This might be Darcy Coates best book yet!

The remote cabin with a snowstorm outside is a fantastic setting and I was flipping the pages because the dread and unease doesn’t let up.

"Dead of Winter" starts with a bus load of strangers heading to a resort in the Rocky Mountains for some winter fun and vacation time.

Christa is a bit nervous but excited for the trip that her boyfriend Kiernan planned for them. She’s had a bit of a rough time for the last few years and feels like this trip will be a great experience for them as a couple, and help her put some past demons to rest.

As they head toward the resort, things start going from bad to worse. The group finds safety in a remote cabin that’s not too far from the resort. If they can just bunker down for a few days to let the snowstorm pass, they’ll be able to hike there for help.

But there’s a killer among them and this killer has other plans for the group of strangers. Not only is Kiernan and Christa in deep trouble, but so is everyone else.

"Dead of Winter" has the same feel of Agatha Christie’s "And Then There Were None". I loved it!

I think I might be the exception with the fact that I guessed who the killer is but here’s the thing.
I also think Agatha has fine tuned my abilities of mysteries and I might be a bit warped with figuring this one out. hahaha
The great thing with this book is I had an idea of who it might be, but Darcy Coates still keeps me guessing all the way to the end.

Kudos to her on producing a thriller that has you gripped with tension and dread! The gore, action and madness of this one was just top notch. I loved it!!

I just read “Dead of Winter” by Darcy Coates. I went in blind but assumed it was horror based on what I’ve heard about the author. It’s not horror but a great, fast paced thriller!
A group of people find themselves isolated during a snow storm and start getting brutally murdered one by one. Not a new concept at all but I still found myself doing the “just one more chapter” thing late into the night.
I will definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a thriller!

Great story full of twists and mystery. The added suspense of the storm and being trapped in the middle of nowhere gave this one an even more eerie and spooky vibe that I really enjoyed.

I received a digital advance reader’s copy of Dead of Winter by Darcy Coates via NetGalley. Dead of Winter is scheduled for release on July 11, 2023.

Dead of Winter follows Christa, a woman on a bus tour deep in the Rocky Mountains. A felled tree, followed by a massive snowstorm trap the group of relative strangers in a tiny cabin with no way to call for help. On the first night in the cabin, the tour guide goes missing, then is found dead. As the bodies begin to accumulate, the chances of survival dwindles. Christa’s only hope is to figure out who to trust and who among them is the murderer.

For me, this was a book of two halves. The second half of the book was very tightly focused on who the killer was, and why they were killing these people. As secrets unraveled, and characters began to find commonalities, and work together to find a way out, I kept reading to find the answers to my own questions. While I did see the big twists coming, the pieces of the mystery fell together in a way that made sense.

The first half of the book was less successful for me. Honestly, I almost stopped reading after the first two chapters. In the opening chapters, we are with Christa and her boyfriend. They have gotten separated from the group, and are fighting to get back to the bus through an ever worsening storm. We have no sense of who these characters are, or why they are in this situation. It was difficult to care what happened to them. From these chapters, I thought this was a wilderness survival story, and almost put it down.

After those chapters, we jump back in time to the bus ride up the mountain, where we meet the rest of the group and find out where we are and where they are headed. This set-up for the story felt very clunky, with explanations for why this group of ten or so people was headed to a lodge that was supposedly closed for the season.

With this many characters and only Christa’s point of view, I did not get a good sense of who any of the characters were, which made it lack impact when characters began disappearing and dying. Despite being with Christa for the entire story, at the end I had no more understanding of who she was than I did when we met her in the snow at the beginning.

Overall, Dead of Winter had a premise with potential that did pull together toward the end. With more character development, and some adjustments of the set-up, this could have been a solid isolation thriller.

Eleven people climb onto a bus set for a lodge in the Rocky Mountains, located literally in the middle of nowhere. After stopping due to a tree fallen in the road, Christa and Kiernan wander off to get a view of the scenery. A storm sets in and the pair get lost, but Christa is miraculously found by her bus-mates and pulled into a tiny shack in the woods. The tiny cabin is too small for the 10 people from the bus, but it is keeping them out of the elements for the duration of the storm. During the night, Brian the guide goes missing. His head is found the next morning impaled on a tree near the cabin (and what of his body...?). Apparently the nightmare is only beginning.

