DNF at 20%. Too many characters to keep track of, none of which I connected with. The plot was choppy and hard to follow. Storyline taking on too much of a dystopian / horror feel for my liking. I usually love this authors work but this is not one I’m connecting with.

"The Drift" by CJ Tudor is a post-apocalyptic novel told as three different storylines that eventually intersect and connect. I enjoyed this novel immensely and would highly recommend it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I must start by thanking NetGalley as well as the publisher for the eARC in exchange for my honest review. “I always knew you were one of the good guys…..l have got to tell you, It’s a major pain in the ass” three story lines set in a dystopian future of horror, and you will always be searching for the good. Is there any? Can everything be justified?

I'll be the first to admit that I have found Tudor's books to be very hit and miss. I seem to like every other one, but in 2021 she put out The Burning Girls, and I LOVED it, so I had high hopes for her upcoming releases.

While Tudor's novels have always been thrillers that dip their toes in horror, this was her first more horror bent novel, and that was exciting to me. Unfortunately, I feel like Tudor maybe doesn't read much contemporary horror herself.

While the story was told in a compelling way, I did finish this book, I found so much of the attempts at humour or "shocking" moments to be super juvenile. I love poop jokes. They rule. At the same time, I only want to read so much about poop in books, and I really felt like the toilet talk was at a premium here. The tone didn't work for me.

In December I DNF'd her short story collection. I was noticing word choices and descriptions that I felt uncomfortable with. Enough that I wasn't interested in finishing it. It turns out that these descriptions were foreshadowing of the full-blown fatphobic comments that The Drift would be littered with. It was super distracting, absolutely unnecessary and honestly, disappointing.

I am not asking for every character to be likeable or have perfect politics. I just think that we don't need three different narrators, talking about three different fat bodies with open repulsion. At that point it isn't a flaw in a character, but maybe a prejudice of the author.

With those last two misses for me this is probably the last Tudor novel I'm going to bother with, and that's a sad prospect for me.

Thank you to Penguin Random House and Doubleday for an arc of this title.

C.J. Tudor’s new novel, The Drift, was one that I had to wait for. I don’t want to get into the particulars of how I eventually got a copy of the book — suffice to say that it involved a “comedy of errors” — but this was a novel that I wanted to read, once I got wind of its existence. It had been billed in publicity copy as a book that dealt with redemption, and those types of books are exactly what I feel that my soul could use right about now after more than two years of pandemic life. Well, The Drift wasn’t exactly the kind of novel that I was expecting, but it was still oh-so-good. I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s a pandemic novel to be sure — the idea for it came to the author in 2019, so she wasn’t simply latching onto topicality for the sake of it. The striking thing about this popcorn piece of entertainment — it’s the sort of thing that reads like a screenplay, which is apropos considering that it is now being developed for the screen — is that it offers readers real bang for their buck. You get not one, nor two, but three different novels with The Drift. There are three competing plotlines and although they are connected by a thread, they are all as different from each other as oil in water. This is the sort of wintery book released in the depth of winter that will have you turning pages fast and furiously just to see how it all comes together and concludes. And, for a bubble-gum novel of sorts, you won’t see that ending coming.

If you had to describe this novel, I’d say that it is one part horror novel, one part locked-room mystery, and one part straight-up thriller. One storyline sees a woman named Hannah trapped in a bus with fellow students of a prestigious academy that has crashed down the side of a wintery road with no way out and a snowstorm raging. Plot two features a woman named Meg who is en route with a bevy of others to a mysterious retreat in a stalled cable car with winter again raging outside and seemingly no escape from her predicament. The third story is about a man named Carter who is trapped in a facility in the woods with others in the middle of a blizzard with mysterious zombie-like people called Whistlers who make it an additional risk to step outside. Each of these characters must contend with the fact that there is a fate worse than death. From there, the book effectively bounces between characters and different points of view with each chapter ending in cliffhangers. And because this is a tale of survival, characters suddenly having to use the bathroom plays a part sometimes. If anything, The Drift — for all its escapist trappings — is firmly rooted in everyday problems.

