I absolutely loved this gripping horror, thriller. It had me on the edge of my seat and I could not stop reading. Following Christa on her way to a remote vacation in the Rocky Mountains, Dead of Winter is an account of everything that went wrong. This is not for the faint of heart. It is gory and detailed. The setting was absolutely amazing though, as well as the plot (love a locked room mystery). It is non stop action. And I loved how Coates fits in things that happened in the past to what's happening in the present. This is one I highly recommend for the TBR! Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for an early digital copy.

Writing: 5/5
Character Development: 4/5
Plot: 4/5

Themes: Mystery, Thriller

Dead of Winter is about a group of people that get stuck in the cold wilderness while heading to a dream winter vacation. When their tour bus gets stuck they are forced to find shelter, however one of them ends up dead. Now they don’t only have to figure out out to be rescued but who is the killer. This was a really good closed door mystery. The entire time I was trying to figure out who the killer was. I really liked the story behind how each person got to be on the vacation. I didn’t guess the twist at the end but I could see the process of how it ended. I love Darcy Coates writing and this one did not disapoint.

I received an arc and am leaving an honest review.

Darcy does it again! Loved Dead of Winter!
🪓🪓🪓🪓
More psychological thriller than horror, and full of twists and turns - fairly reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None but in a wintry snow-filled mountain setting! ❄️🗻 Definitely recommend!!

I very much enjoyed this horror/slasher who done it mystery. The pacing was good, and suspensful. After a few chapters in I had two explanations of how I thought this story would end, and on one of those I was correct. Nonetheless I had a good time reading this book.

Christa wants to lay her past to rest. Wants to move past that terrible night and embrace life with her doting boyfriend, Keirnan. To build something new and wonderful. An out of season trip into the Rocky Mountains, the area Keirnan grew up in, seems like just the ticket. And she loves how excited he is to show her the beauty of this part of himself, the trip promises to be fantastic. At least it promises to be fantastic until a surprise snow storm leaves their tour group stranded part way to the lodge. Until their tour guide turns up murdered. Until the group of strangers she finds herself among starts to dwindle at the hands of a violent butcher and the abandoned cabin they sheltered starts feeling more and more like a trap.

I feel like one could argue as to whether or not Darcy Coates' Dead of Winter counts as a locked room mystery or not, there is quite a bit of wondering around from the characters. But it is definitely a solid mystery with a well developed through line leading to the killer's identity.

That is sort of the crux of my feelings in this one, Coates does a really good job of setting up her killer with a handful of clues and a couple inconsistencies in the Butcher's MO. It is a fantastic drip of information, but it also leaves Christa and the other characters feeling less like a group of people solving the mystery of who is killing them off and more like the victims in a slasher film waiting to die. This also has the knock-on effect of leaving it a little frustrating to be locked into Christa's point of view because the reader only sees what she sees and still gets all the clues. This is not to say that it makes Christa seem less intelligent, but that there is a strong divide between what the characters know and feel and what the reader can figure out. It leaves things a little tiring then, when Christa is desperately trying to figure out who done it without considering all the details. She literally cannot consider all of them.

Coates does a solid job with this though, since the characters are all strangers, everyone is a suspect. Everyone is only working with what they can figure out, sometimes to tragic results. There is only so much any of the characters can know and most of them, Christa included, are fairly closed off about their thoughts. This does a nifty sort of thing where perspective and interaction leaves characters who are fairly flat feeling a lot more three dimensional. The reader finds out bits and pieces, has room to try and figure out if there is a reason why the Butcher is going after these people and, if so, why? Room to try and build connections with short character bits and Christa's musings to try and tie them together.

It works quite well right up to the end of the book where there is a fantastic suspenseful action set piece with Christa on the run. It just kind of hits the wall there because that balance of reader knowledge and character awareness falls flat, leaving the whole thing feeling over long and a lot less solid than it had any right to feel.
On the whole, Dead of Winter is a really solid book with some frustrating rough patches. The mystery is enjoyable, with the question being more why than who with regard to the killings. The characters are well thought out and more multidimensional than it feels like they should be. Even the things I find frustrating have a very clear place in the writing. It earns a four out of five from me and I think I will need to look into more of Coates' work when I get the chance.

