Rating:

“Old scars sometimes peel back open and weep fresh blood.”

Author: Darcy Coates

Christa and Kiernan are escaping to the remote Rocky Mountains for a romantic get-away. Christa needs the distraction. Kiernan is her bright spot, her hope, the single luminous wave in a dark ocean. So, when the bus gets stranded, she’s not too worried. She has Kiernan with her – loving, gentle, and yet a tough mountain man. What could go wrong?

The answer – pretty much everything. When Kiernan gets lost and the snowstorm starts in earnest, the group is forced to break into the only local cabin for miles. They promise they’ll search more, but as every hour passes, Kiernan’s survival becomes less likely. Christa must get out there, get to him, at all costs.

But then, things go from bad to worse. The tour guide disappears, and his decapitated head appears in the towering fir tree outside the cabin’s window. That’s when people start disappearing, start accusing one another, start dying. Someone on this trip is not who they say they are. Someone on this trip is hunting. There’s no phone service, no signal, no help. Just the swish of snow and the screams in the night.

Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay

Dead of Winter is just about perfect. It blends the ambiance of paranoia, a good mystery (Colonel Mustard in the library anyone?), and a survival thriller. It hooks you, and as the bickering group makes all the worst decisions, the fear escalates. Coates mixes in just the right amount of gruesome horror with psychological tension too. Before long, we feel both the cold and the fear. We see the cabin, its gruesomely bedecked tree (you just know more trophies are going on that bad boy), the window full of teeth (that’s a mindfuck all its own), and Christa’s softer, gentler feelings toward the missing man she loves.

Is some of it a tad obvious? Yes . . . But that doesn’t detract from the literal, killer ending. The twist we know is coming – it’s the reason behind the twist and the comeuppance that ensnares our twisted imaginations and fulfills our dark little hearts.

Now . . . is the logic a bit horror-movie shaky here and there? Also, yes. These idiots just won’t arm themselves, and then they get surprised when they end up as tinsel in the forest. They literarily find the killer’s axe at one point . . . and leave it where it is for said killer to return, pick it up, and continue the massacre. Y’all. Come on.

But . . . whatever . . . everything else is so perfect, from the personalities to the descriptions to the emotions to the well-placed shifts from action to tension and back again, that I was willing to let a few horror tropes go.

Dead of Winter is Darcy’s greatest achievement to date. It’s the Goldilocks of bloody horror gems, and in the end, the reader sighs, having been told an epic story and been along for the ride for every single moment. You’ll devour this book in a night, or less, and it will stay with you far longer. Better yet, save it for a lonely, isolated winter night. Highly recommended.

– Frances Carden

Follow my reviews on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/xombie_mistress

Follow my reviews on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/FrancesReviews

Frances Carden
Latest posts by Frances Carden (see all)