As you can tell, this is a highly original and captivating yarn. It’s a rollercoaster ride of pure adrenaline and the plots keep moving along at a sometimes-breakneck speed. It all culminates in a single plot line that most readers won’t be able to see in advance, as already noted. The real ingenuity of the novel is that it pulls no punches — while there are a ton of characters to keep straight throughout the book, some major and some not, the body count ratchets upwards in grisly amounts as The Drift progresses. That’s probably the only real failing of this commendable work: there are so many people to track that when someone meets their demise, it’s as though they’re little more than cannon fodder for the author to get rid of (akin to excess baggage) rather than be treated as real human beings with a tangible backstory of their own. So, yes, The Drift is a bit of a slasher novel. However, this is a book with brains even though it’s true that if you think about the outcome a little too much, the story kind of feels flimsy. Still, that’s not a knock against this work. This is your usual “park your brain at the door and enjoy the ride” kind of novel. No dissertations will likely be written about it, and that’s kind of the point. This is just a good ol’ break from reality — albeit one that takes significant risks and chances with who it kills off in the end. If I’m not saying too much.

All in all, The Drift may not be a perfect read, but it is fun, fresh, and fascinating. I must commend Tudor for juggling three narratives that are completely at odds with each other. To be fair, it sometimes doesn’t work because you must read two other chapters before you return to a particular character’s plotline, at which point you may have forgotten what the cliffhanger was that the characters are now working to resolve. However, is that a criticism? This is a book that demands that you read it fast and in as few sittings as possible. Hence, this is what makes The Drift as refreshing as a can of cold soda water on a humid day. It has one job and one job only: to tell a story that will enthrall readers. At this, it more than admirably succeeds. So, even though I’m not sure how this works out as a redemption story of sorts (though I have clues, but to say anything would give parts of the book away), The Drift is a terrific way to kill some time. It’s effective at all the genre mashups it pursues, even if it’s perhaps not the happiest of books about survival in tough circumstances ever written. And yet this is a glorious piece of pop confectionary. Thrillers, mysteries, and horror novels don’t get too much better than this, so if those are the go-to books that you enjoy reading, then you’re going to adore The Drift. Here’s hoping that you don’t have to break a sweat to track down a copy as I did, but even if so, it would be well worth it. More than worth it. This is pretty fantastic stuff for what it is.

I love CJ Tudor’s books and this one did not disappoint. As usual, a fantastic concept; three different scenarios that jump back and forth and keep you guessing as to how it all connects. And the connection does not disappoint! Each storyline almost felt like a locked room mystery, but Tudor takes it to another level. One of my favourite reads so far this year!

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for providing a copy of The Drift by C.J. Tudor in exchange for an honest review. In The Drift, we find ourselves in the middle of a snow storm, in a time where the world is gripped with a deadly virus, introducing us to three separate stories of survival. Who will survive? Everyone wants to get to “The Retreat” the elusive safe haven. Is it truly safe?

Hannah, a brilliant student at the academy who wakes to find that her bus carrying “chosen” students heading to “The Retreat” has crashed, the bus driver is missing and all of the doors and windows have been sealed shut. Only some of the students survive, and some they find are infected. How will they survive? Meg, a police detective wakes up in a cable car surrounded by strangers all on their way to “The Retreat”, stuck, suspended, swaying in the wind. All “chosen.” She recognizes one. At “The Retreat”, which we find out is an abandoned ski resort, we meet Carter. Along with the others who work there, we find out that “The Retreat” isn’t everything we have been led to believe it is.

