Christa has agreed to accompany her boyfriend on a winter retreat to a remote lodge deep in the mountains. When the weather deteriorates and their bus is unable to reach the lodge because the road is blocked the group is forced to take refuge in a deserted cabin. Meanwhile, Christa’s boyfriend has disappeared….then the tour guide is nowhere to be found…. And then it only gets worse and more terrifying.

Sounds similar to Agatha Christie’s Then There Were None, doesn’t it? But Dead of Winter goes far beyond the Christie story. Darcy Coates has created a story that is interesting, creepy, and suspenseful, with a variety of characters and backstories – not to mention the blizzard that is almost another character as well. Her descriptions of wintery mountain weather are spot-on and well-done.

At times the story seemed to be a bit drawn out and occasionally the suspense lagged a bit, but overall it moved along at a good pace with plenty of surprises. I found most of the characters to be fairly unlikable but that also kept me engaged while I tried to figure out the essence of the plot. I enjoyed Dead of Winter and it was a great book to read in the middle of our relentless summer temperatures. NetGalley provided an advance copy.

Thank you to Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for this ARC!

I decided to read his book on some of the hottest days of summer and it definitely kept me cool with the chilly wintery landscape in the mountains!

This book had me guessing until the end who he killer way. I enjoyed the characters and the storytelling. It was a bit more grisly then I normally read but wasn't too bad that it absolutely creeped me out and turned me off. I would say the perfect amount of grisly.

This was my first Darcy Coates book and I am looking forward to reading more.

4 Stars!

A surprisingly suspenseful story of a bus load of people stranded in an isolated mountain area during the winter,, being picked off one by one in a gruesome manner. With an unexpected twist ending I quite enjoyed this one.

Alright, so I haven’t had a book in a minute that has given me the creeps. This book did it, and I LOVED IT! The scenery was 👌🏻: stormy, middle of nowhere, freezing and the woods. Couldn’t ask for more in my backdrop. Traveling can be stressful enough, but add being stuck in the middle of nowhere in a snow storm, with no one you know and this was a stress filled situation. The back 40% was 🤯🤯. It was a lot of things happening, I binged the back half because I just had to know what was next. The ending was equaling as mind blowing. This was an excellent novel!

Fast paced thriller, great setting that adds to the sense of doom and horror, several twists that kept me guessing the whole time. I'll definitely check out more from this author.

The dread creeps through the snow and ice and freezes you to your bones in Darcy Coates' latest. I read this novel courtesy of NetGalley, but I would gladly have paid to experience the suspense and terror. A simple trip on a bus to a forest lodge in the winter... what could possibly go wrong? Especially when the people on the bus all seem so normal...

Darcy Coates has done it again!

Every once in a while, you come across a book that makes you want to just forget all your responsibilities and snuggle up to read from cover to cover. “Dead of Winter” was definitely one of those books for me. I enjoyed every moment of this book with all of its twists and turns.

Thank you NetGalley, Darcy Coates, and Poisoned Pen Press for giving me access to this wonderful ARC. I can’t wait for what is next!

This book was super good! Had me interested from the beginning and couldn’t put it down. I definitely recommend this book! 5 stars !!

This was one of the most intense and thrilling books I've read in a while, and I couldn't be happier about it! The story had me hooked from the beginning, and I couldn't put it down. Definitely recommend this one to EVERYONE!

This was my first book by Darcy Coates, but it won't be my last! 4.5 stars!

Christa joins a tour group that gets stranded in a small cabin due to a snow storm. In the middle of the night, someone goes missing, and his severed head is found outside. Now they are trapped in close quarters and one of them is a killer.

This is one of those books that just makes you feel incredibly uncomfortable. You can feel the cabin they are in, closing in on them. You feel the claustrophobia.

The book was a quick and easy read, and kept me flipping pages. I will say that some of it is incredibly unbelievable, but I didn't even care because it was just fun.

Big thank you to Netgalley and Poisoned Pen Press for sending me a digital copy to review. All thoughts and opinions are my own. This was my first Darcy Coates book, but it most certainly won't be my last. The setting was perfect for a hot summer day, chilling me to the bone with the imagery of the brutal snowstorm and I was left gasping at the end of each chapter. The suspense throughout this novel is heavy, and you don't know what the next turn of the page is going to bring you. I loved everything about this book, and honestly didn't want to put it down at all. I give this one five stars overall, and would highly recommend it to anyone that enjoys a good horror/thriller.

