A solid thriller, surprisingly fun to read in the summer heat.
Thanks for the opportunity to read and review!

Dead of Winter follows a group of travelers stranded in a storm in the Rocky Mountains. Soon their misfortune turns to horror as they begin dying gruesome deaths.

The red herrings are thick as the situation devolves and the cast of characters stew in their fallibility. The book amps up the suspense and suspicions until the chilling, satisfying end. The gore level was disturbing but not extreme.

Had I known anything about Darcy Coates prior to this, I would have held off starting the book until I had more free time. Instead, I got completely sucked in and sacrificed sleep because I constantly needed to know what would happen next. It may be a tiny bit predictable, but everything about Dead of Winter is entertaining.

This is the best mystery I’ve read so far this year and it’ll be extremely hard for anyone to top it.

Thank you, NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the opportunity to review this advanced reader copy of the book.

Dead of Winter by Darcy Coates is a fact paced thriller/horror that mostly takes place on one snowy vacation as a small bus full of tourists are stranded by a small hunting cabin in the mountains. As they try to find help, they begin getting killed off one by one and the only explanation is that the killer is one of them. But will our main character, Christa, figure it out before it’s too late?

I have read a few books by this author and I always love them more than I think I will. She has a unique writing style that I would describe as “cozy horror” that almost feels like a straight to streaming scary movie but in the best way. And while I feel like this book had a similar general vibe, it was much more gory and thrilling than I was expecting. With extremely short chapters, this book flies by while you are reading it. Christa as the main protagonist doesn’t have a ton of personality but it lends itself well as being easy to relate to her. She is a great example of a self insert character done well.

I really only had two issues with this book. The first being that the cast of characters was just really big right from the start so I had a hard time caring about anyone because I didn’t really know who they were. I was confused a few times about who everyone was. I think this story could have still been the exact same with half the characters but it would have been a lot easier to follow. There was also a point when it felt like the author sort of had to shoehorn in some foreshadowing for the twist at the end and it felt very awkward to me and took me out of the story completely. I’m sure there are some readers that wouldn’t even notice it but it was something that annoyed me a bit.

I would recommend this to anyone who likes locked door mysteries that are fast paced and thrilling with some horror elements. This is a great book to pick up when you just want to fully immerse yourself in reading for a few hours. I would give this a 3.5 star rounded up just because of my few issues but overall, this was a good time.

Dead of Winter is a locked room mystery that takes place in a snowed-in hunting cabin located in the Rockies. When their charter bus is no longer capable of handling the mountain roads, the driver and eight of its passengers make their way to this isolated cabin. Two passengers are missing, having lost their way in the woods. While trying to make it to safety, only one of them makes it to the cabin. Soon, these unlucky souls begin to be murdered; their heads severed and hung from a tree. Can it be one of them, or is there someone—or something else—committing these gruesome slayings?

I like a locked room mystery where it seems the most logical explanation is a supernatural one. Someone is not who they appear to be, and the red herrings begin to pile up. Once you think you have it figured out, you realize you are wrong; and that’s okay. However, this did not happen to me in this book. Sadly, I solved the puzzle too quickly, and there wasn’t much more to make this a thrilling read.

I think that I would have liked the snow and cold weather to be more present; to help build up the claustrophobia and fear. Yes, they were stranded, and in need of heat. But there was a sense of climate inertia: shouldn’t the wind and snow come into the open cabin door, seep through the windows; and when they go out to take care of their bathroom needs, shouldn’t their butts either freeze or get stuck in the snow? Also, how do ten people fit comfortably in a one room cabin?

I am the type of reader that likes to be masterfully manipulated by a writer; to be able to say ‘damn, you tricked me!’ However, although I am a Darcy Coates fan, I was left wanting more.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Poison Pen Press for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This book was non stop action and tension from start to finish! It was gruesome, gory, and had some scary moments. My suspicions kept jumping around and the mystery definitely held my interest. I love isolated thrillers, especially when the characters start getting picked off one by one! I guessed part of the twist but the motivation was a total surprise. I only wish I had read this during a snow storm lol

Darcy Coates' Dead of Winter is not her typical gothic horror novels. Instead, like with From Below, she is exploring different horror genres -- this time a slasher.

Slasher novels are some of my favorites, and this one is no exception. A group of tourists heading to
mountain retreat find themselves trapped in a small cabin during an intense snow storm. One by one, they are murdered. Is the murderer one of them, or someone hidden by the storm? The claustrophobia and paranoia builds as the story progresses. There are not one but two red herrings, and several twists.

This novel is gory, and may not be suitable for some readers. It is a slasher, after all. There is some spousal emotional abuse that may be upsetting, as well.

Dead of Winter would be great for horror fans who don't mind gore. I'd recommend it to fans of Stephen Graham Jones' slashers. If you've never read a slasher novel, but love slasher movies, check it out!

