The drift is on edge of your seat can’t put down fast, paced thriller/horror story.

The novel is written in three storylines told by three different characters. Hannah and a group of students are trapped in a coach in a snowstorm, Meg, and a group of strangers are trapped in a cable car, and Carter is trapped in an old ski lodge on a Mountain. As if the claustrophobic fear of being trapped in a raging snowstorm in close quarters isn’t enough, there is also the risk of exposure to a deadly virus that has taken over the world. In each storyline the characters try to work as a team to survive with the understanding that if I have a secret, these strangers probably do too. Which leaves us asking the question, who would you trust?

This post-apocalyptic thriller/horror story had me claustrophobic, anxious, and my stomach in knots as the characters fight for survival.

Thank you to Net Galley, Penguin Random House and CJ Tudor for the Free Review Copy in exchange for an honest review.

A deadly virus has and it's spreading like fire. Three different groups of people are stranded, some are on a crashed bus some on a stalled cable car and some in a place where they are supposed to be safe. All have one thing in common, a killer is among the three groups. While they all wait to be rescued they begin to realize no one is coming to save them. The race is on to survive.
Although the story draws you in and keeps you on the edge of your seat, there were parts where I was disappointed in. The ending lacked a satisfying conclusion but it definitely will give you something to think about. I had a love hate vibe with this one but I have really enjoyed the authors other books. It is a very intense read were no one is who they seem to be.

I hate to be the odd person out here.. but I did not enjoy this one.
This one is told in three story lines. For me, it was too many characters and too many moving parts. I just didn’t enjoy it.
I had a lot of trouble getting into this one. Like I said, too many characters for me. But that being said, lots of people liked it. Just not my type of book.

I love a good thriller and some blood, guts and gore are never a problem for me. What I wasn't crazy about was reading about the contents book after feeling like I am still struggling mentally through the pandemic at times. If this book was released in 2018, for example, I would have been admittedly head over heels with it. But it just felt heavy to deal with, for me personally.

The main characters are well written, they are given full back stories prior to the virus taking over the earth and how they are surviving now. The reader knows their motivations, struggles and victories. The background characters were left lacking. I didn't always understand why someone was seen as good or evil or if the blanks were filled in it was done neatly with one sentence, even when these characters were with the reader through the majority of the book. This left me wanting.

This may be a quirk of mine but the author used parenthesis throughout the book when a comma or a new sentence would have worked.

Overall it is worth reading but I would be happy to borrow from a friend or the library, even though at times I found myself flipping to the next chapter to see what happened.

Thanks to netgalley for the advanced arc of this book.

A Horror-apocalyptic novel, heavy on the horror, interspersed with heavily-armed government, military, and just plain evil bad guys - think Walking Dead meets Jack Reacher - that unfortunately just didn’t hit the mark for me.

Blending the POVs of three separate bands of five or six characters, each located in the midst of a particularly dangerous and desperate crisis for survival, (too many indistinguishable characters for this reader to keep straight), this story centers on the bleak and violent days following global infection by a zombie virus.

Although well written, and laced with plenty of action, twists and turns, I did not find the plot interesting or suspenseful. I did stop reading at about the two hundred page mark, at just over fifty percent through. So I did not get to the reveal, which I understand to be clever and dramatic.

Unfortunately I was just not engaged enough with the book to really keep on reading.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read an ARC of this book.

The Drift is a master class in thriller writing, period. I am still reeling and shaking from how the plot unfolded. I finished this book in a day, staying up late because I just had to know what happened next.

This book is not boggled down by heavy exposition. Rather, we get hints of world-building—the author leaves tiny details and lets the reader put the pieces together. I love that!

I always nitpick the ending. Endings are hard! I could have happily read more, the ending felt like an opening to more.

Highly, highly recommended!

I found it pretty easy to get into this one. The multiple viewpoints and short chapters keep the pace moving nicely. It wasn’t my favourite book by her but it is still a very solid read.

This book tackles some interesting moral issues that will really make you think. The ending was explosive and had me laughing at the insanity of it all! Well played CJ Tudor, well played!

ɪ ʀᴇᴄᴏᴍᴍᴇɴᴅ ᴛʜɪs ᴛᴏ ↠ Anyone looking for an exciting thriller with a pandemic element that will keep you guessing.

I am going to start this off with all honesty here. I am not a fan of C.J. Tudor after seeing some twitter drama involving her, which could have influenced how I felt about this story. So not being a fan, why would I read a book by that author? That fear of missing out. There is plenty of buzz for C.J. Tudor, and she has become somewhat of a superstar regarding horror thrillers, so I had to find out what I was missing.
My two cents

Tudor creates a page-turner here with plenty of tension and suspense that had me turning the pages as fast as I could. She not only creates one claustrophobic setting, she has created three, each with its own storyline and characters, leaving us with questions about how they are connected and their roles and motivation. She gives us little clues while creating surprising reveals and twists that felt misleading and robbed me of that I should have seen that coming thrill I love so much. I wonder if she was trying for misdirection and missed the mark. I could have missed any clues, but once that twist is revealed, you should be able to see that you missed them, giving the story credibility whether it has an element of believability or not. I must admit that one reveal could have been a clue, but by then, things felt convoluted, and it felt more confusing than a clue, another sign of misleading. The twist was a good one, but I am still bothered by that feeling of being misled. That of course could just be a me thing that no one else felt.

