Cold Snap is a powerful, icy plunge into grief‑driven horror. Its strength lies in mood and emotion, but its ambiguity and intensity may divide readers. If you embrace bleak, evocative stories and can navigate unresolved, haunting endings, it’s worth reading. If you're after a cohesive plot and light scares and animal abuse triggers, steer clear.

This electrifying thriller hooks you instantly with its razor-sharp plot and relentless suspense. Twists are delivered with precision, each one more unexpected than the last. The characters are richly drawn, making every high-stakes moment feel personal. A masterfully written, edge-of-your-seat experience that doesn’t let go until the final page.

Felt a little confused and rushed to me, not quite my cup of tea but still largely enjoyable. I like a novella but this felt like it would’ve been better suited as a longer piece

I went into Cold Snap expecting a chilling, atmospheric horror story with strong emotional distress — and for the first little bit, that’s what it seemed to be. Set against the icy backdrop of a small Appalachian town, the setup is familiar but effective: people with emotional baggage retreat to a remote cabin in the woods, and weird things begin to happen. To quote Dora the Explorer: "¡Vámonos!"

Unfortunately, what begin as isolation horror deeply embedded with grief (the husband died hanging Christmas lights), the story quickly took a turn into surreal territory, and I found myself more confused than captivated. Her dead husband is talking to her, or is it the moose, and events start to feel disjointed — almost dreamlike, but not in a way that ever fully clicks.

What really pulled me out of the story, though, was the cat death — which is not only graphic and disturbing but referenced multiple times throughout the book. I understand horror can be visceral and I don't shy from gore, but the way this was handled felt excessive and deeply unpleasant. And the only person traumatized by it was the kid! Mom was just like "Darn, the cat got stomped to death in the snow by a maybe-moose". If animal harm is a deal-breaker for you, I strongly recommend skipping this one.


There are interesting ideas here — grief, guilt, isolation — but they get buried under so much weirdness and emotional chaos that they never fully land. Cold Snap might resonate with readers who enjoy abstract, metaphor-heavy horror, but for me, it was more frustrating than frightening. I kept waiting for it all to come together or for the deeper meaning to reveal itself, but by the end, I was wondering WTH just happened.

Having loved Bless Your Heart and Throw Me to The Wolves, I was excited to venture into this one, but it missed its mark with me.

an unfortunate example of a fever dream gone too feverish. this novella had a strong start with a chilly ambience, but the narrative got way too disjointed. it lost its eeriness in the snow.

Like other reviewers, I'm not quite sure what I just read. The story is told from the POV of the MFC as she navigates Christmas just a few weeks after the death of her husband, who fell off the roof while hanging Christmas lights. She and her teenage son decide to continue with the trip her husband had planned, spending Christmas in a secluded cabin in the woods. That part was clear. The rest was a sort of fever dream where I wasn't quite sure what was actually happening and what she was imagining or remembering. The author did an excellent job of evoking dread and a sense of helplessness. Was not my total cup of tea, but some of you horror fans will love it!

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher Titan Books in exchange for an honest review.

If I had to sum this book up in one word, it would sadly be 'confusing'. If I had to sum it up in two, it would be 'missed potential'.

Cold Snap starts off with an interesting premise. A woman has just lost her husband in a tragic accident and, rather than cancel her Christmas lodge holiday, she drags her son up to the snowy mountains to spend the holidays there. The beginning of this book is quite promising, with some heartfelt depictions of grief and a spooky setting. Unfortunately as soon as they reach the cabin, the story became fairly incomprehensible to me. There is a difference between ambiguity and understanding what is going on, and sadly this book failed to communicate clearly to me. I can't be scared if I don't connect with the characters or the situation, so this was a major sticking point.

I really wanted to love this book and it's a shame that the style and atmosphere of the beginning didn't carry through to the rest of it. As well as being confusing, the book becomes very repetitive. It's already a short story and yet it begins to drag with the amount of times certain phrases are repeated. It just wasn't what I was looking for

Overall Rating: 2/5 stars

Lord take the wheel with this one.

Who thought that this book is good enough for publishing? It's sounds hars, but did the editors actually read it?
It's a short book, but still took me ages to read it. I thought it would never end. It wa so hard to follow what was happening in this book. To me it was just a bunch of word wommiting, without any connection and mening to the story. And was there a story at all? What did author tried to tell us? I gues we'll never know.

Thanks to NetGalley and Titan Books for the ARC.

Honestly, the mundane conversations between Christine and Billy were better written than the horror parts. It showed the tension within a family after the death of one of their own. There was a lot of potential for whatever that was haunting Christine, and it kinda got too muddled from the cabin onwards. I felt like I was lacking a lot of context for the monster, beyond it being a manifestation of her grief and guilt. It felt too short to really build on what it had going.

This is 100% a situation where I could see what the author was going for and I think they achieved their goal but I'm just the wrong reader. This was a shorter horror read with some really great supernatural and psychological elements. However, it was a little too trippy for me and I wanted to get a good footing in reality before getting into the weirdness. Instead, this pretty much plops the reader right into the mess and it took me some time to get some sort of footing while reading. I think I loved the ending but found myself with more questions by the end and I wanted more of a resolution at the end.

There is nothing quite like hunkering down with a good book on a cold winter’s day, especially a book with a cold winter setting. Christmas in a remote mountain cabin; what could go wrong?

Ryan created a couple of great, sympathetic characters in Christine Sinclaire and her son, Billy. I can feel for her, Christine is in a no-win situation, her husband just died two weeks ago and now it is Christmas. A fifteen-year-old is hard to deal with in the first place, I can only imagine how every decision would have to be second-guessed. I wanted the two of them to work things out, to find a path forward.