I was provided an ARC through netgalley for an open and honest review.

This might be Darcy Coates best book yet!

The remote cabin with a snowstorm outside is a fantastic setting and I was flipping the pages because the dread and unease doesn’t let up.

"Dead of Winter" starts with a bus load of strangers heading to a resort in the Rocky Mountains for some winter fun and vacation time.

Christa is a bit nervous but excited for the trip that her boyfriend Kiernan planned for them. She’s had a bit of a rough time for the last few years and feels like this trip will be a great experience for them as a couple, and help her put some past demons to rest.

As they head toward the resort, things start going from bad to worse. The group finds safety in a remote cabin that’s not too far from the resort. If they can just bunker down for a few days to let the snowstorm pass, they’ll be able to hike there for help.

But there’s a killer among them and this killer has other plans for the group of strangers. Not only is Kiernan and Christa in deep trouble, but so is everyone else.

"Dead of Winter" has the same feel of Agatha Christie’s "And Then There Were None". I loved it!

I think I might be the exception with the fact that I guessed who the killer is but here’s the thing.
I also think Agatha has fine tuned my abilities of mysteries and I might be a bit warped with figuring this one out. hahaha
The great thing with this book is I had an idea of who it might be, but Darcy Coates still keeps me guessing all the way to the end.

Kudos to her on producing a thriller that has you gripped with tension and dread! The gore, action and madness of this one was just top notch. I loved it!!

I just read “Dead of Winter” by Darcy Coates. I went in blind but assumed it was horror based on what I’ve heard about the author. It’s not horror but a great, fast paced thriller!
A group of people find themselves isolated during a snow storm and start getting brutally murdered one by one. Not a new concept at all but I still found myself doing the “just one more chapter” thing late into the night.
I will definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a thriller!

Great story full of twists and mystery. The added suspense of the storm and being trapped in the middle of nowhere gave this one an even more eerie and spooky vibe that I really enjoyed.

I received a digital advance reader’s copy of Dead of Winter by Darcy Coates via NetGalley. Dead of Winter is scheduled for release on July 11, 2023.

Dead of Winter follows Christa, a woman on a bus tour deep in the Rocky Mountains. A felled tree, followed by a massive snowstorm trap the group of relative strangers in a tiny cabin with no way to call for help. On the first night in the cabin, the tour guide goes missing, then is found dead. As the bodies begin to accumulate, the chances of survival dwindles. Christa’s only hope is to figure out who to trust and who among them is the murderer.

For me, this was a book of two halves. The second half of the book was very tightly focused on who the killer was, and why they were killing these people. As secrets unraveled, and characters began to find commonalities, and work together to find a way out, I kept reading to find the answers to my own questions. While I did see the big twists coming, the pieces of the mystery fell together in a way that made sense.

The first half of the book was less successful for me. Honestly, I almost stopped reading after the first two chapters. In the opening chapters, we are with Christa and her boyfriend. They have gotten separated from the group, and are fighting to get back to the bus through an ever worsening storm. We have no sense of who these characters are, or why they are in this situation. It was difficult to care what happened to them. From these chapters, I thought this was a wilderness survival story, and almost put it down.

After those chapters, we jump back in time to the bus ride up the mountain, where we meet the rest of the group and find out where we are and where they are headed. This set-up for the story felt very clunky, with explanations for why this group of ten or so people was headed to a lodge that was supposedly closed for the season.

With this many characters and only Christa’s point of view, I did not get a good sense of who any of the characters were, which made it lack impact when characters began disappearing and dying. Despite being with Christa for the entire story, at the end I had no more understanding of who she was than I did when we met her in the snow at the beginning.

Overall, Dead of Winter had a premise with potential that did pull together toward the end. With more character development, and some adjustments of the set-up, this could have been a solid isolation thriller.

Eleven people climb onto a bus set for a lodge in the Rocky Mountains, located literally in the middle of nowhere. After stopping due to a tree fallen in the road, Christa and Kiernan wander off to get a view of the scenery. A storm sets in and the pair get lost, but Christa is miraculously found by her bus-mates and pulled into a tiny shack in the woods. The tiny cabin is too small for the 10 people from the bus, but it is keeping them out of the elements for the duration of the storm. During the night, Brian the guide goes missing. His head is found the next morning impaled on a tree near the cabin (and what of his body...?). Apparently the nightmare is only beginning.

This book was very Agatha Christie, but that didn't stop it from being really quite good. I will say that I guessed the villain around the halfway point, although the author did make me doubt myself repeatedly. I just could NOT put this down. In fact, my Kindle died at the 55% mark (RIP, dear friend) and I absolutely panicked. But I needed to know how it ended so badly that I did something I hate and read nearly half of it on my phone. This is my favorite Darcy Coates book yet.