There is also plenty of over-the-top gore that provides some shock value, and while the gore doesn't bother me, I have to question if that is meant to drive the story forward instead of a layered twisty story with an exciting reveal that you should have seen coming but didn't.

Overall this one didn't show me what I was missing, and maybe it was not the one too, because I have heard The Burning Girls is one of her best.

I hadn't read anything by CJ Tudor so didn't know what I was getting into. I love apocalypse books and this one certainly delivered with some very clever twists. Lots of action and mystery through the stories of three small groups of people each in a different and dangerous situation. A bus crash that has everyone trapped, a stranded cable car 1000 ft in the air, and a secluded ski chalet being used for other ominous purposes.

The story keeps you on the edge of your seat and feeling chilled since it takes place in the brutal cold of winter with some interesting and sometimes scary characters in each situation. I'll definitely be picking up another book by this author.

This might turn out to be my favourite book of 2023! 🎉

I know you may think it’s way too early to tell but hear me out - I think it’s safe to say if for the first time in my life I’m sitting there thinking “wait a minute, am I loving every page??” that gives me the green light to make such a declaration.

Action 👏 on 👏 every 👏 page.🕺That is what I’m talking about!

Funny enough, my boyfriend was watching a zombie apocalypse series on tv that I just couldn’t get into when I first picked up this book. I wasn’t aware that a similar theme took place in The Drift when I started it. Zombies or apocalypse stories are not what I normally reach for which is what made this five star read extra refreshing.

I really appreciate the well developed characters and that neither character nor chapter acted as a place holder or a means to an end for something larger to transpire later on in the story. I genuinely couldn’t pick a favourite main character of the three, which is pretty surprising. We’re human - it’s natural to have favourites. Every main character was so interesting and very real. I am grateful that I didn’t have to eye-roll their choices as much as I need to in other thrillers.

I will most definitely be devouring more @cjtudorauthor novels throughout the year!! Thank you so much @netgalley, @penguinrandomca and @doubledaybooks for the early arc, my first ever arc. 💝

I was hooked on this premise right from the first page. The different characters aspects really made you want to get to the truth of what was really going on here. The book is very atmospheric. The characters were sympathetic and yet untrustworthy. It was detailed and a bit draggy in spots but overall it was an intense thriller with twists and turns. Surprises at every turn. I throughly enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it.

This book was so hard to put down. It was thrilling and full of suspense and a splash of horror. So many twists and turns I had to know what happened next. Definitely keeps you on your toes.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for my advanced reader’s copy. The review contains my honest opinion.

The book starts off with three different narrators that are not particularly likable.
In the last 10% of the book, the author tried to redeem the story and make sense of it, but I'm still confused. There were just too many storylines that didn't seem to add up to the thrilling finale I was expecting.
This book just didn't do it for me, although I still gave it three stars. I thought the writing made up for the plot that was all over the place, hence my generous rating. This is the third book I read by this author, and it will be my last for a while.

While this book is very easy to read and entertaining, by the end I was kind of frustrated by it. I love apocalypses and snow-bound horror, but the horror was more thriller-based and the apocalypse aspects are very few and far between.

Yet, I think people who like novels with unreliable narrators, multi-POV, and lots of twists will enjoy this one. It just didn’t work for me 100%.

The concept is very cool. I liked the idea of three separate stories, all in contained environments set apart from the rest of the world. The book is solidly entertaining and would make a decent movie. Except for the very end, I was never bored. It moves at a balanced pace, the chapters are short, and the three POVs help keep things dynamic.

Yet, the novel was kind of “meh” to me.

First off, it’s said to be “post-apocalyptic” but it doesn’t feel apocalyptic. We only see the three isolated areas - the coach bus, the cable car, and the chalet. There are mentions in passing of the outside world, but if the mail system still works, I would argue it’s not really an apocalypse (unless, of course, we're in The Postman). We just don’t see enough of the world at large to really make it feel like the world has ended or is even on the brink.

Likewise, there isn’t a great deal of description overall. I can’t really picture what the chalet or retreat looked like for the life of me. Granted, a lot of it is just snow.

I think one of the book's drawbacks is that there are too many side characters. Each setting has a group of people, all of whom get limited or slowly parcelled out backstories (to keep the twists in place, I guess), so they all sort of blend together. Half the time I had to pause and be like, “is Sarah the one in the cable car or the bus?” When they start dying it gets easier, of course.

Now, I will say, there are a few really good twists in the novel, with a few I didn’t pick up on and a few I did. Unfortunately, a lot of these are revealed through info-dump monologues at the end. As such, after the reveals were made, I got bored and skimmed the last 30 pages. There’s also a lot of people just getting shot left right and centre, which is less interesting to me than zombie-virus creatures (which didn't get enough page time). My disinterest in the denouement of the book could also be because the main character grows really unlikeable, so I didn’t care if they lived or died in the end. There were also quite a few unanswered questions that, had they been answered, would have broadened the world-building.

