The Drift is one of the most clever dystopian thrillers I've read in a long time.
This giant puzzle includes a medical student trapped in a bus, in the middle of a snowstorm with a group of people she doesn't know; detective Megan stranded in a cable car with a bunch of strangers,suspended above the storm, with no recollection of how they ended up there; Carter, living with his coworkers in an abandoned ski retreat, They all are part of a post apocalyptic, pandemic world full of uncertainty and wariness.
These different storylines will come together masterfully in this gripping, atmospheric book that will keep the reader hooked until the last page.
I've read CJ Tudor previous novel (The Burning Girls) and loved it to pieces. This one, didn't disappoint me.

The Drift is a fast paced intriguing read. This book is more of a thriller/horror. At first I wasn't sure if it was going to be for me but it was so intriguing that I just had to keep reading. I really enjoyed it!



Thank you Netgalley and Ballentine for the digital arc.

Hannah, a student at an elite boarding school being evacuated because of a dangerous outbreak, wakes to chaos and death when her bus crashes in the midst of a snowstorm. Meg, a bereaved mother and former detective, comes to in a cable car stranded high in the mountains with five other seeming strangers, all of them intended to be volunteers at a medical research facility known as "The Retreat." Carter and his coworkers live in an isolated chalet far up a mountainside, tending to a long-term experiment that is reliant on a now-failing generator. All three will need their wits about them as they face off against the people and elements around them if they have any hope of surviving, but as more and more secrets are revealed, it becomes clear that each one is just a piece of a much larger puzzle.

To be clear, this is more of an apocalypse by way of pandemic novel than straight-up horror or suspense, which I didn't know when I started reading. In the last few years, apocalypse novels, especially ones with a pandemic storyline, have not worked for me, so I was surprised to enjoy this as much as I did. Having three narrators and structuring it like a thriller definitely kept me engaged, especially as it became clear that the three storylines were connected (but not in the way I initially thought). The isolated settings for each narrative make them feel like locked-room mysteries (one of my favorite tropes) and the reveals feel earned by the reader, who pieces things together just before they are uncovered. Definitely recommend, but people should know at the outset that it involves a pandemic-driven apocalypse, even as the end of the world happens mostly off-stage.

Thank you to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read The Drift early in exchange for an honest review.

Very intriguing read. A bit disorienting at the beginning trying to keep up with multiple storylines, but eventually they meld together and make sense. Would’ve loved more background information on the story as a whole.

A great murder/mystery with lots of twists. So many characters that actually was hard to keep straight at one point. I love the 3 different locals and groups of people. A great read!

The Drift was like the reading reincarnation of The Walking Dead but set on a cold snowy mountain. It was a bleak post-apocalyptic horror/thriller that was filled with gruesome and violent dog-eat-dog survival scenes. The bloody melees, destruction, and gore were like a train wreck you couldn’t turn away from. I felt compelled to read to the conclusion.

I loved the cliffhangers between chapters and the tension and dread were unreal. The humor was witty and provided some much needed, if sparse, comic relief.

This book was dark and focused on humanity at its lowest point. I wish it had some brighter spots for balance or just go full twisty-dark but instead I felt like the conclusion was mostly anticlimactic and disappointing. Definitely wished for more at the end!

Catch this one if you enjoy bloody action packed post-apocalyptic thrillers!

Publication date: COMING SOON — January 31, 2023
Pages: 352

Thank you to @netgalley and @randomhouse / Ballantine for the advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Wow. Really enjoyed this book by C J Tudor. I really enjoyed the characters, and the plot/pacing was great also. Can't wait to read more from C J Tudor. #TheDrift #NetGalley

I think it's safe to say my reading slump is over. I've just read my first 5-star read. The issue is how to write this review without giving too much away.

My reviews tend to focus on how a book made me feel, as opposed to an actual synopsis. What I will say is that the reader should go in knowing as little as possible. All I knew about this book was that it was an apocalyptic isolated story. And you know what? I'm so glad I knew so little. It made me enjoy the story so much more.

THE DRIFT had me going. It was frightening, suspenseful, and claustrophobic. I was down in the trenches, experiencing everything that the characters were going thru. Anger. Sadness. Hopelessness. And that ending??

CJ Tudor is a fascinating, skilled author. The characters were fleshed out. The scenarios written were intense, frightful, and had me on edge. How they manage to pull everything together?? Whew! Don't think you have it figure it out .... you don't. Think I owe a few apologies to folks who interrupted me while reading (lol). Overall the story flowed well and moved at a satisfying pace.