This book would certainly appeal to those of you who love a good apocalypse story, or a fast-paced closed-room thriller mixed with a light sprinkling of gore. The characters were all compelling and interesting, the connections between the characters and twists were just what I would usually enjoy. I found that the story being set during a time of a worldwide infectious disease was a bit too soon for me, and I found it less enjoyable than I might have a few years ago simply for this reason. Overall, the characters were interesting, the way the stories intertwined was satisfying and clever, and the story overall kept me wondering what would happen. If you are already a fan of C.J. Tudor, this book will not disappoint and if you are new to her work, this will be the first of many.

Title: The Drift

Author: C.J. Tudor

Publication Date: January 19, 2023

Publisher: Doubleday Canada/Penguin Random House Canada

Suggested Reader Age: 17+ Contains profanity, violence, drug use, or nudity.

Genre: Horror, Thriller, Suspense, Mystery, Survival, Dystopian

Pages: 352

Content Warning: child abandonment, death, detailed medical talk, gore, graphic violence, gun violence, hallucinations, murder, pandemic, profanity, PTSD, racism, sexual assault, suicide.

› In an interview, Tudor said she came up with The Drift before covid which is kind of crazy considering what we've been living through the past three years. She likes locked-room mysteries and this story is a locked-room mystery to the extreme in the best way.

"The devil was an angel once."

› Hannah is a medical student at The Academy, an isolated school in the mountains run by her father Professor Grant. The Academy sent them on the bus in a snowstorm to quickly get them to safety because there is an outbreak at the school. Their phones were confiscated before getting on the bus so the students couldn't give anyone their location. There was an accident, the bus tipped over and is now stuck in a snow drift. Of the twelve students on the bus, five are dead. The doors are jammed, including the escape hatch. Hannah, Lucas, Josh, Ben, Cassie, Daniel, and his sister Peggy are stuck with minimal supplies and no way to call for help. Meg discovers one of the dead people was infected with the airborne virus that has destroyed the world. If they are rescued and The Department realizes the infection is among them then none of them will make it to The Retreat alive.

› Meg wakes up in a cable car hundreds of feet in the air with five other people. They have no idea how they got there. Sarah, Karl, Max, Sean, Mark and Meg are volunteers headed to The Retreat. Meg discovers a dead man, and although his lanyard id says his name is Mark Wilson, she knows his real name is Paul Parker because Meg used to work with him in Homicide.

› A previous unknown accident has left Carter with a cavity in the center of his face, lips dragged to one side, no nose, and parts of his face permanently scarred by frostbite. He and his dog Dexter are living in the four-level mountainside retreat with Caren, Nate, Miles, Julia, Jackson, and Welland. The basement is off-limits to everyone except Miles. Miles tells Carter that someone has been stealing supplies from the basement and Jackson is missing. They are having problems with the battery that supplies energy and the delay in the backup generator is getting worse. The automatic locks in the basement will open if the power fails.

› A quarter of the way into The Drift I was on the edge of my seat with many questions:
- Where is the driver of the bus?
- How are Hannah and the group going to get out?
- Is Hannah's father going to save her?
- Why was Paul Parker wearing an id for Mark Wilson and who killed him?
- Who drugged the group and left them in the cable car?
- What happened to Carter's face?
- Who is stealing the supplies?
- What's in the basement?
- Why did Jackson leave?
- Do the groups know each other?
- What is The Academy? What is The Department?

› The bus is stuck in a drift, the cable car is drifting in the air, and a storm is drifting towards the Retreat. Humanity and morality are drifting away as people do what they need to do to survive.

› I use the CAWPILE method to rate books.
0-3 Really bad
4-6 Mediocre
7-9 Really good
10 Outstanding

› Characters: 10
These characters are incredible. With such a large cast you'd think some of them would be flat or boring. Every single character is unique. The main characters have goals, strengths, flaws, external and internal conflicts, characteristics, and backstories.

› Atmosphere: 9
My only complaint about the atmosphere is that I wanted to know more about this world. I want to know more about The Department. I would read a prequel or sequel set in this world in a heartbeat.