Unfortunately, the story just didn’t hit me right. There were some off-putting transitions that made me lose my focus on the story. I was left more than once wondering did that happen or not? It made me disconnect from the story about people I had invested in, I felt the connection with the characters but lost it through the story.

The monster was a bit vague, what was it? Natural? Supernatural? The transitions in the story made everything just out of reach.

I wanted to enjoy Cold Snap, the synopsis really brought me in; but then the story lost me. I don’t know if a longer story would have allowed Ryan to build it up better or if a short story could have been better, one where you get straight to the point of it all. As it stands, Cold Snap left me out in the cold.

*3 Stars

❄️COLD SNAP❄️ by @lindyryanwrites was a crisp and chilly novella full of green and horror. Thank you to the author, @netgalley, and the publisher, @titanbooks for the e-ARC. (And thank you to @night_worms for including this in their December 2024 box!)

🥶🥶🥶

Christine and her son Billy (and their cat Haiku, my favorite character) are headed up to a cabin that her husband rented for them for Christmas. Unfortunately, her husband Derek slipped, fell and died when trying to put up Christmas lights at Thanksgiving. Christine wrestles with her grief while trying to connect with her son who is angry and sad and confused. Then she starts hearing and seeing things...but are they really there?

❄️❄️❄️

This is a quick romp of a story that can be read in a day. It is solid grief horror mixed with an isolated cabin in cold weather which created quite a spooky atmosphere. While I definitely felt for the characters grief, I didn't feel too connected to the characters themselves - somewhat of a hazard to a short story. I did enjoy the descriptions of the cold landscapes!

I really, really wanted to like this book, but once the dead cat stuff started happening and getting super graphic, it was a no from me. It had a really cool premise and plot idea but i think it could’ve been done a little better.

I have to admit I only finished this one bc a good friend of mine did, and she felt that given time reflecting back on the story-that it was good. I don’t think I can say the same, lol. This was like a weird episode of Black Mirror that went no where & had zero point to it. And repetitive talk of the cat was just too much, stop already.

There were some things that hit for me and there were some things that were just meh. The writing style was cool as it felt like floating through a fever dream of words. The moose/slenderman creature thing was very interesting and spooky. I had some issues with the very graphic scenes involving cat mutilation and the subsequent handling of the body afterwards. Blegh! The ending was super ambiguous as the main character is given a choice but we don't see the outcome. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either. It was good for a winter time read.

This is my second read by Lindy Ryan. I really enjoy her writing style.

However, I didn't like the whole cat mutilation/death. If you are comfortable with animal harm then it shouldn't bother you. Unfortunately, it is not something I enjoy.

I was so very excited for this cozy novella! A cabin, in the middle of nowhere, during Christmas had got to be one of my favorite settings of all time. And while I did love the setting, the rest fell short for me. This one read like a fever dream. About half of the book was a flashback and the flashbacks came at very random times. Often during the next paragraph, so I was confused a lot through out the book. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting at the end, but the ending wasn’t for me. A very cozy and creepy Christmas horror, but a bit odd!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy.

Now that the weather is turning, there's nothing better than an appropriately atmospheric book. Lindy Ryan's Cold Snap immediately sunk me ankle-deep in snow and ice and held me tight till it hurt to breathe. Following the loss of her husband two weeks previous, Christine bundles her teenage son, Billy, and their cat into the car to spend the holidays at a remote cabin as originally planned. The only thing colder than the weather is the new frost between mother and son as they contend with their loss. The relationship between Christine and Billy, what brings them together and pulls them apart, is one of the stronger elements of the novella. The flashbacks Christine has to her husband's death are also really great as they literally interrupt the current scene in a jarring but effective way. The moose, whether metaphorical or real, was a terrifying aspect and had a great presence. The setting is rich with potential and was described well.

However, too many aspects of the novella felt ambiguous or unclear and I ended it not really knowing how I felt. The last third is a confusing mix of things that may or may not be happening and it was hard to keep track of past and present. Other reviewers have noted the extreme animal violence, which didn't prevent me from reading further, but also didn't feel fully earned. The hints of domestic violence were never clear enough to reveal much. Whether this is an intentional reflection of how trauma and grief often unfocus our memories or accidental, I can't be sure.

Overall, a quick and entertaining read. I'd recommend it for readers yearning for frosty mountains, families contending with a powerful loss, and anyone who hates the thought of being stalked by a moose.

Cold snap is a psychological horror combining a good old creature feature with our deepest, darkest emotions of fear and loss. I found that Lindy has a great writing style that builds intense dread through the eyes of a women who lost her husband to a tragic accident. The flashbacks, the imagined ( or real ? ) sense of being hunted in an isolated forest just kept me reading, page turning until the very end. Cold snap is one of them books which it will sit within your psyche.

Thank you Netgalley and Titan Books books for this eArc

4 stars

Cold Snap by Lindy Ryan is a haunting and atmospheric novella that delves deep into themes of loss, guilt, and grief. Set against the backdrop of a remote mountain cabin during Christmas, the story follows a grieving mother and son as they confront not only their inner demons but also the literal ones lurking in the frozen woods.

Ryan masterfully creates a sense of dread and isolation, making the reader feel the chilling cold and the oppressive weight of sorrow. The novella’s strength lies in its ability to blur the lines between reality and the supernatural, leaving readers questioning what is real and what is imagined.

The narrative is both horrific and heartbreaking, drawing comparisons to works like The Shining and The Babadook. The emotional depth and psychological horror make it a compelling read that stays with you long after you’ve turned the last page.

If you’re a fan of horror that explores the human psyche and the impact of grief, Cold Snap is a must-read. It’s a story that will consume you, much like the relentless winter storm that traps its characters.