So if you couldn't tell, I enjoyed the book and highly recommend it. Even though the year just started, I wonder if this will make my top 10 for 2023.

#THEDRIFT. #CJTUDOR #NETGALLEY

The setup for The Drift is a lot. There are several characters in play with background story as well, but once the story gets going… Wow! This one was hard to put down. There is a lot of plot twist and the writing style is akin to Stephen King. This one held my attention from start to finish as we follow the survivors of a tragic crash and their fight for survival.

CW: child death, fatphobia, viral pandemic, violence


Buckle up! This is a wild one! Told through multiple POVs, The Drift is a story of survival in a world overrun with a deadly, zombie-like virus. A charter bus carrying wealthy private school students crashes during a blizzard, and the passengers slowly begin to realize that it may have been intentional. A cable car full of passengers on their way to the Retreat is stuck halfway up the mountain, also with a blizzard raging outside. At the Retreat, the storm seems more of an inconvenience, as they have generators and food stores. But electrical issues are causing headaches and tensions between the various inhabitants are beginning to reach a breaking point.

As the three groups face the deadly challenges before them, dark secrets from their pasts are revealed and cause even more strife and pit people against each other. Every person has a secret to hide and is willing to kill to survive.

This is one doozy of a book! It’s incredibly tense and violent with graphic descriptions of gore and trauma. My only complaint is the amount to casual fatphobia found throughout the entire story; I found that far worse than the violence. There is A LOT of fatphobia, please read with care. I will admit, I began to wonder to when the twist was going to be revealed, as this is a thriller, and it’s worth the wait! This is one of those stories that there isn’t a single character that you have any reason to care for. Every single person is horrible. Every single person has something to hide: an evil agenda, a person to protect, a grudge to be avenged. Every. Single. Person, Absolutely sucks. And also, there is a viral pandemic going on that causes people to become zombie-like and I understand the desire to survive in a world that would be just fine with you not being in it anymore. But the payoff at the end is, begrudgingly, earned. I was very surprised for the twist in events and found it very deftly done.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions and mistakes are my own.

This thriller/horror follows three groups of people who all find themselves trapped during a snowstorm - a bus of students crashed after making a hasty escape from a boarding school, a group of people in a cable car stopped part of the way up a mountain, and a group in an abandoned ski chalet. Each group has a puzzle to solve in order to survive their ordeal. But finding these solutions is made more difficult by the snow storm and a deadly virus that threatens not only the individual groups, but the world as a whole. 

The pacing and balance between these three groups was very well done. We have a main POV character in each group - Hannah in the bus, Meg in the cable car, and Carter in the ski chalet. There's a lot of other characters in these three scenarios so having one main POV to anchor the reader works out really well. The pacing for this was phenomenal and Tudor starts each group off at just the right spot for immediate intrigue. Each storyline is different enough that they are all intriguing in their own way which really made me want to keep turning the pages. Tudor also does a great job of staying with each group just long enough for some substantial plot or character development before moving to a new group and this really kept the pacing feeling snappy.  

The setting was phenomenal. I love an isolation thriller and this really delivered on a number of fronts. Each group is isolated inside a structure (bus, cable car, chalet) but they are also isolated because of the weather. The winter storm is so atmospheric and Tudor dribbles in reminders to the reader about the threat that a snowstorm would pose to these characters. The close quarters of these different settings also helps amp up the interpersonal tension which is one of my favorite aspects of isolation stories. As we progress in the story, Tudor really amps up the environmental stakes as well as the interpersonal ones.

The horror elements in this were great and really felt realistic for this story. There was a good amount of gore/body horror in the absolute best way. The scenes with the gore were really used to punctuate the story and ramped up the tension really well. These moments are used to show the reader just how much danger these characters are in. There's also some great creature horror which I was surprised we didn't see on page more. However, the scenes where we do get these creatures on page are really impactful and don't feel like they've been added in off-hand. We also get some horror elements related to how this virus impacts infected people and some medical procedure/testing horror.  

I think the make-or-break moment for readers is going to be how they feel about the reveal of how these three groups of people are connected. I initially wasn't thrilled with the reveal, but as it continued to play out I ended up really enjoying it by the end. We get the reveal around the 80% mark so then we have the last 20% of the book to see how that information changes our understanding of these situations the characters are in. I had a pretty strong guess going into this book as to what the connection between the groups would be, and I was way off base. Tudor does lay out a good amount of breadcrumbs and I think a lot of readers will figure it out earlier than when the book flat out tells us. I think the implications and how that reveal expands the plot going forward is where some readers might feel it is a little convenient. This book also uses one of my favorite mystery/thriller tropes that I can't say because it would be a spoiler but it is always fun when I stumble into a book that uses it. 

