Dead Of Winter

Specs:

What The Vibes Are

What It’s About

From bestselling author Darcy Coates comes Dead of Winter, a remote cabin in the snowy wilderness thriller that will teach you to trust no one. There are eight strangers. One killer. Nowhere left to run.

When Christa joins a tour group heading deep into the snowy expanse of the Rocky Mountains, she’s hopeful this will be her chance to put the ghosts of her past to rest. But when a bitterly cold snowstorm sweeps the region, the small group is forced to take shelter in an abandoned hunting cabin. Despite the uncomfortably claustrophobic quarters and rapidly dropping temperature, Christa believes they’ll be safe as they wait out the storm.

She couldn’t be more wrong.

Deep in the night, their tour guide goes missing…only to be discovered the following morning, his severed head impaled on a tree outside the cabin. Terrified and completely isolated by the storm, Christa finds herself trapped with eight total strangers. One of them kills for sport…and they’re far from finished. As the storm grows more dangerous and the number of survivors dwindles one by one, Christa must decide who she can trust before this frozen mountain becomes her tomb.

What I thought about it

***Possible Spoilers below

Darcy Coates has quickly become one of my favorite thriller/horror novelists. I absolutely LOVE her supernatural horror novels; each one centered around a different decrepit, haunted mansion with a morbid past. So when my book club picked this one for January’s BOTM, I was all in.

In Dead of Winter, Coates brought to life two fears that I think most people have — being stranded in the cold with no food or power, and being hunted and killed by an unknown assailant. The growing tensions between the characters as the bodies kept dropping were beautifully developed, as was the scene when they all realized how they were connected.

Christa was your basic guilt-ridden protagonist who also showed levels of naivety that made me think she was an unreliable narrator. I was honestly expecting the big twist to be her as the killer. Don’t worry, she wasn’t. It wasn’t any of my guesses; make me think I’m losing my touch. Did I ever have one?…. Meh.

Anyway, the big reveal was shocking to me (that might be because I was listening to it while cleaning and missed some things), and what was even more shocking was the killer’s proposition to Christa. Unhinged. I knew it was a revenge plot as soon as Christa mentioned her past, but to learn how meticulous the killer was and how many people they tracked down, besides the ones at the cabin, and killed was impressive and unforgiving. Artfully brutal.

Conclusion

Darcy Coates’s Dead of Winter was the perfect winter slasher! The story followed a group of hikers after a storm left them stranded in a nearby cabin. Things take a deadly turn after they find their tour guide brutally slain and decapitated the next morning.

The vibes were a combination of Slasher: Guilty Party (TV Series), The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and I Know What You Did Last Summer in this gory, ruthless, and morbidly beautiful revenge slasher that highlights what happens when you fuck around and find out.

I ate this book up in one sitting, and I know you will, too!

Have you read Dead of Winter? What did you think about the twist? Did you see it coming? Can’t wait to hear your thoughts!

♡ G&P