A good paranoid thriller, with three different tales. People are being hunted, people are being killed mysteriously oh and there's global pandemic wiping out the human race.
People are trapped in a bus crash, a cable car without power stuck out on the cable and ski retreat where people are being picked off one by one. I can't talk about the plot without giving it away but the three tales all intertwined with each other that leads into a nice twisty plot.
My verdict: while it's not perfect it's a damned entertaining read. Great use of the global pandemic so soon after the after the advent of covid. Also great use of the weather, I got cold just reading this book.

I'm amazed at how the plots came together. There are twists in time, mistaken identity, several who-done-it's, and lots of surprises I never saw coming. Nothing and nobody are what they appear to be. Even the timeframe comes as a surprise. I want to pick apart the book to see how the author did it. I want to talk about the twists and turns but then we'd have a spoilerfest.

I have to say that there are so many characters that at first, I thought I'd never keep them straight. That turned out to not be a problem. Between murders, questionable accidents, a virus, and more murders, characters exit the scenes rapidly. I should mention that there is violence, gore, and illness. Oh, and every character manages to roll their eyes. That's my only complaint. Everybody answers questions with a roll of the eyeballs. Please. Just stop. Every book I read lately is full to the brim with eyeball rolling. Dexter the dog was the only one not participating in the eyeball-rollathon..

Other than eyerolling, I found the story exciting. About 50 percent through, I said I was going to stop for the night. Instead, I stayed up until 4 a.m. and finished the book. The mysteries, the twists, the horror, the mistaken identities made it impossible to put down.

Thank you to Netgalley and Ballentine Books for allowing me to read and review The Drift.

Three suspenseful stories, all playing out chapter by chapter. You know that somehow they must intersect, but it isn't obvious how they will. Until they do. But even then you can't see the end coming. What a cool book! I was hooked every minute that I was reading.

4/5. Tudor did a great job interweaving stories across timelines here, Clever use of tropes and continued suspense.

4.5 stars

Wow! This was so unlike The Chalk Man but still so damn good! I loved the slow burn of The Chalk Man, which turned me on to C.J. Tudor in the first place, but this book is intense. 3 different perspectives, pandemic, never knowing when or how these stories are going to come together. I really couldn’t put it down. This is what I want from my thrillers, and it did not disappoint.

[Blurb goes here]

The Drift is three intertwining stories, in one amazing and fast paced adventure.

Where to begin?

First, there's Hannah's story. Hannah wakes up after the bus she was in, has a harrowing accident. Hannah is a medical student from the academy. She was being evacuated to a secret location. The people inside the bus are also students. Just a handful of them survived the crash. She notices that one of the dead shows signs of infection, that means that they all might be infected. There's no way out from the wreckage. They're surrounded by snow, and there's a storm raging outside. Thus starts a race against time, but can Hannah trust the other survivors?

Meanwhile inside a cable car, Meg—an ex-cop—and five other adults, wake up. The car not moving, and suspended high above the snowy void. None of them know how they got there. They know their destination is "The Retreat," a place up on the mountains, where doctors and scientist are trying to find a cure for a disease that ravaged the world, decimating the population. They will have to come up with a plan to get out of the car and get to The Retreat, before they freeze to death. But not all is what it seems, there's a dead person inside the car, he was murdered. Meg recognizes him as a cop she used to work with. It only takes one day for two of the five survivors to die. There's a killer on board.

And then there was Carter, he survived frost bite, loosing half his face to an accident. He's working at The Retreat. Doing whatever shores come to Miles' mind. Miles is a sociopath, and rules The Retreat with an iron hand. Carter is forced to do his bidding, since Miles was the one who saved him and allowed him to live inside the compound. Soon people inside the place start dropping like flies. With no one to trust, Miles will have to do anything in his power to survive.

Then there's the Whistlers to consider...

As the three stories move forward, our protagonists will be confronted with one disturbing reality: there's no one to trust.

C. J. Tudor writes an edge of your seat thriller that will have you saying "just one more chapter and it's off to bed" for the entire night. I've come across the author before. His collection of short stories "A Sliver of Darkness" is something I really enjoyed, but nothing compared to The Drift.

What will you be willing to do to survive? Is the question that this fantastic tale answers, simply by stating that good guys, are dead guys.

It amazed me that there was no respite while getting into the book, no obvious place to stop reading, every single chapter pushing me to go further, to keep on going...as I reached the surprising conclusion: the moment where all three stories turn into one.

This is one book you shouldn't miss. It has horror, splashes of gore here and there, mystery, intricate conspiracies, a global pandemic, and the inevitable drive for survival...I could go on. On a personal note, it's uncommon for me to simply read a book in one sitting. Specially in week days. This one kept me awake all night. It's that good!

What a ride, I couldn't put this one down. THE DRIFT had everything you'd want in a thriller. I felt totally into the story, the characters, the mystery...

