This is one of the best thrillers I have read!

My appreciation goes to @netgalley and @poisonedpenpress for providing me with this early copy in exchange for an honest review.

Christa has joined a tour group heading into the Rocky Mountains for some time away with her boyfriend. Storm conditions force the group to take refuge in an abandoned hunting cabin. Their tour guide goes missing and is later found dead… very dead.

Eight strangers, one killer- stranded in the middle of nowhere in freezing and storming weather. I felt the tension and fear as if I were in the cabin. The claustrophobic and isolated vibe was as chilling as the blizzard conditions they faced. It made me want to bury myself in a blanket as I read to keep shelter from it all.

It kept me engaged, nervous and guessing as to whether the killer was one of them or someone on the outside. I didn’t guess it either which made me love the book even more!

Highly recommend!

Excellent. A sweet blend of suspense, horror and violent murder mystery, without any supernatural element. A 2-week vacation at a lodge in the snowy mountains turns into a not-so-fun one room cabin full of strangers nightmare. I didn’t want to put it down and look forward to reading more by Darcy Coates. If you like locked room mysteries in a remote location with inclement weather, this book is for you! There were a good amount of characters so they were easy to keep track of and not mix up. The suspense was non-stop without a dull moment, up to the very end.

Even though I guessed who was behind all the murders and why, it was still an intense read. The author makes so many characters suspicious enough to be the killer. Once I got past 20% mark, I didn't want to put it down until I finished the book. Definitely a deadly cat and mouse game confined to a small basic cabin in the middle of a snow storm. Everyone is afraid to go anywhere alone, sleep or turn their backs on each other. Grizzly murders. Why is this happening to these characters? Who is the killer? Why are they being picked off one by one? Lots of twists and turns with the answers at the end. A very good read.

I received an ARC copy through NetGalley and this is my honest review.

A group of strangers are heading on a perfect winter retreat. They get stuck in a cabin together (somewhere close to the retreat but not there) in a very remote area in the Rocky Mountains after a snow storm. Then things get weird, someone dies. Someone is a killer and it could be anyone.

I loved the suspense! What a well crafted thriller that had me guessing till the very end. I might have guessed what was happening at some point but was never quite sure. I felt it was very well written too.

Some of my favorite parts;
1) I loved the “edge of your seat” set up — dark, cold, often times with little visibility, food was limited, phones were about to die….
2) Unreliable characters — I did not trust anyone, not even the main character, ai just couldn’t be sure. This made it a very thrilling read

Some of my less favorite parts:
1) I’m in the US so reading this during a heat wave was kind of weird
2) Some of the violent gory parts were too excessive for my taste but they have definitely made this book unique ( can’t say I have come across that anywhere else!)

Overall a great read if you’re into thrillers. Save it for the winter! Give it a try.

I cannot recommend this book and found its writing to be extremely subpar. Please see my full review on GoodReads here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1135708?ref=nav_mybooks

What started off as a 12 day retreat in the snowy mountains turns into a fight to stay alive as a group of stranded tourists hunker down in a cabin waiting for assistance.

Christa and her boyfriend are heading to a remote lodge in the mountains when a storm strikes and the road is blocked by a giant tree. Unable to move the tree, the group they are with decide to hike to what they hope is the nearest town. They end up finding an abandoned cabin and decide to stay there until a search party can locate them. Unfortunately, a murderer has also located them and every time someone makes the unwise decision to wander off they end up dead. No one knows who they can trust and help doesn't seem to be coming. The slowly dwindling group of people have to decide whether they can afford to wait it out, or whether they need to venture out into the wilderness to try and find help.

This book was tense and suspenseful and a great thriller! I did have some logistical questions when I was finished, but overall I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a good horror thriller.

Christa is dealing with demons from her past. Guilt gnaws at her to the point she’s unable to let go and move on. Her boyfriend books a getaway for them al a lodge in the Rocky Mountains.

On their way, the bus has to stop due to a tree blocking the road. As if the delay wasn’t enough, a mighty snowstorm hits the area, so the group is forced to huddle in an abandoned hunting cabin. During a walk the couple tales, the boyfriend goes missing and Christa gets hurt. She wakes up to the strangers’ faces of the group members. She wants to find her boyfriend, but the weather is bad.

Things become more worrying when the guide goes missing as well. Only to find his head speared on a tree next to the cabin.

Christa and the group get the chilling understanding that there’s a killer among them once the body count rises.

