“The Drift” by CJ Tudor is a post-apocalyptic mystery/thriller book. If you are one still struggling with books based around the COVID-19 pandemic (a few people I know still are), then be forewarned before reading this book; it can be a lot too close to home. I won’t get into the plot except to say that there are three different points of view and they all occur near the same place. I found this book to be more about survival but also using your wits and puzzling things together. There is a bit of gore in this book, which if I’d been reading it during the day I woudn’t’ve minded, but at night before turning in - I started skimming a bit (I didn’t need those bits to infiltrate my dreams, thank you). I did like how Ms. Tudor fit the stories together in the end, though the little bits of potential supernatural weren’t my cup of tea (though was it supernatural, maybe they were hallucinations or wishes?). I did like a number of the action scenes - especially those with the cable car (or maybe I’m just a sucker for closed room who-done-it cop mysteries). In summary, if horror, mystery, and post-apocalyptic are your jams, this might be a book up your reading alley. This is definitely an engaging and fast-paced read.

Hannah and a group of other people are traveling to the Retreat, a super secret destination that required they surrender their cell phone before boarding the bus that would take them to their destination. A traffic accident has caused the bus to veer off the road and down an embankment, killing and wounding many of the passengers. As a blizzard roars in, they seem to have little chance of survival. Trapped on a stalled tram, thousands of feet in the air, Meg and a group of people destined for the Retreat, where they will be working, are horrified to discover one of the passengers on board is dead. Meanwhile the wind begins to howl as the snow falls ever faster. At the Retreat, Carter and other workers who keep the facility running, are dismayed when their only source of power, a generator begins to fail. As these characters struggle to find a way to survive, they must also face the reality that the end of the world as we know it looms ever loser. Five years ago, a book about a worldwide deadly pandemic would have been either a thing of the past or pure science fiction, in the wake of the Covid pandemic, Tudor’s book is too close to reality to be anything less than terrifying. Tudor is remarkable and should be on the shelves of anyone who enjoys intelligent thrillers

Wow! This post apocalyptic and claustrophobic thriller makes you shiver and sucker punches you with its brilliant twists and entertains you a lot with its pure dark sense of humor!

There are three different storylines with bunch of different characters make you think this book takes place in near future with a huge crowd of characters like Stephen King’s apocalypse thriller Stand where the virus keeps affecting the nation and only a few people are the survivalists! Well, there are some similarities but a huge twist make you think about that entire story’s execution again! So give your full attention not to get tricked by ultra intelligent author!

Welcome to the Department or Research into Infection and Future Transmission a. k. a DRIFT if you don’t hate acronyms! And let’s quickly meet with Hannah, Meg and Carter who are trapped in different places in the middle of Choler pandemic which is dangerously infectious and turns into people into Whistlers ( a kind of zombies who lost their extra status at after the last season of Walking Dead, are named after whistling sound they make through their lungs) .

Unfortunately the traditional vaccine trials fail. So the government’s special scientists extracting blood plasmas from the survivors who are used as volunteered Guinea pigs to provide the immunity. Scientists’ trial centers such as Retreat is mostly used that incarceration of the people who are infected and extracting more blood plasma.

Hannah, medical student of a genius professor father finds herself locked in a coach that has careered off the road with a bunch of survivors/ boarding school students including a sarcastic annoying girl, a German MacGyver, a short-nerdy- infected boy, a bulky brother and his highly injured sister. Somebody sabotaged their ride and all of the students hiding big secrets. Could they find a way to get out of the coach?

Let’s meet with another main character Meg: ex police officer, locked in asylum for months after committing suicide several times. She is grieving her little girl Lily’s lost and she is volunteering for the tests that will get practiced at Retreat but now she is trapped in a cable car that stopped in the middle of nowhere, dangling from wires, with a bunch of strangers. And there’s a dead man in the cable car. She knows who he is. That means one of the people in the car is a murderer.

And Carter, whose faced blown away, working at bizarre ski chalet with his companions. When he returns back from grocery store, he realizes there’s an electric outage and two of his companions were brutally killed. Why and who? There are dangerous things in the basement caged behind locked doors. What if somebody set them free?

You keep asking what’s the connection of those different characters? You’ll get very pleasant and satisfying answer to your question. So keep reading patiently and enjoy the ride!