The Drift by C. J. Tudor. Just like a train wreck where one can't look away, this story is compelling. Don't quite know what to make of it, the story is dismal, terrifying, gory but couldn't stop until found out how it ended. Hard to define, either one will like it or not but an interesting well written read. Dexter without a doubt will be the favorite character.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to preview the book

Wow. This was one crazy wild ride! The Drift is my first book by C. J. Tudor, but it will certainly not be my last. I got major I Am Legend vibes from the beginning of the book, but it quickly took off in completely unexpected ways. Navigating through three distinct POVs, you’ll eventually see how the plots and people tie together. I could not put this book down!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Apocalyptic stories aren’t usually my favorite, but the author does an excellent job of keeping the reader engaged as the tension builds in this story told from various viewpoints which successfully merge.

This book is told from 3 different point of views. Every point of view and setting deals with survival of an apocalyptic pandemic. It was gripping, chilling and kept me turning the pages as fast as I could read them.

I kept wondering if these 3 storylines would intersect at some point. There were so many questions and so many big shocking moments.

You know those authors, that you will pick up anything they write without even knowing what the book is about? In this genre, Tudor is one of those authors for me.

I'm never disappointed, always surprised and always eagerly awaiting the next book!

Maybe If we had all survived a worldwide pandemic, we would have some clue as to how to survive the next one. But, the thing is that the next one is always different and the lessons we learned on stocking up essentials are not the lessons needed for the next event. I guess we will find out, won’t we?

Drift offers us a glimpse of one pandemic inspired future, one where there is a vaccine, but no cure. Those that get the disease and survive are shipped out to farms where their precious blood is harvested and they are quarantined. Others escape quarantine and survive as lepers in the woods. We don’t know enough about how most of society has made out though.

Here we get three interconnected stories of survival, each a story of a small group, isolated in suffocating conditions. We learn how desperate survivors interact and what it takes to survive, particularly who to trust, if anyone.

One group is on a school bus, heading up to a retreat when the bus crashes and they are trapped inside with seemingly no way out. And there’s the mystery of whether everyone is who they are supposed to be and whether their is a mastermind testing them all. Mostly it’s a story of people at each other’s throats.

Another group is trapped in a cable car, an even smaller prison where the stakes might become even more desperate. Again, who do you trust and what are they up against.

The third group is in a lockdown retreat away from everything barely in contact with the outside world. Everyone has secrets and no one can stand each other. How would you fare locked up with strangers as the world collapses around you and there’s nothing much left but infected monsters and wolves out there and in here?

Drift is a chilling portrait of a world under siege when there’s no one left to trust

I have really enjoyed all of Tudor’s novels, so I was thrilled to receive an ARC of this one! The Drift by C.J. Tudor is a post-apocalyptic/dystopian thriller. It is told from three different perspectives, Hannah, Meg and Carter. I thought this book was written very well, I really enjoyed the way the author brings the three stories together. This book is full of twists and turns and the ending was fantastic!

This was such a good book, I could not put it down. I definitely recommend picking this one up!

Thank you to Ballantine Books/Penguin Random House and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review!

This is a fantastic horror book and given the current times it's almost sure to give you the creeps. CJ Tudor has done a fantastic job of setting and holding the tension in this book, a great read!

This is spine tingling, bone chilling, blood freezing fun at its best!

A group of students leaving their academy due to an outbreak by coach crashes on a snowy road, students that haven’t died are trapped, and they beginning of their dilemma.

A cable car, rising high into the mountains toward the Retreat, suddenly stops, stranding six passengers in the air with no hope of rescue. And the body count is somehow rising.

At the Retreat, things have gone from bad to worse as power failures increase in length and frequency. People are dying, and there’s something being kept in the isolation cells that shouldn’t be released.

Set during an apocalypse, following a viral pandemic (too close to home you say? Never ) these tense situations become more and more grave, until crashing into each other for the final thrilling conclusion.

This was a full throttle, cat and mouse, thriller with such chilling connections that you won’t be able to stop reading for fear of the impending frost bite.

Grab a hot cocoa and be ready to grab this icy thriller due for release in Jan of 2023. Oh yes, you have to put those paws on freeze until then, but don’t get left out and stuck in The Drift come January. Pre-order this one now!

Thank you to #NetGalley, the publishers and author for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinions.

My full review will be posted to all social media sites, blogs and retail after publication date.

