murder. Who is killing the other people in the cable car, and why? Will help come, or will Meg have to do the impossible swing on the cable car line to get to safety, which is 200 meters away? And what will happen to Meg once she is at the cable car station?

Fast forward around 2-3 years later, and everything has stayed the same. Carter is part of the science team who is turning out vaccines desperately to stem the pandemic’s spread. But his life at The Retreat is falling apart. Their generator is failing, the infected are closing in on the chalet, and the man who gives them supplies is suddenly wanting more. So, when various crew members are murdered or missing, Carter is on edge. See, Carter has an ulterior motive for being at The Retreat, and this motive, along with everything else, might get him killed. Why is Carter there? Who is he looking for? And, more importantly, will he survive the fallout?

The characters in The Drift were well-written. What I liked the most about them is that they were written to be morally gray characters. Take Carter, for instance. He did awful things to get where he was. But he wasn’t a bad person. He was doing what he had to do to get by in a society devastated by a pandemic that didn’t have a cure.

Hannah— I liked her the most out of the three main characters. In her parts of the book, she brought a clinical, almost detached view of what was happening. She learned to do it after her mother died and relied on it to process everything. She quickly discovered certain things on the bus and was instrumental in helping when things started to go sideways. And it was that reason why I was so mad with how the author ended her storyline.
Meg—She had the most heartbreaking storyline of the three characters. She was the most emotional out of the three because of what she went through. But I liked that she also thought like a cop. She knew something was up with the other people in the car. The scenes where she escaped the car were harrowing, and I didn’t think she would make it during parts of her escape. I disagreed with how her storyline ended, but I got why the author wrote it the way she did.
Carter—I didn’t understand why he was included until halfway through the storyline. Then a lightbulb clicked on in my head. It made sense why he had such extreme frost bit to his face. I also liked how he followed his gut about who was killing the other people at The Retreat.
I mentioned at the beginning of this review that I wasn’t a fan of how the author wrote the timelines. She jumbled them all together, and we had to figure out where in the 12 years this book covers that it took place. It wasn’t obvious. But, a little more than halfway through the book, the author starts tying all three of the storylines together, and by the end, everything makes sense.

The storyline with Hannah, the bus crash, and everything else were well written. I felt awful for Hannah. Not only did she discover something horrible, but she had to do something terrible to save a life. I also felt her trust in a specific person was misplaced. As I mentioned in her section, I wasn’t happy with how her storyline ended.

The storyline with Meg, the cable car, the other passengers, and what happens after is interesting. I say interesting because of what the author reveals. Keep that in mind while you’re reading the book. How the author portrayed that storyline was interesting. There was a mystery that should have been super easy to solve but wasn’t. The breakout scene of this storyline was Meg’s escape while traveling the cable car lines. It was perilous. Again, I wasn’t happy with how Meg’s storyline ended, but I understood why it ended that way. It was something she wanted more than anything in the world, and while it broke my heart, it made me so happy for her.

The storyline with Carter, The Retreat, and the murders was interesting. I’m not going to get much into this storyline because there are major spoilers. But several things surprised me while reading it. Such as the murderer. I thought I knew who it was, and that was wrong. I also liked how the author brought elements from the previous storylines into this one. Again, I was taken by surprise at certain things revealed. Like the other two storylines, I wasn’t thrilled with how Carter’s ended. But it did make sense, and it explained a particular scene.

The Drift fits one hundred percent into the horror genre. The author did a fantastic job of creating a world ravaged by a pandemic similar to Covid. I had no issue picturing what happened in this book happening in real life. There is also a mystery angle to this book that the author did a fantastic job with. I usually can figure things out reasonably early, and I couldn’t in this book.

There are no happy endings in The Drift. I was surprised by who was featured at the very end. What that person did was surprising. All I could think was that this person had a death wish. It left me sad because of everything that had led up to that small chapter.

I would recommend The Drift to anyone over 21. There are language, violence, and non-consensual sexual situations. Also, see my trigger warnings.