What demons are haunting Christa?
Who’s killing the group members and why?
Who is friend and who is enemy?
Would Christa and the remaining others survive?

This is a well written, well paced, chilling and gripping thriller! Darcy Coates shows no mercy when it comes to her characters nor towards her readers.

I had suspected who the killer was early on, but the author pulled a twist that basically killed that thought. Once everything got together and all cards were put on the table, I had an Oh. My. God! Moment. It was well put together, perfectly planned and thought through plot. Loved the twists and loved the tension!!

This has been my first Darcy Coates book but certainly not the last!

4.5 ⭐

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This was just an OK read for me. The description drew me in quickly – a group of strangers stuck in a cabin during a snow storm with a killer on the loose. Why are they all there and who would want to kill them?
The first part of the book was a little too slow for me and kind of boring. The second half is when everything started to come together and intensify. The twist at the end was surprising to me only because I wasn’t that engaged in the story to figure it out earlier.
As for the characters I did like Christa. I felt like she stayed alert to what was happening around her despite the personal drama she was going through. The rest of the group was just flat. I wish we got a little more details on their stories and lives. Many times I caught myself thinking “who is this again”.
This book is categorized as a horror, which I assume is due to some of the graphic and gory elements. To me this read more like a thriller. It was still enjoyable just didn’t blow me away. Solid 3 stars.

Thank you NetGalley, Poisoned Pen Press and the author for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

2.5 stars This had an interesting premise. Unfortunately, the “whodunnit” was blatantly obvious, despite the actual plot being utterly ridiculous. For someone wanting a quick, gory read…this will keep you turning the pages. For anything deeper….look elsewhere.

One of my biggest regrets as a horror reader is that I waited so long to give Darcy Coates a chance. This is only the second book I’ve read by them, but I fully intend on making my way through their entire back catalog at some point.

If you need a break from the summer hear, like I really did, then this chiller is is perfect for you. Coates’ world building is always great, giving room for the characters to live and breathe, and the slow sense of creeping dread she infuses through the whole thing is second to none.

Also, selfishly as a 911 dispatcher, I loved that one of the core characters in the book is also a dispatcher. I wish she’d been a better one 🤣 but I can’t be too upset about it since it’s sort of a plot point. Mostly it was just cool to see, since dispatch isn’t a job that comes up often in books. Or anywhere.

* Thank you Netgalley for giving me a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I’m always so excited to read a Darcy Coates book! 😀 Her Newest book, Dead of Winter will not disappoint! There are twists! There are turns! There are so many red herrings, your head will spin!

I love the plot. The vibe reminds me of the very first Friday the 13th, you know, pre-Jason….. if you know, you know. 😉 Dead of Winter is a bitter tale of slasher killing spree. The story does an amazing job of keeping you on your toes and keeps you guessing the whole time. Lots of lovely twists, false turns, dead ends, second guessing, misdirects, red herrings all slowly oozing suspense. 😀

The suspense mostly comes down to the characters. A large group of people. One is a killer. Seriously, the suspense has such a creeping pace you feel the dread building like an avalanche in your chest every time the main character has to do something with another character. Is he the killer? Or is she the killer? Or what about him?? I legit thought every single character in Dead of Winter was the killer at one point or another!

Another thing about these characters… I actually felt BAD when they got killed. What the WHAT?? 😮 That never happens to me!! But Darcy has a way of making me care, even for the most unlikable people in the group (Looking at you Blake!!). I don’t know how Darcy does it. Her characters get me every time!

*Important* Don’t go into Dead of Winter thinking it will be a Darcy ghost / haunting / monster book. This is straight up slasher horror. Now, slasher is not my personal fave sub category of horror, but I really enjoyed what Darcy did here. I love her ghost stories the best, but it is so cool watching her KILL IT with other horror themes! ❤

Dead of Winter is an absorbing tale of suspense. It isn’t super creepy or scary, but the thrills and chills will leave you with a shivering chill from your head to your toes. By the end of the book, I was WAY down that rabbit hole trying to gather clues and figure out who the killer was! I was up to my eyeballs in guesses. So many twists, I didn’t know what to expect any more by the time the ending was revealed.

This is a chilling slasher tale. Dead of Winter is a book you don’t want to overlook. The way the tension slowly builds is a chief’s kiss to thriller. Even though slasher is not my fave type of horror, I was hooked on the plot and on the edge of my seat waiting to see what would happen next. This was another hit out of the ball park for Darcy!