4 1/2 stars.

4⭐️

My first read by this author. The fear of missing out was real as I’d heard some good things about it on social media I had to read it asap.
This is a combination of a very claustrophobic closed circle mystery/ but veers more to slasher horror. It’s dark and blood thirsty! With some quite graphic description. It’s got a decent amount of action too.

It starts with a great level of fear and tension with Christie and Kiernan wandering around in a blizzard totally lost fearing death. I think that section is my favourite of the book.

There’s quite a large group on the bus, so a number of names to get to grips with.

Christie & Kiernan- a couple lost in blizzard
Steve- trucker. Miri his wife
Hutch -DJ
Blake-911 dispatcher
Simone - ex army
Alexis- about her not readily revealed
Denny-mechanic and son Grayson
Brian - guide/bus driver

It would make a great horror film for sure! I really liked Christie, badly debilitated by frost bite, but still plucky and a very proactive member of the group, and wanting to do the right thing for the group.

Slasher horror is not my go to genre, it’s very well executed and keeps the reader on the backfoot for the duration. I enjoyed it, one for you if you love horror, may not be for you if you prefer locked room / closed circle mysteries.

Wow this book was a twisty ride. What sounds better then a winter retreat in the woods? Unplugged from the outside world and just relax and seaters. Could be great if a killer wasn’t on the loose. I was hooked from the first page and didn’t want to put this one down. Every time I thought I had something figured out, it twisted again and I was wrong. The ending was definitely not one I saw coming either.
You are not gonna want to miss this book. Special thanks to netgalley for this book!

~ 3.5 stars rounded to 3 stars ~

I've been going back and forth with myself about this read ever since I finished it. On one hand, I was ensnared by the plot very early on. I love a fun, sloppy gorefest, and this book really delivered in that regard. I used to describe Coates' works as light/cozy horror, but after this, I think she has thoroughly demolished that label. She was absolutely merciless with this story, and I am so here for it!

On the other hand, the mystery aspect was incredibly weak. Maybe if you've never read a mystery/thriller, the ending of this book would come as a surprise, but honestly, it's full of well-known tropes that were just too obvious in their execution. I already knew who the killer was in the first 30 pages of the story and figured out the rest of it (motive, the plot progression) shortly after. This didn't feel like a situation where there was a trail of well-placed clues that I happened to pick up on. It just wasn't a very well-executed mystery to begin with.

Overall though I had a lot of fun reading this. Loved the brutality and how quick everything plunged into chaos. The atmosphere was incredible, and I really felt like I was sharing in the character's claustrophobia and paranoia. Definitely worth picking this one up!

Oh my! I needed a nice chipper book after reading Dead of Winter. What an utterly sinister book of unrelenting terror. The winter storm, the suspicious travelers, and the claustrophobic cabin sucked me in and gave me nightmares but in a good way. After a few calming books I'll read more by Darcy Coates. With the lights on.

I loved the setting for this story - an isolated cabin in the middle of a snowstorm, and there’s a killer on the loose, picking people off one by one. However, it did just not work for me.

For the most part, the characters were not unlikeable; they were just bland and I didn’t care about any of them. There was some tension, but they never really turned on each other at the level that I was expecting from characters in this situation. Nor were they presenting a united front in surviving. I think this, along with the characters themselves, made most of the book drag. For me, I found the last 20% to be the most exciting part of the story, but even then, it didn’t have me on the edge of my seat.

This thrilling read starts with the worst vacation ever! You aren’t sure what is going on, other than never-ending murder. Once the remaining vacationers figure out what they have in common, the bad guy was pretty easy to guess, if you were paying attention. The story is fast-paced and keeps you engaged throughout.

Thank you to NetGalley, Poisoned Pen Press, and Darcy Coates for the eARC.

Isolated mystery thriller with heavy slasher horror elements.

This was everything I wanted Ruth Ware’s One by One to be but wasn’t. And I know that isn’t fair to bring up another book by another author to compare at all times, but in this case, that’s what I feel is the closest related book.

Darcy Coates wrote this book masterfully. It felt like a horror movie with characters being picked off one by one in pretty dark and gruesome ways.

The whole time the finger gets pointed to each different character in the book and leaves you questioning who is murdering all the other characters.

While I called it right away and was correct, it was still fun to get to the ending.

My only problem and it’s minor is that the book felt a little slower in the first half than the second half, but it picks up fast!

I enjoyed the characters and I liked being in Christa’s POV.

Highly recommend, especially if you want an isolated mystery with a bit of an edge.

Wow wow wow! That's all I can say! This book really keeps you on the edge f your seat the ENTIRE time! Dead of Winter is one of the best thriller books I have read in a while! If this book was a road, I would get motion sickness from all those twists and turns! Defiantly recommending this book to everyone I know