Many thanks to Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine, Ballantine Books, NetGalley, and C.J. Tudor for allowing me to read and review The Drift. All opinions stated in this review are mine.

C.J. Tudor has been a must-read author for me since she burst on the scene with The Chalk Man back in 2018. Since then, she's written an original thriller each year, fast becoming a favorite author of mine. COVID put a wrench in that rhythm. Personal tragedy combined with a global pandemic saw Tudor complete a novel that she simply wasn't satisfied with. In a brave act of self-awareness, she opted to scrap that novel and release a collection of short stories instead. Now she's back with a new, highly anticipated book that she promises is entirely different from anything she's written thus far.

When she first awakens, Hannah isn't entirely sure where she is. There are bodies in various states of injury around her, all compacted close together into a claustrophobic space. It takes her a moment to comprehend that she's actually in the wreckage of an overturned bus, the very bus that was taking her and a group of other students to safety. The vehicle is stuck in a snow drift, a casualty of a snowstorm that seems to only be starting. Stuck in coach with no apparent way out, Hannah and the other survivors of the crash can only wait until potential rescue arrives. There's only one thing troubling them. A few of the remaining passengers are beginning to show symptoms of the virus that they were all desperately traveling to escape from.

Meg is awakened by the gentle rocking of the cable car. Dangling high above the snowy mountain below, the former detective takes in the faces of the strangers traveling with her. They are on their way to the mysterious refuge known as The Retreat, a reported safe haven from the virus-plagued world they've been living in. As the car slowly glides up the mountain, the group is jolted by its stopping. Lights go out, and power is completely lost. In the same flash, the lights come back on, but something has changed. There's the murdered body of one passenger left in the corner of the cable car. Meg is trapped in the place, hanging high above the remote landscape. Trapped inside with a killer.

From the top of a mountain, Carter looks out at the world below. He's safe and warm inside the abandoned ski chalet, shielded from the brutal winter storm that rages outside. More importantly, Carter has found solace from the virus that has taken over the world. From this chalet, he works with a group of companions to survive. They scrounge up any food and supplies that they can. It is a meager existence, but it is existence nonetheless. Amongst the day-to-day tasks of basic living, the group works to develop a vaccine against the virus. Their hopes persist in spite of more and more frequent power outages and dwindling supplies. But now the power has been out for a good amount of time. The routine they've built is interrupted, and they'll have to work diligently to keep the threat of the outside world at bay.

From the very start, it is clear that The Drift isn't the ordinary thriller that I'd expect from C.J. Tudor. In fact, I'd classify it more in the post-apocalyptic horror genre than any other. Still, it is the genre-bending nature of the book that makes it so intriguing. Tudor tells her tale through the perspective of three characters, each of whom faces their own locked-room mystery. This unfolds through alternating chapters. I found this method to be a bit taxing at first as it felt like each story took a long time to find its footing. Stick with it though. As the three plots begin to progress, the suspense and leap-from-the-page action begin to take hold. This is bold, go-for-broke writing that only an author as confident and dexterous as Tudor could ever dare to achieve. I can't say that I felt completely connected to the work, especially as some plot elements and character beats didn't really vibe with my sensibilities. Still, Tudor's narrative wizardry is revealed in some third-act context that ultimately sold me on the story. To say more would spoil the revelation for you. Suffice it to say that The Drift is another unique hit from an author who continues to write at the top of her game.

The Drift-Sometimes I was riveted and sometimes…I drifted. A body in the snow. A bus full of kids crash, killing most, A mysterious group barricaded from a dying world. A group of people waking up, stranded high above the snowy ground with no way to go forward or back. Very slowly we get to know these people, sometimes only to watch them die, and the connection between them comes into gradual focus.

The world has ended. These pandemics seem a little more possible now, don’t they? A fever that either kills you or turns you into something new. Suddenly, seems plausible.

All kidding aside, there were a few times I felt I was losing my interest. Very few. Then I’d be right back in it. And just when you really want to know what is going to happen to one group of people, you are thrown into another.