This is a DNF for me, but it is totally my fault. I was expecting more cozy Agatha Christie vibes, and it was more Steven King horror/thriller. Just not my jam.

The story is set in the Rocky Mountains, where we follow Christa a young woman with a dark-ish past. Christa is on a romantic journey with her boyfriend Kiernan, who she thinks might be proposing to her. However, the journey takes a turn when the bus carrying her, Kiernan, and several other passengers get blocked by a fallen tree from the intense went weather. Things go south from there for Christa and the fellow passengers.

This thriller gave me a ton of And Then There Were None vibes, except the stakes were far more gruesome. This story made me feel cold, unsafe, and unsure of what would happen next to our main character. Darcy Coates really nailed making the reader feel the isolated, scared, and cold. Even towards the end of the story I was unsure of how it would end, who did what, etc. I really loved how Darcy Coates blended the mystery/thriller genre with horror. I am excited to pick up more from this author!

This was an good read. The writing was good. I felt that I was right there experiencing the cold weather. I would have like to have rated it higher. Unfortunately, I didn't like any of the characters and didn't really cared what happened to them. I figured out who the killer was half way through the book. However, it didn't have any affect on my judgment. It did drag on in the middle and I had to force myself to finish. It wasn't a bad read. It was exciting, especially the last third of the book.

#DARCY COATES. #DEADOFWINTER. #NETGALLEY

I picked this book up for the sole reason that the main character's name was Christa. After reading this, however, I'll be back for more by Darcy Coates! This was an excellently executed locked room mystery in that the amount of suspense was even throughout the whole book except for the whirlwind of an ending which I didn't predict. While it had an array of characters, the story was told from Crista's perspective, so it wasn't completely confusing to keep track of all of them.

When a private tour bus breaks down on the way to a remote resort, the group of strangers aboard must band together to survive until help arrives. They find a small cabin to stay in until the snow storm is over, but when the tour guide goes missing and is later found dead, the strangers realize that they can't trust one another.

Gruesome, Chilling, and Suspenseful, this was an excellent locked room mystery.

A huge thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an eARC to review.

I usually enjoy Darcy Coates’ books and this was no exception. I actually preferred this to her usual paranormal-leaning stories. Though I had the story pegged from the beginning, it was still a fun, quick read!

This review was also posted on Goodreads.

This book reminded me a lot of One by One and Daisy Darker - a group of people caught in a deadly snow storm start getting picked off one by one. They must try to survive the storm while one of them is a killer.

It is a very claustrophobic read- high tension, untrustworthy characters, brutal violence. The twists towards the end were insane. The slow burn leading up to the finale made the pacing a little slower for a thriller but was standard for Darcy books.

I truly felt the paranoia of the characters and didn’t know who to trust. If you enjoy the typical “people stuck in a snowstorm start dying” trope you will love this one.

The last 15% was absolutely wild.

Well it was interesting reading a book set in a blizzard on a sweltering hot beach.

This book is a similar to a locked room scenario. Most of this story takes place in a remote cabin with no phone service. The story started to wear on me a bit as it became a bit redundant but as what ties all the characters together comes to light it picks up again. The ending was a bit predictable but it was still a good mystery read. The deaths were a bit gruesome and graphic but it also kept you on your toes.

I’m not typically a fan of the horror genre, but this synopsis intrigued me, and I knew I would enjoy the ride. The author sucks you in from the very first chapter! If you’re looking for an edge of your seat, suspenseful ride full of twists, than this is the perfect book. Setting, plot, and characters were all on point.

I don’t think I’ve been this anxious reading a thriller in a while. The pacing in Dead of Winter was unreal — the action and tension never let up. 

Our heroine Christa and her boyfriend are on a bus up to a remote lodge for a vacation.  The group takes shelter in a small cabin and start dying horribly, one by one…

I’m a sucker for an isolated location, survival-based thriller and this one didn’t disappoint.  I really felt the cold and the murders were appropriately horrifying.  Dead of Winter plays with the line between thriller and horror.

The characters are a bit shallow, but for this kind of thriller that’s fine.  Coates gives the reader enough on each character to speculate about their motives and who might be the killer, and I cared about them enough to feel it when my favourites were in trouble.

Thank you to Netgalley and Poisoned Pen Press for my review copy of this book.