Especially the last chapters of the book made me scream WTF loudly! I giggled several times and jumped from my seat with pure adrenaline rush! This book is a little different from the author’s other works! I think this is so far my favorite book of hers!

Many many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing / Ballantine for sharing this amazing digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.

Woah! What? Wow!
This could have taken place during the pandemic at any point! It is just that incredible!
The retreat that people have been invited to and will be attending, is not quite that! But will the group ever even arrive?
There is a massive blizzard that threatens to kill them all before they can arrive to the retreat.
Then- there are people stuck in the same snowstorm that are in a cable car that has quit!
Are these people infected with this virus? Can they get the proper medical attention?
Is this really a planned way to dispose of people and by whom???
The answers all lie within the pages of this very descriptive, well thought out, intense novel.
I honestly had no idea what I was going in to, but I will say that I wanted out real quick!
If you enjoy mystery, Sci-fi, and horror then you will love this book!

Thank you to NetGalley and to Random House-Publishing Group- Ballentine for the opportunity to read this ARC and to provide my own review!

This one wasn’t quite my cup of tea. I enjoy some end of the world books, but this one was a little close to home after the pandemic and it freaked me out.

A horror story in the middle of an apocalypse! In The Drift, we meet three different heroes trying to survive in or around a place called "The Retreat." Hanna is in bus with other students headed to the Retreat, Meg is also on her way with a group of adults via a cable car. Carter is an employee at the Retreat searching for his colleagues and friends. All have been cut off from the world during a dangerous viral outbreak (overturned bus, dangling cable car and abandoned facilities.

Take on this book if you dare! It's dark and daring and on the tail of COVID 19 maybe a little too close to home. CJ Tudor has done an excellent job of creating 3 interesting protagonists that are connected but not revealed until the end of the book. There is some gore, some shocking moments and like all apocalyptic novels, lots of death.
If you like your dystopian, locked room stories, or just interested in a new snowy thriller, The Retreat is for you!

Three different groups of people stranded during a snow storm. Working against a sinister force outside while worrying that not everyone is who they may seem to be, this one keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire time. The first thing that comes to mind when reviewing this is how incredibly well this author writes her stories. I don't even know how to explain exactly what I mean by that without spoiling it but I am highly impressed. The beginning was a bit confusing to me and I felt like I had no idea what was going on but don't worry, it's supposed to be like that. When reveals are made, you won't be questioning anything. Forewarning, this is not an uplifting read. This is dark, sinister and honestly quite depressing. But it works and it works beautifully. This one is one of my more favorite from this author and it definitely sticks out. I can easily see this as a future series or movie. Four Stars.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for this ARC.

This book follows three groups of people in different settings and in different dangers, all with the goal of not becoming infected and dying of a virus or even worse, living after having been infected. This is an end of the world adventure. Every minute counts and everyone is hiding something.

The three groups are tied together and that will come out as the story unfolds. This book was creepy, suspenseful, filled with twists and turns and brought out some of my own phobias while reading it. Very creative and the ending should surprise everyone.

I could barely put this book down. It was that good.

I want to thank NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the opportunity of this early read.

This was a real page-turner! It tells the story of three separate groups of people following an apocalyptic viral outbreak (which hits uncomfortably close to home). They all face dire situations in the fight to survive in a dystopian world.

I really enjoyed (if that's the right word to use for such a dark book) the switching of stories among the three groups--even though there were a lot of different characters, it was easy to follow. And because each group kept facing different crises, it really kept the action moving, but in a believable way.

I loved the ending--it took me by surprise but made sense.

Would definitely recommend (although probably not right before bed, or you'll be up all night reading to find out what happens next)!

There are three POVs representing three groups of survivors:
Hannah — medical student and survivor of a bus crash full of students heading to a semi-secret mountaintop campus called The Retreat during a blizzard. Half of the riders are dead, the driver has vanished, the exits are blocked and emergency tools are missing. Prior to boarding, they all agreed to give up their phones to protect their destination’s location.
Meg — former police officer and volunteer for an experiment at The Retreat, waking up drugged and finding herself trapped with four others and a dead man in a stranded, swaying cable car she does not remember boarding.
Carter — a frostbite victim who has worked at the ski chalet style Retreat for three years with six others, one of whom is inexplicably missing. Realizing that the oncoming storm might isolate them, Carter has his turn to ski downhill to get groceries and trudge back up.