Since Hawk Mountain, my October reading pile has been an absolute non-starter, so when I got notified that I was pre-approved for this title I went ahead and downloaded it yesterday despite the fact that thrillers are not often my thing. This suffers from a touch of overkill, to make an understatement; there are three separate groups of people struggling to survive in harrowing conditions like "stranded cable car in a howling snowstorm", society has all but collapsed because of a deadly virus spread through blood, spit, airborne contact, and infected tissue wherein one has 98% of being symptomatic after exposure and a 75% chance of dying, the other 25% of being turned into a zombie-like rage creature, and as if the harrowing conditions are not enough, in each scenario someone is trying to/succeeding in murdering their fellows. When at some point it turned out that a gravely injured character was pregnant with a secret baby and also in labor, I had to set my phone down for a bit. But it is not Tudor's fault that I don't usually hang with thrillers, so if this is your scene there is certainly much for you to like here, and an extra star for the fact that she <spoiler>.</spoiler>

I was so excited when Ballantine offered to send me a copy of The Drift! I had heard great things about CJ Tudor, and I was so excited to read this book. I liked reading it, but some parts didn't work for me.

This story is told from the POV of 3 different people and all of the storylines are so cleverly intertwined. Tudor was able to give each narrator a different and distinct voice, which helped keep easily keep up with the switching POVs.

My biggest complaint is that I was able to guess the twist so early. Some of the writing seemed underdeveloped, which I think led to easily being able to figure out what was happening.

Despite that, I did still enjoy reading the story. It was very fast paced and even with knowing where the story was headed, I still wanted to continue reading to see how all of the plotlines came together.

I will still pick up some of this author's other books because I can see myself really enjoying some of their other writing!

Thank you to NetGalley, Ballantine/Random House Publishing, and the author for an advanced copy of this book!

“The Drift” by C.J. Tudor is a post-apocalyptic, mystery and adventure thriller. I enjoyed it and believe that fans of Stephen King and after-the-end-of-the-world tales like “War of the Worlds,” “The Omega Man,” “World War Z,” “The Road,” “The Book of Eli,” and the like may well enjoy it too.

I’m going to try, very hard, not to give any of the plot away because asking readers to figure out its many mysteries is a big part of this book. Right from the beginning, Ms. Tudor throws us all “into the deep end of the pool.” While we quickly learn that this is a three-plot story set in blizzard conditions—and that each plot involves 5 – 10 people stranded in a world where things have gone seriously awry—we have absolutely no idea who any of the characters are, where they come from, what country they’re in now, or when or how they came together. The answers to these and other questions are revealed slowly, and gradually. Of course, each revelation leaves us wanting to know more and eagerly turning pages.

Along the way, “The Drift” includes lots of action and adventure. Ms. Tudor—who writes well—knows how to put her characters into dangerous, nail-biting situations. I found some of her more perilous scenes as gripping as anything Ian Fleming wrote for James Bond.

And while “The Drift” is as plot-driven as anything written by Mr. Fleming, it is not as strong regarding character development. Part of the problem lies in the fact that there are so many characters that it's sometimes difficult to tell one from another or to remember who’s who—especially during the first half—and that can cause confusion. And unfortunately, the characters are just not that interesting, especially since most of them have survival as their only objective. We never do get very much about their backgrounds, or hopes and dreams, or disappointments caused by the end of the world as we know it. So, it’s tough to become invested in any of them. Indeed, there probably isn’t a character that I’m going to remember by the end of the week.

A word of caution: for those who are offended by gruesome and/or scatological and/or just plain gross material, this novel has a fair amount of it. I realize this is a tale about surviving the end of the world, but the “yuck factor” can, in places, get pretty intense. I might have preferred the author to leave some of that to my imagination.

Nevertheless, on the whole, I found “The Drift” to be a well-written, tension-packed tale of action and adventure that likely will keep many readers absorbed and turning the pages late into the night.

My thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for providing me with an electronic ARC. The foregoing is my independent opinion.

The Drift is a dystopian horror/thriller that, considering we are just barely post-Covid, might have cut a little too close to our recent pandemic experience. In C. J. Tudor's newest novel, three groups stranded in a post-apocalyptic world during a raging snowstorm provide the framework for a story that is both chilling and terrifying. The way that the author cleverly brings the three stories together at the end is nothing short of brilliant. Dark, gripping and very well written.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group/Ballantine Books and NetGalley for providing an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

In this very dark, apocalyptic novel, there is a raging virus with seemingly no cure, a crazy scientist bent on saving only himself, and a dystopian world where nobody is safe.

Hannah is on a coach headed to The Retreat when it crashes and she finds herself surrounded by dead students, others infected with a deadly virus and yet others with secrets. Who will survive and make it to The Retreat?

Meg awakens in a stalled cable car wondering where she is and who she’s with. They were headed to The Retreat when they were drugged and thrown together in this cable car with no supplies and a storm raging. Who will survive and make it to The Retreat?

At the mountaintop retreat, Carter is an employee who is searching for his friends and finds that things aren’t quite as they appear. Who will survive and make it out of The Retreat?

D.R.I.F.T. stands for Department of Research into Infection and Future Transmission. But are they good or evil? You’ll need to grab yourself a copy of The Drift to find out.

Although I enjoyed this book, I struggled to keep up with its many characters. I found myself having to write down names and tidbits about them to follow along easier. For this reason, I give this book 3 stars. Thank you, NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the ARC. This is my honest review.