› Writing Style: 10
Tudor is a master storyteller. This is high-quality writing with incredible readability, style and dialogue.

› Plot: 10
The beginning, middle, and end are intriguing. This is a page-turner with an incredible climax. There is no fluff, every scene is moving the plot forward. There are many twists I did not see coming.

› Intrigue: 10
I didn't want to put it down.

› Logic: 10
I was never confused. I didn't notice any plot holes or elements that didn't make sense (that doesn't mean there are none, I'm not an expert).

› Enjoyment: 10
Outstanding overall experience. I would read it again (and probably will).

Average 9.9

1.1-2.2 = ★
2.3-4.5 = ★★
4.6-6.9 = ★★★
7-8.9 = ★★★★
9-10 = ★★★★★

My Rating ★★★★★

› Final Thoughts
• Told from three perspectives, The Drift is a terrifying and thrilling novel about the price of life, morality and doing what you have to do to survive. In the same interview that I mentioned earlier Tudor talks about her next book which is in the works set in Alaska with vampires. Yup. I'll be pre-ordering that one!


Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for sending this book for review. All opinions are my own.

A very engaging post apocalyptic book about a virus devastating the world and the Haves and Have Nots trying to survive it. What appeared to be 3 separate stories told during the same event turns out to be a single story told over 3 different perspectives and timelines, with 1 character linking them all together. 4 stars

The Drift ⁣
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What a wild ride! 🫢 The Drift is the latest book by CJ Tudor and I read this as part of a Tandem Collective Readalong - my first! ⁣
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The Drift follows three different POVs as they try to survive being trapped (on a suspended cable car, in a bus under snow, or in an isolated cabin), in the middle of winter, during some kind of pandemic (too soon?). ⁣
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This was so much fun to read as a group. I think this would be a great book club book because it brings up a lot of “what if’s” and moral dilemmas. ⁣
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What I loved:⁣
🚡 The pacing! I had so much anxiety which I love when it comes to horrors/thrillers⁣
🚌 Multi POVs keep the story moving and kept me guessing ⁣
🌲 The atmospheric writing - I kept getting chills. You need a cup of tea with this book! ⁣
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The readalong forced me to take my time with this one otherwise I’d fly through in a day. It’s a quick read! ⁣
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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⁣
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I should note that this book contains quite a bit of body horror and gore (at least more than I’m used to) so I wouldn’t recommend it if that’s an issue for you.⁣
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CW: Death, Disease, Grotesque Bodily Harm, Rape⁣
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AD-PR PRODUCT⁣
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Thank you @tandemcollectiveglobal, @cjtudorauthor and @penguinrandomca for my copy and for including me in this readalong! Prior to joining the readalong, I had started reading this on @NetGalley. Thank you @NetGalley!

A suspense filled locked room mystery told in multiple pov with an ending that leaves your jaw hanging open

Wow. I went into this book without knowing the synopsis, only knowing I enjoyed this author. The way this is written so that you think all three stories are occurring at the same time is brilliant.
I was worried that the ending would not be satisfying and potentially ruin my experience but nothing could be further from the truth. An excellent ending that wraps it all up perfectly.
Another excellent read from C.J. Tudor.

CJ Tudor returns with a thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat and your heart pounding page after page. The story is broken up into 3-4 storylines and my favourites were Hannah and Meg.

Hannah wakes up on a bus that has fallen into a ditch and half the passengers are dead. With the snow storm getting heavier, Hannah and the surviving passengers must get out before they are found by the ones that put them there. Only two of them have been infected with a deadly virus and the impact could literally kill them all.

Meanwhile, Meg awakens in a cable car that is suspended in the air with a group of others and again the body count rises.

Survival of the fittest seems to be the name of the game for this one and I could not turn the pages fast enough.

I enjoyed the writing style of this author, it was fast paced and kept me interested for sure.

Overall a thriller with horror.