This was a mind-twisting tale that keeps you on the edge of your seat until the very end. It was a slow build for me. I’d say maybe 40% was around where it started to really pick up and I found myself becoming more and more invested. This had the perfect creepy vibes for a late night spooky story read.

Why is it that winter makes the best setting for horror novels? Better even than Halloween. Maybe it's the bleak hopelessness of being trapped by mountains of snow and ice, the roads impassable and the slightest glitch in the power supply threatening the most extreme conditions. I don't know. But horror stories in winter are the things that spook me the most.

And Darcy Coates' Dead of Winter did not disappoint when it came to sending chills up my spine as the nine total strangers are picked off one by one while trapped alone on a snowbound mountain, with no suspects other than the people they can see every minute that passes.

Dead of Winter focuses on Christa, an introverted young woman with a murky personal history who is traveling with her boyfriend and a tour group of strangers into the Rocky Mountains in, obviously, the dead of winter. Christa is underappreciated and underestimated by the group, even by her boyfriend and especially by the group after her boyfriend disappears and is presumed dead in the blizzard conditions. Taking that indifference that borders on animosity, Christa sets out to be a part of the group because it will help her survive longer but also to look out for herself above all else, because that will help her survive. Period.

The others in the group are a diverse, falliable cast of characters, all with a small, random thing in common that they eventually find out has drawn them together on the tour bus. And the common thing is never spoiled, hardly hinted out, and almost impossible to guess until the big reveal.

And even after it's revealed, the story continues on for at a breathtaking, but fascinating pace until the last sentence.

If horror novels, murder mysteries, psychological thrillers, and snow-based stories are something you like, give this book a try.

Disclaimer: Thanks to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the chance to read this novel in exchange for a review. All thoughts are my own and no compensation was

This book was such a fun thriller and I really enjoyed it. Such a fast paced read that gripped my attention throughout. Highly recommend.

The writing was amazing. I was drawn in immediately. But I did have to DNF at about 20%. It was just so uncomfortable reading about the severed head in detail like that and then the dispatcher with her horror stories and I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle much more. But I did enjoy the writing style. I was into the story. And I skipped to the end to see what happened because I had to know! So I would give this author a try again if it were more thriller and less horror maybe.

It is slow, it is many layered and you will have suspected everyone at the end. The Rockies during a snowstorm is the perfect setting for a closed room horror thriller. How everything was tied together was excellent and very cleverly done.

I found this book to be good, my only issue was the last part of the story dragged for me. Christa and her boyfriend are on their way to Blackstone Lodge in the Rocky Mountains for a vacation, her boyfriend, Kiernan, is from the area and anxious to share it with Christa. The trip is part of a tour with a group of people on a tour bus to the lodge. On the way the bus is forced to stop due to a tree that had fallen across the road, the driver of the bus (also the tour manager) thinks they can remove the tree to continue on their way, while this is going on, Christa and her boyfriend decide to take a walk hoping to get a better view of the mountains, while on the way, Christa falls from a ledge and miraculously survives the fall uninjured. She then walks randomly to find a cabin where the rest of the tour bus group is, they left the bus after a blizzard started and they too walked to find the same cabin as Christa. Things start to go a little crazy after that, one by one the members of the group start to disappear, and when found they are dead, minus their head which is stuck on a tree. There is some backstory on Christa, an incident in her past that has a bearing on the events that happen. I did enjoy this, I just wish the ending hadn't dragged on for as long as it did. Thanks to #Netgalley and #Poisoned Pen Press for the ARC.

I have mixed feelings about this one. The plot was actually really good with some pretty interesting twists and intersecting story lines. My problem came towards the end of the book. While we’re supposed to be at the height of the suspense and the action, I felt like everything started to drag on. As stated before, the story line was great but I could do without detailing every single step, action, and thought.

I will say that when I was reading this book I could feel the hairs in my arm standing, I was at the edge. Being in a cabin and bad weather outside and not knowing who will get hurt is scary for me. It was a good story that I enjoy reading.

The atmosphere created for the events in the story is fabulous.
Even reading in the summertime you get chills.
A group of tourists has to seek a refuge from an unexpected blizzard.