This book messed me up! It follows three groups of people stuck in a snowstorm after a virus has ravaged the country. The story is a slow burn, as we learn about each group of people and start trying to figure out their secrets. There is some action, but mostly just building suspense while the reader tries to figure out what these three groups of people have in common and when it will all come together. Details start clicking into place and the reader gets smacked in the face with the reality of the situation. CJ Tudor has become one of those authors whose books I will get without even reading the description. This is the third of her books that I've read and I've loved every one of them. Her character building and world building are fantastic and she's great at building suspense. Looking forward to reading more of her work!

C.J. Tudor is one of my favorite thriller authors and The Drift did not disappoint! This story is told from three different perspectives and each perspective is told from a near fatal moment in time.

What the author delivers is an action paacccckkkkkeeeedddd ride. I could not have flipped through the pages any faster and the ending? One of the best that I have ever read in a thriller book.

A big thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for allowing me to read an early copy!

What. A. Ride!!!! The Drift was completely gripping from start to finish and I DID NOT WANT TO PUT IT DOWN. Yes, I binged this book in a day.

The Drift is a post-apocalyptic thriller/horror/mystery. There is danger, secrets, twists & reveals. It has 3 POVs and I loved them all! I felt like I got 3-for-1 amazing locked-door mysteries. Typically when books have multiple POVs I strongly favor one and when the POV switches to the others I'm disappointed. Not the case here!!! I found all 3 POVs to be equally exciting. The way they ultimately connect was SO WELL DONE. As the plot unraveled and I started to get inklings of things I grew more and more excited, turning the pages to see how everything would pan out!

Be prepared - The Drift has lots of death, violence and an intense plague. It can be a little graphic. Even so, it never was too much for me to read. Also, it is set against a terrible winter storm which added an amazing atmosphere, raising already high stakes.

4⭐️…. This was really really good and I highly recommend you read it!

Thank you so much to Random House - Ballantine and NetGalley for the ARC.

"Survival was selfish. But then, survival often was."

Apologies for taking so long to read this, but I was traveling and getting accustomed to living in Spain! Don't let my read dates make you think this book was boring. Because it was quite the opposite.

The beginning is a lot to take in—three perspectives, three different locked-room mysteries, and no idea how they will connect. There are a LOT of characters, but I promise if you power through it will pay off.

It's clear that many of the themes of this book were inspired by the pandemic (though, interestingly enough, Tudor actually started writing it in 2019!). At first I was a little wary of reading about the trauma we all just went through in an explicitly dystopian/post-apocalyptic setting, but I found the larger message extremely poignant. It may just be because I recently rewatched The Maze Runner movies, but I also found soooo many parallels between The Scorch Trials and this novel (in a good way!). There is a zombie-like infected population and questions of the ethics of using the immune or infected as a means to find a cure. Fascinating, yet terrifying, stuff.

While the whole premise is scary in itself, I do want to give dystopian readers a fair warning/reminder that this is also a HORROR novel. Tudor does not hold back with the body gore.

There is a lot Tudor doesn't hold back on. Like plot twists and escalation. I was expecting this book to be a wild ride, but that Act 3 twist... let me tell you, I was not prepared for it.

Even though I found the beginning a little cumbersome, this book won me over by the end, and I'd recommend it to anyone who's prepared for a healthy dose of emotional whiplash. Can't wait to get to some of this author's other work, such as The Chalk Man.

This is a little outside of my normal choices for reading, but the premise was interesting and hooked me just enough to give it a read. WOW. This was an absolute rollercoaster of a ride that left me literally breathless and got my heart racing at times (thanks covid!), leaving me no choice but to put the book aside so that I could calm down. But the breaks didn't last for long because the storytelling was too compelling to be away from. The twists and turns just kept coming, and I was still guessing right up until the end - a rarity for me. Definitely recommend this for those who love a good thrill ride and mystery all in one. The only thing I didn't love was the amount of gore, but it fit with the story. Tudor says that she writes in different ways each time, so I would be interested in finding some of her older titles based on the strength of the story in this one, assuming they're less violent/gory.

