There’s something about thrillers set in winter that always seems to make them suspenseful and frightening. All three of these snowy plots froze my heart multiple times while reading them.
Dead of Winter, Darcy Coates
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. 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.
Fair warning, this one is quite gruesome. Coates’ other novels are not quite as macabre. This one is definitely spin-chilling and you’ll suspect everyone at some point or another. The closed quarters of the cabin and the stuffiness of the winter storm keeping them there makes this almost like a locked room mystery.
Nightwatching, Tracy Sierra
Home alone with her young children during a blizzard, a mother hears a noise. This sound is disturbingly familiar: it’s the tread of footsteps, unusually heavy and slow, coming up the stairs. She sees the figure of a man appear down the hallway, shrouded in the shadows. Terrified, she quietly wakes her children and hustles them into the oldest part of the house, a tiny, secret room concealed behind a wall. There they hide as the man searches for them, trying to tempt the children out with promises and scare the mother into surrender.
The first scene in this novel is a doozy! I felt like I was holding my breath the entire time I read it. There are a few unexpected actions by the mother in this novel that make you question what is really happening. The thought of this type of thing happening for real is so scary. Definitely a heart freezing read!
Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre, Max Brooks
As the ash and chaos from Mount Rainier’s eruption swirled and finally settled, the story of the Greenloop massacre has passed unnoticed, unexamined . . . until now. But the journals of resident Kate Holland, recovered from the town’s bloody wreckage, capture a tale too harrowing—and too earth-shattering in its implications—to be forgotten. In these pages, Max Brooks brings Kate’s extraordinary account to light for the first time, faithfully reproducing her words alongside his own extensive investigations into the massacre and the legendary beasts behind it.
I listened to this story on audio and I highly recommend going that route if you decide to read it. It’s narrated by a full cast which adds to the atmosphere. Fair-warning- this is a slow build novel but the pay off in the end is well worth it. I will admit that the main character, Kate, is a bit insufferable in the beginning. But I soon realized that was the point. It’s her character journey from insecure, people-pleaser to a resilient and shrewd leader that I loved the most. The story is both terrifying and devastating.
Do you prefer wintery settings or beachy settings?