We know from the prologue that something ghastly and infectious has been affecting the world and we easily assume that Hannah, Meg, and Carter will be joined in an eventual mission to cure or conquer the zombie apocalypse (such things called “Whistlers” lurk in the woods), but that snowstorm is preventing that meeting. Within each protagonist’s group, there’s paranoia, suspicion, dead people, and deepening claustrophobia. It becomes slowly apparent that it’s not just Mother Nature conspiring against them.

Suspense is tripled as each group tries to solve their immediate mystery (like where’s the driver, how did that guy get knifed, who stole the drugs) and each protagonist seems to have an annoying adversary (Hannah’s Cassie, Meg’s Sarah, Carter’s Welland). As the narration unfolds, the stories overlay in a twisty, surprising way.

I admit that nowadays I need to be in a specific mood to read any novel about a pandemic, but “The Drift” appealed to me like pre-COVID thrillers did, back when “The Walking Dead” was just a TV show and “World War Z” was just a showcase for Brad Pitt. And this is pure horror/suspense entertainment. You can’t necessarily trust that the good guys and bad guys will sort themselves out. The book is fond of quoting the first part’s heading “The Earth is full of dead good guys.” It’s an original thriller full of suspense and surprising moments. 4 stars!

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

Literary Pet Peeve Checklist:
Green Eyes (only 2% of the real world, yet it seems like 90% of all fictional females): NO But there are some equally rare grey eyes.
Horticultural Faux Pas (plants out of season or growing zones, like daffodils in autumn or bougainvillea in Alaska): NO All considered, it is a book about snow, lots of snow, covering any flora.

I thought the end of the world mystery was a great idea, it was what I was expecting and it did what I was hoping for. The characters worked in the world that was established and I'm glad I got to know them. It had a great plot and I'm glad I was able to read this.

"True, they were not dead, but if what Hannah feared was correct, that was only a matter of semantics. They would be soon. Not only was rescue unlikely, anyone who did come looking for them wouldn’t be here to help. They would be here to shut them down."

Buckle up your seat belts folks because this is one wild ride!
I really liked this horror/apocalyptic thriller. It was a fast paced read and I didn’t want to put it down. Full of twists and turns and gore in places.
Hanna is headed to the Retreat but her coach overturns and a few are killed. Meg is headed there on a mountain top cable car that stalls and leaves her and a few others stranded in ice cold temperatures. Carter is already at the Retreat but his friend is missing. These 3 peoples lives intertwine in wicked ways.
This is a must read for C. J. Tudor fans.
Many thanks to NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group-Ballentine and Kathleen Quinlan for this ARC!

<b>”The Devil was an Angel once”</b>

It’s been 30 minutes since I’ve finished this novel and I’m still sitting here trying to wrap my brain around this captivating story that C.J. Tudor has written. This is the first novel I’ve read by this author and it surely won’t be the last.

<i>The Drift</i> unfolds during a time of unrest, when the world is being ravaged by a plague-like sickness that rapidly infects anyone and only the rich and powerful are being saved. Those that have means are being sent off to safer places while the infected are sent elsewhere.

The novel is told from three perspectives - Hannah, Meg and Carter. <b>Hannah</b>, a student who is on a bus with 12 other students, on her way to the exclusive Retreat. But before they get there, the bus crashes in a snowstorm, leaving them stranded. <b>Meg</b> wakes up to find herself with 5 other people suspended in a cable car in the same snowstorm. There is no operators in site and the drop below is thousands of feet to their deaths. <b>Carter</b> has worked at The Retreat for years. He and his coworkers are responsible for keeping the place running and keeping the "occupants" in the basement safe. But the snowstorm is causing the power and generators to glitch and soon the locks and the gates will give out, putting them all at risk.

This novel is so captivating that I read it in one sitting. The character development and evolvement is nothing short of masterful. 5 well deserved stars.

A group of students find themselves stranded in snowy mountains, trapped when their coach wrecks during an attempted evacuation. The shelter they find keeps them alive for now, but they have to keep going out to seek food.

The generator won't last much longer, and the thing in the crevasse is more and more threatening. They are closer and closer to death. How will they get out of this predicament?