Overall, this was a fantastic, atmospheric, and bloody read. I wasn't expecting so much gore/body horror going into this but Tudor really uses those moments for maximum impact and doesn't over rely on them. The setting and way these isolated situations impact these characters are fantastic and I loved the way the plots all tied together in the end.

Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC.

Expected publication date is January 31, 2023

DNF @12%
I have loved every book by this author until now but I just don't like these people. at all. I don't care what happens to them and I just can't read about viruses or pandemics right now. Sorry.

Holy cuppa!

That sweet smell of darkness! That ever consuming feel of the wolves being everywhere. The assumption that even if the bus goes off course--do we ever really lose our way?

Loss, hope, grief, despair, hell throw in the pandemic (pre-pandemic when this was written) and the good graces for the editors/publishers to allow C.J. to do her thing and you have this ACE!

Not many authors stop me dead in my tracks when reading like C.J.Tudor! In fact, I'm so blessed to get her ARC's that the world literally stops till I sit down and read.

In fact, not many people would probably think that thriller authors are full of love, empathy, nurturing, and all that goodness but as an empath that's what I get when reading between the line.

Never stop caring about others in a world that's lost its way. Our world is full of hatred yet love prevails.

Justice is sought after and often people lose their lives to seek it. " No honor among thieves."

Yet, in the end it's all for our future at large. What will we have when all else is gone. What will be our lasting legacy.

Preach it I must because folks we need to embark on finding our way.
This novel sets up beautifully with that rugged frozen tundra upon which a coach bus veers off course. Surely, there's several survivors but no driver.

Wait...What?
The driver is missing...

Professor Grant (the leader at Invicta Academy) is supposedly Hannah's dad. She was one of the original 7 found alive on the bus full of students. They were headed to a retreat.

The wilderness is a funny thing. Bears, wolves, viruses, ...it's all in this book and then some.

C.J. Tudor never disappoints readers!

Here's the thing...Was the bus full of students the target or was it the retreat?

Ahhh~ The smell of fresh prey. Wolves circling. Get on board and save yourselves before it's too late.

Don't wait for the damn storm to pass while hoping, praying, and wishing for good.

Survival of the fittest- isn't that the key?
Everyone seems to have a secret. Nothing is as it seems. Nope not even Daniel and his sis Peggy.

Did you hear something...
A whistle? A groaning noise...
I'm sorry ...It's a 'Whistler' and yes indeed, it's a wheezing like asthma sound from an infected person.

Now's my chance to tell you that science saves lives not love.
However, nobody wants to be a mere experiment, a guinea pig, nor even a lab rat.

Anti-vaxxers perhaps know this all too well or so they claim.
Is it really true that everyone's expendable. Say, it ain't so...PLEASE.
We'll all meet our maker at some time in our lives. The devil doesn't appear as an angel folks.

Neither do monsters or demons.

I digress, Eva is the star in my opinion because while everyone is off saving the world she's hopefully safe and secure living her life because of those who came before.

Keep in mind when reading that there's always that one person whose in charge. That's who you must find.

The Drift has a meaning behind its title both literally and figuratively and I won't give that away but suffice to say there's always someone with more power and control over others.

Checkmate!

C.J. Tudor you once again have rocked my world-My friend!
Thank you to C.J. Tudor, Random House, Ballantine, and yes, her writing crew for allowing creativity and expression to flow through these pages.

Netgalley you are the reason for this ARC and I thank you for your services.

Go, get, run and grab a copy as soon as able. Pre-order if available in your neck of the woods.

Till we meet again...Love, #TheSecretBookSleuth

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I would give this somewhere from 4-4.5 stars. Despite this novel being pandemic fiction (something I've been avoiding since, well, 2020), I tore through it and was completely engrossed throughout. The story is split into three separate POVs, with nearly every single chapter ending in a cliffhanger. The characters are complex, the plot is twisty and gory, and together they demonstrate the struggle between displaying humanity and fighting for survival. Although there were some plot holes and the ending fell a little short, I liked the way the story was structured and paced. Overall, I'd definitely recommend this novel, as long as you don't mind the combination of a pesky virus and near-perpetual violence.