My thanks to Ballantine Books, the author, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I love C.J. Tudor and have read everything she has written to date. That being said, I am an outlier with regard to this book. I see that all of my GR Friends loved The Drift, but it fell flat for me.

None of the characters are likeable, but then the backdrop of the book is a Pandemic and the theme a mixture of survivalism, dystopian and apocalyptic. There are three storylines, each filled with horror, violence, pestilence, and an underlying heaping measure of cheap pontification.

I see by the descriptions that I did read the same book as everyone else, three storylines separated by 10 years. Everyone is going to die because, as opposed to Covid-19, in the ten years spanning this book, no one managed to come up with a vaccine that actually worked, and if the fabric of society frayed in the three years it took to get Covid under manageable control, you can imagine the toll it had on a society that hadn't yet worked it out after ten years.

It took me a very long time to read this. I didn't give up because of the reviews, but I'm sorry now that I didn't move on to something more appealing. The opinions expressed above are my own, and most readers may enjoy this book, based on the many popular reviews available. Thank you to Random House Publishing Group, Ballantine, and NetGalley for this ARC.

I'm normally slightly confused by C. J. Tudor's books, but this one is more straight forward and I really loved how she tied everything together in the end. The final chapter is perfection! The Drift surprised me in good ways overall.

Things I didn't like -- This book was super gory and violent, which is not my cup of tea. There was lots and lots of profanity (dozens of F bombs) which I detest as well. It was super hard to keep up with all the characters and their situations.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced reader copy. This book was out of my normal genre, so I am still sort of thinking on it. Had the years of Covid not have just happened, I feel like this would have been much harder to imagine. However with Covid, it makes this much more far fetched, but not beyond the impossible. There was a lot of gore and unnecessary use of hateful words towards certain characters which did turn me off. I also felt like the character qualities in the three scenarios were pretty similar that at times it made it hard to distinguish between them. Overall, it did capture my attention and I did not hate it, but I also didn't love it either.

Calling all apocalyptic and dystopian horror lovers: We finally have a unique new book to salivate over! I absolutely adore apocalyptic and survivalist books and CJ Tudor did not disappoint. The Drift is a Russian Doll of survival and horror that is sure to keep readers engaged from start to finish. The story is told from three different POVS.

First we meet Hannah, the daughter of a well known scientist, who is stuck on a coach that tipped fleeing her school because of a deadly viral outbreak. Upon waking up Hannah finds the coach is full of kids; some dead, some alive, some infected; but ALL of them are snowed in and trapped.

We also meet Carter. Carter lives in the luxurious Retreat on the mountain with a group of other people. They are living the dream until a heavy snow storm occurs and the generator goes out. Along with the dangers of the storm are also the “Whistlers” or the infected roaming the wild outside the house.

Lastly is Meg, a former police officer. She has been drugged with a group of random strangers and wakes up in an isolated cable car that has be stranded high above the snowy mountainside. Upon waking, the group finds that one of them has been stabbed to death in their slumber meaning someone in the cable car is a murderer.

These three timelines intertwine to create a deliciously horrific tale. CJ Tudor does not hold back in The Drift. I highly recommend this book!!! Thank you so much to Netgalley and Random House Publishing/Ballantine for the opportunity to review an ARC of The Drift in exchange for an honest review!

So a couple weeks ago I posted what I should read next and The Drift was recommended by a lot of people so I decided to give it a shot and I really enjoyed it! I started off by reading it and then switched to audio for the last half of the book. I enjoyed it both ways, but especially on audio. The narrators did an amazing job of really performing this story. This story had lots of action and lots of cliff hangers throughout. I enjoyed the atmosphere in this one as well as the alternating view points in this one. This is a perfect wintery read if you like books filled with action and are a fan of survival stories/post apocalyptic horror.

Thank you to @prhaudio and @penguinrandomhouse for my copies!