In truth, while I don’t think it’s a bad novel at all - I think others will really enjoy it - it just didn’t work for me.

I enjoyed this story it was fast paced, intricate, and a little gruesome. I loved when everything started clicking into place, if you enjoy a good mystery/thriller this is a quick fun read.

The Drift is set in a Dystopian world plagued by a… um plague. A virus has decimated society as we know it. The majority of people who get it die a horrible death, but for those who survive, their fate may be even worse, becoming ostracized and hunted whisperers, so called because of the noise they make when they breathe.
The book is unique in that it tells three different stories, in alternating chapters, Hannah, Meg and Carter, and as you read you start wondering how they may be related.
In Hannah, a group of people from the “Academy” survive a bus crash. But they are in the middle of a snowstorm, their bus has been flipped to its side, the driver is missing and when they see the emergency exit is locked, they realize there is no escape. In Meg, a group of strangers wake up from a drug-induced sleep to find themselves on a powerless cable car, dangling precariously over a snowy drop. They are a long way from the cable car's terminal, and, like on the bus, escape seems impossible.
Both groups are heading, for different reasons, to “the Retreat,” a close-gated mountain top building, where Carter lives with a group of people. The building seems safe, but not all is what it seems and their survival is also threatened by internal and external forces.
If ever a book takes off from the first page, this is it. Right from the get-go, in Hannah, you are thrown into the bus crash survivors’ desperate situation. In all three instances, the author deftly reveals little bits of information slowly. You learn why the people are in their predicament. In each case something is not what it seems, people have secrets, some may be infected and someone may be sabotaging them.
The Drift is a combination mystery/horror. In the first two cases, escape is a tricky option. They may be safe at first from the external weather threat in their bus or cable car, but unless help comes soon they will soon freeze or starve. And in the Retreat, their supplies are running low, people are being killed and Carter has to brave the outside elements to retrieve more supplies.
Drift is a thrilling page-turner. The revelations, when they come, are so unexpected, you want to go back and re-read chapters to see if there were any clues. There are a few hokey bits, like how someone can recognize a person’s face in an old photograph in someone else’s chest tattoo they see for a brief moment. The author also seems to have a bit of a scatological obsession but nothing that takes away from my enjoyment of reading this book. I’ve never read anything else by C.J. Tudor, but I’ll eager await her next novel.

A fast paced novel of survival at the end of the world. The Drift tells a story of an overturned bus full of students, a stranded cable car full of strangers, and an isolated chalet full of friends. The twisted way that all 3 stories finally fit together kept me reading,

* I received an advanced reader’s copy of this book from NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada, Doubleday Canada in exchange for my honest review

Thanks NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the ARC of The Drift by CJ Tudor
I liked this book more than I expected to, it was the first time I've read this author. I would say it has elements of horror, suspense, mystery. There was a lot of killing, a little more than was believable. I kept thinking throughout that this is Survival of the fittest, or smartest!
This story is written from 3 perspectives or storylines, 3 groups if individuals on their way to the retreat, a safe haven from a virus called the Choler that is spreading. One group is already at the retreat, another is on a bus that has had an accident on the highway and flipped a couple of times and fhe 3rd group are stuck in a gondola and not even sure how they got there. Plasma is needed to ensure healthy individuals dont contract the virus and this is obtained from infected individuals called Whistlers that are kept in isolation
Three different stories with same underlying theme, a very contagious virus that spreads quickly and kills most. There were so many characters introduced at the beginning of the novel, it was hard to keep track, although as the story progresses, some characters die off making it easier to remember who is who.

Overall a good read and found myself not wanting to put the book down. I would definitely read more novel from this author

finally, clicking on a netgalley ‘read now for the first 200 members’ has paid off! this thriller has what i’m now calling the triple A effect: atmospheric. apocalyptic. addicting. i couldn’t get enough! i wish i had 300 more pages to read because i need to know what happens next.

THE DRIFT is not for the faint of heart. it’s a thriller that definitely leans hard into the horror side. it revolves around a pandemic, so if you have any triggers surrounding that topic i’d advise you stay away. i thought the author did such a good job making it feel so real and that really upped the creep factor for me. tackling this subject matter is pretty brave in this day and age so i can appreciate how well the story unfolded, and how much i loved it.

thank you netgalley and double day canada for making “the wildest thriller of the year” available for us!

Man was this ever good. I always say if one person dies I will like it, if a lot of people die I'll love it. As a horror reader this was really satisfying. The virus in this book has many parallels to COVID, which kind of made it more horrifying. I liked that there was no mercy in this book, just like the real world not everyone can live. The book has 3 different story lines and slowly everything comes together. The only thing I could mention that was a little less than satisfactory was that everyone seems to always have something tickling the back of their brain they just couldn't remember. I understand this was used to set up a reveal but it did happen fairly frequently. Overall I LOVED this book, I am so happy to have read it.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.