Content Warnings: pandemic/virus, gore, violence (gun, knife, physical fighting), on- and off-page death, brief mention of fatphobia, body horror

The Drift by C. J. Tudor was a sci-fi, thriller dystopia. It’s a terrifying suspenseful narrative that would scare anyone.
Told from three POV the world was changing and it was changing for the worst. I found it engaging and emotionally charged. This novel was a dystopia which is fine with. I really enjoyed it and highly recommend it. I look forward to the authors next one.
Thanks Random House Publishing via NetGalley.

I think this is the perfect winter thriller! It's not my normal go-to, but it's exactly what I want in a tense, action-packed thriller in snowy weather. This book is definitely gory and not for the faint of heart. Like I said -not my usual read- but it's exactly what I want in a snowy thriller that you can't put down.

My thoughts on an overall rating fluctuated a lot while reading - at first I thought it would max out at 4 stars. But as the mystery started to reveal itself, I thought "whoa!! This is a 5 star mystery!" But then the last 5% was a little *too* wild (even for a thriller that's supposed to be wild), and the ending was not what I thought it was building towards. So I settled at 4 stars, but really enjoyed this one.

What I liked: This truly was a book I could not put down! I had no idea how all 3 POVs connected, and even when it started to come together I still had a hard time wrapping my mind around it all! But I genuinely loved trying to guess it, and I didn't even come close. This book is a wild ride and I was very tense while reading it!

What didn't work for me: I actually didn't mind this, but I'd just be aware that there is A LOT of death in this book. Some of it is on the gory side, so if you are squeamish then this might not be for you. I personally wanted the end of the book to go in a different direction... Also felt some characters were only there to pop back up again at a very convenient time, which just felt *too* convenient. Also there's something in the very end I didn't care for and somewhat affected my overall rating, but I can't disclose without spoiling.

All in all, this book was a great January read!! Perfect snowy thriller to keep you on your toes and keep you turning pages!

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Whew! If this isn’t an intricately plotted and genius “come together” I don’t know what is! Imagine the pandemic during our first lockdown …okay, ya there? Scared and uncertain right? Add in some zombie apocalypse style creatures and snow, so much snow. Terrified?! I know I would be, and that’s what this book is all about.
We have three main characters with three different POVs to tell our story; Meg, Hannah and Carter. At first it was a bit hard for me to follow because there are a large cast of characters but never fear, you will nail them down. All three characters have their own issues/flaws so it makes it hard to trust any of them.
I know that the author lost her father due to Covid and that is what sort of inspired this story. It’s amazing to me that she turned her grief into her craft and created something out of it. Just know it isn’t about Covid per say but it is about a virus and a pandemic. That can trigger some, so it needs to be said. It does provide a pretty good concept for a horror novel however.
I knew something screwy was going on, I just didn’t quite get it until about 65% and even then-that ending blew me away! I can’t really tell much about the story because I don’t want to give anything away. Just know it’s gruesome, full of despair and suspense. You know I loved it lol

Thank you Netgalley for my advance copy!

Wow! I couldn’t put this book down. Three ongoing POVs with groups of characters in each of the three different locations. This made it hard (at first) to keep track of who was who because there was so many characters. It does help that each location stays with one POV and you get the hang of it eventually. I LOVED the apocalyptic/ viral pandemic storyline because it didn’t follow normal tropes. I feel like most fall into run of the mill zombie stories and this was not the case. I love that it focused more on the human nature aspect than the Whistlers themselves. Revenge and survival are two strong motivators and love that this book was centralized around them. Also, the way the different POVs intertwined was brilliant. I’ve never read a book like this! Highly recommend. I also loved the aha! moment when you figure out the name of the book. This was my first CJ Tudor novel and I can NOT wait to read more.

Wow this one was all over the place but I still had a great time reading it. Less of a thriller and more dystopian and post apocalyptic, borderline horror. The three different storylines were confusing at first but didn’t ruin the story for me. I will say there were a lot of plot holes and answers I didn’t get, which makes this not one of my favorite Tudor novels.

My favorite CJ Tudor book to date! Each cliffhanger chapter was short enough that it demanded my attention and made it impossible to stop, each ending leaving me wanting more, staying up way past my bedtime getting in one more chapter. The whodunit in each story was fun to figure out, each story and character held a specific mystery about their presence within that particular moment. I loved working out the connection between the three separate stories, which weaved perfectly together and worked as a standalone. Particularly loved the setting of getting stuck in a cable car in a snowstorm with a handful of strangers… and one very dead body. Highly recommend for anyone looking for a fun suspense thriller with plenty of suspects and locked room settings.