I wish I had loved this book since I've heard so many good things about Darcey Coates, but I just didn't enjoy this one. I LOVED the setting, the middle-of-winter-cabin-in-the-woods, but I literally knew who the killer was within the first chapter and the heroine was not the smartest one, ignoring the red flags and not really thinking about what she was doing. I do still want to read more Darcey Coates' books and I'm hoping I'll like some of the other ones. Thank you for letting me read it!

Darcy Coates has written quite the murder mystery novel! A group of people go on a winter trip to a reclusive and exclusive lounge. Along the way the bus is stopped by a downed tree. People go exploring while others chop and remove the tree.
Unfortunately, some people get lost. The tour guide tries to carry on but the bus is stopped by the arrival of a sudden storm. All are found and rounded up to a cabin save one person still missing.
Then things begin to turn an awful way. People are dying, murdered in fact, heads on trees.
Very well done. Kept me guessing. Did not want to put it down. I recommend.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me this ARC.

Dead of Winter by a Darcy Coates
Publishing Date 07/11/23
Rating (5/5) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thank you Netgalley and Poisoned Pen Press for this ebook arc. Loved it! This one was so intense! I did not want to put this one down. This is a must read !!!

A trip gone terribly wrong, with gruesome results. Coates takes us to a barren place in the mountains, following a group of people taking a leisure trip into the Rocky Mountains to Blackstone Lodge. Christa and her boyfriend, Kiernan, are two of ten people, counting their bus driver and tour guide. A downed tree causes what should be a temporary halt while the bus driver cuts it into movable pieces. While waiting it out, Kiernan talks Christa into taking a little walk with him, showing off country he grew up with, and having a moment alone. When it becomes obvious that the weather has taken a turn for the worst, and Kiernan is at a loss on where they are, the pair turns around to try and find their way back to the bus, and safety.

The weather shifts, they become lost, and as they search, they lose one another. Christa, thankfully, is found by the group on the bus, who had all been stranded as well, and taken back to a cabin found by the guide. From there it's too short days of bad weather, and increasingly bad tempers, and night after night of murders and mayhem. Making it out alive might be too lofty a goal for Christa, but she has to try.

Fans will be shocked at how big a leap this book was into horror as a genre for Coates. I've always called her style Cozy Horror, safe for basically anyone who wanted a little spook. This book goes full bore on the details, the gore, and descriptive terror. Solid four star read, and looking forward to more like this!

This was such a great read! It really kept you on the edge of your seat and kept you guessing until the very end. I thought that I knew who the killer was but then boom...I didn't see that coming! As also, Darcy wrote a great mystery! I highly recommend this book and any book written to Darcy!

Let me just say that I was very proud that I predicted who the killer was! I'm not going to lie, Darcy made me doubt the hunch I got while reading through the book but I shouted a loud YES once the killer was revealed lol.
This was a great read overall. The story was a bit drawn out but the book started out great, the middle was a bit eh for me but once you reach the ending, it picks back up again and you will be very surprised once everything is revealed!

A group embarks on what is supposed to be a relaxing retreat for a two week stay at a secluded lodge deep in the mountains. Christa and her boyfriend, Kiernan, are looking forward to solidifying their relationship further but quickly become lost in the woods after their bus becomes stuck. Christa is lucky to find her way to the secluded cabin where the rest of the group have found shelter...but is lucky the right word?!?!
When their tour group guide comes up missing and his head is found skewered into the tree outside their cabin, the group questions who among them is a murderer?? All means of escape and safety are one by one compromised and Christa begins to realize that none of them are getting out alive!! Who's head will be found in the tree next? Did someone lure this group here just to murder them one by one? Has Christa's past mistakes finally come back for redemption?