This book was very Agatha Christie, but that didn't stop it from being really quite good. I will say that I guessed the villain around the halfway point, although the author did make me doubt myself repeatedly. I just could NOT put this down. In fact, my Kindle died at the 55% mark (RIP, dear friend) and I absolutely panicked. But I needed to know how it ended so badly that I did something I hate and read nearly half of it on my phone. This is my favorite Darcy Coates book yet.

4 1/2 stars.

4⭐️

My first read by this author. The fear of missing out was real as I’d heard some good things about it on social media I had to read it asap.
This is a combination of a very claustrophobic closed circle mystery/ but veers more to slasher horror. It’s dark and blood thirsty! With some quite graphic description. It’s got a decent amount of action too.

It starts with a great level of fear and tension with Christie and Kiernan wandering around in a blizzard totally lost fearing death. I think that section is my favourite of the book.

There’s quite a large group on the bus, so a number of names to get to grips with.

Christie & Kiernan- a couple lost in blizzard
Steve- trucker. Miri his wife
Hutch -DJ
Blake-911 dispatcher
Simone - ex army
Alexis- about her not readily revealed
Denny-mechanic and son Grayson
Brian - guide/bus driver

It would make a great horror film for sure! I really liked Christie, badly debilitated by frost bite, but still plucky and a very proactive member of the group, and wanting to do the right thing for the group.

Slasher horror is not my go to genre, it’s very well executed and keeps the reader on the backfoot for the duration. I enjoyed it, one for you if you love horror, may not be for you if you prefer locked room / closed circle mysteries.

Wow this book was a twisty ride. What sounds better then a winter retreat in the woods? Unplugged from the outside world and just relax and seaters. Could be great if a killer wasn’t on the loose. I was hooked from the first page and didn’t want to put this one down. Every time I thought I had something figured out, it twisted again and I was wrong. The ending was definitely not one I saw coming either.
You are not gonna want to miss this book. Special thanks to netgalley for this book!

~ 3.5 stars rounded to 3 stars ~

I've been going back and forth with myself about this read ever since I finished it. On one hand, I was ensnared by the plot very early on. I love a fun, sloppy gorefest, and this book really delivered in that regard. I used to describe Coates' works as light/cozy horror, but after this, I think she has thoroughly demolished that label. She was absolutely merciless with this story, and I am so here for it!

On the other hand, the mystery aspect was incredibly weak. Maybe if you've never read a mystery/thriller, the ending of this book would come as a surprise, but honestly, it's full of well-known tropes that were just too obvious in their execution. I already knew who the killer was in the first 30 pages of the story and figured out the rest of it (motive, the plot progression) shortly after. This didn't feel like a situation where there was a trail of well-placed clues that I happened to pick up on. It just wasn't a very well-executed mystery to begin with.

Overall though I had a lot of fun reading this. Loved the brutality and how quick everything plunged into chaos. The atmosphere was incredible, and I really felt like I was sharing in the character's claustrophobia and paranoia. Definitely worth picking this one up!

Oh my! I needed a nice chipper book after reading Dead of Winter. What an utterly sinister book of unrelenting terror. The winter storm, the suspicious travelers, and the claustrophobic cabin sucked me in and gave me nightmares but in a good way. After a few calming books I'll read more by Darcy Coates. With the lights on.

I loved the setting for this story - an isolated cabin in the middle of a snowstorm, and there’s a killer on the loose, picking people off one by one. However, it did just not work for me.

For the most part, the characters were not unlikeable; they were just bland and I didn’t care about any of them. There was some tension, but they never really turned on each other at the level that I was expecting from characters in this situation. Nor were they presenting a united front in surviving. I think this, along with the characters themselves, made most of the book drag. For me, I found the last 20% to be the most exciting part of the story, but even then, it didn’t have me on the edge of my seat.

This thrilling read starts with the worst vacation ever! You aren’t sure what is going on, other than never-ending murder. Once the remaining vacationers figure out what they have in common, the bad guy was pretty easy to guess, if you were paying attention. The story is fast-paced and keeps you engaged throughout.

Thank you to NetGalley, Poisoned Pen Press, and Darcy Coates for the eARC.

Isolated mystery thriller with heavy slasher horror elements.

This was everything I wanted Ruth Ware’s One by One to be but wasn’t. And I know that isn’t fair to bring up another book by another author to compare at all times, but in this case, that’s what I feel is the closest related book.

Darcy Coates wrote this book masterfully. It felt like a horror movie with characters being picked off one by one in pretty dark and gruesome ways.