Three separate stories. Hannah is on a crashed bus that was en route to the retreat. Her and the few survivors are trying to survive not only the crash and the cold, but the virus outside. Meg is on a cable car en route to the retreat. The cable car loses power and the cables snap. The survivors on board also have to survive the cold, in the hopes of being saved. And Carter is at the retreat hoping to survive the day to day and the dangerous virus outside.

Will any of them survive, even the night?

I was totally underwhelmed with how the story came together and how the ending came together. There wasn’t enough closure to tie things up.

This book was a wild ride, start to finish!

The Drift is a story in 3 parts. We’re in a world where a virus has taken hold and has devastating results on human life. The story follows Hannah who wakes up confused after a bus crash, Meg a former cop who finds herself trapped on a ski gondola mid air, and Carter who works at a deserted ski lodge called “The Resort.”

There’s so many twists and turns and truly this book had me unable to put it down. This is definitely leaning on the horror side of thriller with a heavy emphasis on a survival narrative. CJ Tudor is just a masterclass of atmospheric writing and she’s created super claustrophobic and gripping scenarios.

I really had a great time reading this! Perfect creepy read for the winter and will make you VERY glad to be indoors under a blanket!

Readalong Wrap Up and Book Review 📖

What a great week it has been reading “The Drift” by CJ Tudor with a wonderful group of Canadian bookstagrammers! Just when you think you have figured out the connections between the 3 narratives, something else happens that blurs your judgment! What a rock star book to have as a part of a readalong!

BOOK REVIEW: 🖤🖤🖤🖤/5

This book is a mix of locked room mystery, dystopian thriller and horror all wrapped into one! There are 3 narratives to follow:

1️⃣ Hannah is trapped in an overturned bus full of students during a snow storm. There are more dead people onboard the bus then alive.

2️⃣ Meg is a former police officer who is stranded on a dangling cable car full of strangers. There is literally zero refuge, food or water … and they are stuck hanging 1000 feet off the ground.

3️⃣ Carter is stuck at an abandoned ski chalet where power is failing and supplies are dwindling down at a nerve racking rate.

This book is graphic, sinister, haunting and downright chilling. My mind was blown at several points throughout all the twists and turns! The atmospheric elements added so much anxiety and fear to the story! HOW are these three narratives connected?? WHY is no one coming to rescue them?? WHAT is everyone trying to escape from?? And WHOSE intentions are truly genuine??

Thank you again to Tandem Collective for including me in this thrilling readalong and to Penguin Random Canada, CJ Tudor and Netgalley for my gifted physical and digital copies in exchange for my honest review!

The horror thriller vibes of this book really drew me in at first. A virus wipes out most, society crumbles, everyone hates each other are forced to try to survive with these whistlers.

There are a lot of characters, it bounces back and forth quite a bit. Lots of very descriptive gore which doesn't bother me. What did end up nagging at me was the fatphobia. Just too many degrading descriptions, and praise for the athletic characters. Too many loose ends for me overall, and by the time I got to the big reveal I was just over it.

The one I felt the sorriest for in the end was Dexter.

I thoroughly enjoyed this chilling novel. Not only was it chilling in the sense that the atmosphere and setting is based in the wintertime mountains but the story itself had chilling aspects to it. The story is told through three different narratives each going through a different murder dilemma with a locked room feel to it. As the story is being told the reader is not sure how the three different narratives are connected but it is all tied up in the end with a twisty turny ending which was very unexpected. I read this book in two evenings and it definitely has me hooked. Definitely recommend to those who like a good murder mystery with isolated locations for the backdrop.

This is a great book by Tudor. Three groups of people with differing POV.
All leading to one place in time...just a stellar read

The Drift sucked me in from the first page and I found myself thinking about it when I wasn’t reading it. I love when a book keeps you guessing and confused but then everything clicks when the twist comes. I also adore pandemic books. It was quite graphic at parts but fit the setting and the characters. I can’t say I particularly liked any of the characters but I think all of them got what they deserved in the end.