Wow!! What a ride this was!! I've enjoyed all the books I've read by Darcy Coates but this is by far my favorite! More horror mystery than paranormal as my other Coates reads have been told from the point of view of Christa. I really enjoyed the character development of this book and thought the whole build up from beginning to end was great and I could picture this as a screenplay for an awesome movie! Save this book for your snowed in, winter days!! You won't regret it!!

Thank you Netgalley and Poisoned Pen Press for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC. whoa baby! I couldn’t put this book down. Twists and turns and then more twists and turns. Highly recommend to anyone looking for a great suspense novel, full of thrills and chills.

Huge fan of Ms. Coates so I read everything she writes. This book was completely different from her usual ghost stories but it did not disappoint. I couldn't put it down and read it in one sitting. I see it being turned into a major motion picture and the author has found a new genre.

Dead of Winter
By: Darcy Coates
Publication Date: July 11, 2023

Christa is nervous but excited to go on a winter trip with her recent boyfriend. She has been a bit sheltered since a tragic event she was involved in. They load up on a bus with other guests to head to a remote resort but a series of unfortunate events have left the group to seek shelter in a small hunting cabin as a big winter storm barrels down on them. Something sinister is at play though as the days go on and people keep turning up dead. Who is doing this and are they just a random group of strangers on a trip or do they have more in common?

This book left me in chills, literally! With the hot summer days here this book was a refreshing break from the heat. This was a classic locked room mystery that was intense and shocking. The many characters had unique voices that were well developed. It was gory in the best possible way and kept me guessing. This is definitely a must read summer book!

I loved this book. Very suspenseful and unpredictable. Lots of twists and turns. I couldn't put it down. Highly recommend.

A tense, chilling thriller. Strangers heading to a remote winter getaway are waylaid by a storm. Separated from her boyfriend while hiking, Christa is relieved to find the group taking shelter in a cabin. When people start getting picked off by a killer, relief is replaced by fear and suspicion.
Everyone becomes a suspect but the truth is more shocking than anything imagined.

This book was riveting. The characters were complex and their relationships believable and built over the course of the plot. The arc of the storyline was pitched well, and details were fed to the reader at a pace to maintain interest. Highly recommend!

This is such a cool book! Pun intended? Maybe. The twists and turns come in strong and frequent and it was refreshing that they all worked. It isn’t perfect and left me a bit cold (yep another pun) in the end, but it certainly worth the time.

To my knowledge this is Darcy Coates' first non-paranormal horror/thriller book, and honestly I think she does a fairly decent job of pulling it off. The setting she's chosen, a secluded winter cabin in the middle of a blizzard, is one that works well, and has the added bonus of giving a sensible reason for a lack of cellphone service that in the modern age can end up feeling overly contrived because it's a necessity but not exactly something that is easy to make work. Her main character is likeable but not pathetic or useless and is carrying enough of a backstory to keep you curious about her, and maybe even a little bit wary. I will say that major genre fans (or locked room mysteries mostly) won't be overly shocked at the big who-done-it reveal, but there are enough twists and turns to keep it interesting, and no one will be able to say that her kills aren't enough to chill your blood. I will say the number of characters was pushing the limit of how many people I could keep track of, even though they were all fairly well differentiated, but that, along with my guessing the big reveal, were really my only gripes. I do think it might have been possible to cut a few things out to trim up the page count just a little, but she certainly didn't have a problem keeping the momentum going, and while a few things were a little convenient I'm not sure it's possible to write a story like this and not include such things, so she certainly doesn't loose points there in my eyes. I'm actually surprised this is only the second novel of hers that I've read (although I have my eye on a few more), but either way she's an author I've come to be curious about, and I have no doubt I'll be hand-selling this one to many a customer without feeling bad about it in the slightest. Sometimes you just want an ice cold slasher to keep you cold during those hot summer nights, and this certainly fits the bill.