The whole time the finger gets pointed to each different character in the book and leaves you questioning who is murdering all the other characters.

While I called it right away and was correct, it was still fun to get to the ending.

My only problem and it’s minor is that the book felt a little slower in the first half than the second half, but it picks up fast!

I enjoyed the characters and I liked being in Christa’s POV.

Highly recommend, especially if you want an isolated mystery with a bit of an edge.

Wow wow wow! That's all I can say! This book really keeps you on the edge f your seat the ENTIRE time! Dead of Winter is one of the best thriller books I have read in a while! If this book was a road, I would get motion sickness from all those twists and turns! Defiantly recommending this book to everyone I know

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63264519-dead-of-winter


https://www.bookbub.com/reviews/2177165628

I will post my review on Amazon on release day

Murder mystery about a tour group stranded in the Rocky Mountains being picked off individually. The tour group has trust issues as no one knows who they should trust. The murders are gruesome. How anyone can commit these crimes repeatedly in such conditions and display them without being caught is remarkable. No animals ever threaten the tour group or their remains. They only have to fend off each other and the snow.
This was an interesting read. It didn't pull me in. I didn't feel anxious at any point in this book. I wasn't invested in the characters. I did want to know how the book ended. The ending was abrupt and gave me that it's done feeling. I'm happy for people who found this exhilarating. I just feel this could have been fleshed out more.

Thanks to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for an e-arc in exchange for an unbiased review

Stuck in a remote cabin in the Rocky Mountains eight people begin to die one by one…who’s doing the killing and can any of them be saved? My gosh, this book was tense, the plot grabbed me right away and who doesn’t love an ode to And Then There Were None? The setting was perfect and Coates described it brilliantly, I could feel the bitter cold and the intensity in the atmosphere. It was great getting inside our main character, Christa’s head and learning her back history as the story is told from her singular point of view. The other travellers are fully fleshed out, realistic, all are important to the plot and have a significant role.

The winter weather on the mountain is like another character and causes almost as many problems as the people themselves. That ending was perfect because just when I thought I was so smart and had everything figured out, Darcy Coates threw a monkey wrench into the works and the ending blew me away. (I guess I am not as smart as I thought 🤔)

I was really pleased with how good this book was, it takes guts to take on a book that is anything close to Agatha Christie…kudos to the author for that, she did an amazing job of it and she made it uniquely her own. This is really more of a tribute and not a copy.

If you like dark, claustrophobic locked room type mysteries with flawed realistic, multifaceted characters this book is for you. And let me say that the mystery is just that, a mystery because there were red herrings throughout and I kept changing my mind on who the culprit was. This is my fourth read by Darcy Coates and I think it’s her best.

A truly terrifying psychological thriller and equally terrifying characters!! A well thought out and written novel. I gave it 3 stars because there were many chapters that droned on and on and I skimmed a lot of the story & didn’t miss anything. The ending will leave you speechless!!

I love a good scary story. There's nothing like being stranded in the snowy Rocky Mountains and stuck in a ramshackle hunting cabin with a small group of strangers who had been on their way to a Lodge for a winter retreat. One by one they are being beheaded and our narrator Christa knows it must be one of the people she is stranded with.

Christa realizes that she can't trust anyone and therefore has to be on her guard 24/7. The snowstorm is relentless while they are there. One of the major problems is that each person must leave the cabin to relieve themselves and that is when the killer attacks, so everyone is watching everyone and trying to keep track of who is outside and who is inside.

As numbers dwindle some of them start to figure out that they are a group selected because each of them is connected to an event that happened a few years ago that resulted in a young man's life. But there always seems to be a missing piece to the puzzle. The puzzle is solved in the end.

The book just ends abruptly, and I would have liked to find out what happens to any survivors and the killer.

Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for an Advanced Reader copy of this book!

Such a great book that gave me the chills from the setting and the writing. A locked room YA horror novel, this one pushes all the buttons for me!

Want summer chills? Read Dead of Winter.

Stuck in a snowstorm, a group of tourists must survive when one of them appears to be picking them off one by one. There was a lot going on throughout the book, and I was hooked from the first couple of pages. In the beginning, there was a time jump that felt unnecessary, as the book jumped back in time for 2 chapters, then jumped right back. Otherwise, even though I had an idea who the killer was from early in the book, the author did a fantastic job of making me second-guess myself until the big reveal. Great book!