Hi Everyone,

Well this feels strange, I feel like I haven’t written a review in forever. I’m not sure how long it’s actually been, but I know it’s definitely been a while. I started a couple of books at the same time and then just fell into the biggest reading slump. I peaked too soon at the beginning of March. But never mind, here we are now, out of the slump and with a review.

Book 📖

Thank you to @michaeljbooks for this advanced copy of The Drift by @cjtudorauthor in return for an honest review. The Drift was published on 20th January 2023 and you can get a copy here.

Description 🔖

Hannah awakens to carnage, all mangled metal and shattered glass. Evacuated from a secluded boarding school during a snowstorm, her coach careered off the road, trapping her with a handful of survivors.

Meg awakens to a gentle rocking. She’s in a cable car stranded high above snowy mountains, with five strangers and no memory of how they got on board.

Carter is gazing out of the window of an isolated ski chalet that he and his companions call home. As their generator begins to waver in the storm, the threat of something lurking in the chalet’s depths looms larger.

Outside, the storm rages. Inside each group, a killer lurks.

But who?

And will anyone make it out alive? . . .

General Thoughts 🤔

This book ended up being something completely different to what I was expecting. I thought I was heading into a dark thriller and I ended up getting a bit of a mix up of dark thriller, post apocalyptic drama and horror. I wasn’t mad at it though and it ended up being a pleasant surprise.

I spent a chunk of this book wondering what on earth was going on and where the story was going to go but it was so worth trusting the process, because it all fell into place and it all made shocking sense in the end. I love a good plot twist and this plot was full of surprises.

Characters 👫👭👬

There were quite a few characters in this story, all of them were separated off into groups. One group were trapped in a coach in a snow storm, another group trapped in a cable car and the final group, residents in the retreat. I think the group trapped in the coach were my favourite to read and I found their stories the most engaging. I really liked Hannah and thought that she was so brave and so smart. At the same time I had a huge amount of empathy for her as I think she was quite a lonely person and really craved some sort of emotion/feeling from her father.

My least favourite character across all the groups was Sarah. Not for any serious reason, I just felt like she didn’t appreciate the severity of the situation that they were in and therefore was unable to prioritise sensible decisions. I would have 100% gotten extremely frustrated if I had been trapped in such a small confined space with her.

Writing Style ✍️

This isn’t my first C.J. Tudor book so of course I was looking forward to a clever plot with plenty of twists and turns and that is what I got. The story started to come together for me earlier than I would have liked though which eliminated some of the shock factor that I really love in a twisty thriller. It didn’t completely ruin it though, because I enjoyed reading it all unravel for the characters.

Conclusion & Scoring 🎖

Although this story ended up being something really quite different from what I expected it to be, I really enjoyed it. I have seen quite a few post apocalyptic books emerge since Covid and some of them aren’t done very well. This book however was written well and the story was cleverly put together with some great twists and reveals. I would have liked to have had a more of a shock factor, but it didn’t spoil the experience of the story for me. A great read that I’d recommend for lovers of thrillers with a different edge to them.

😍😍😍😐😐