Big cover love for this one! Clearly a great book to read during these upcoming colder months. It’s just a short read that takes place on a snowy mountain during Christmas but with the added bonus of a scary monster so if you’re looking for a more isolated horror that you could probably read in one sitting, and really want to get into the holiday spirits, check out Cold Snap. Sure I had some minor problems but I enjoyed my time with the story overall.

This was an interesting one for sure. I adored Lindy Ryan’s writing style, she absolutely has a talent for selecting word choice that builds atmosphere, very show-not-tell and I liked it a lot.

The horror was alright, I didn’t find the creature particularly terrifying. As most other reviews have mentioned, there is an animal death, but personally I didn’t find it unreadable. Definitely uncomfortable though - and you SHOULD feel uncomfortable.

I just wish this story had been a tad longer. I feel like it rushed to a close just as things were starting to get interesting. I wanted to know more!

Still, I really did enjoy this one, and I love bite-sized horror. I would recommend this one as a quick spooky winter read.

Poor kitty. If you can't handle animal death couple with spousal death then definitely read up on the triggers for this. The MC suffers from PTSD and frequent flashbacks after the sudden death of her husband and the author captured the feelings of immense grief, guilt, and worry about being a single parent very well. This book was dark and creepy and I liked the atmosphere of a remote vacation cabin in the woods at Christmas time. I think this one is eerie and a good strange and scary quick read.

Whew I was not prepared for this book. If you're drawn to stories where grief manifests as monsters, then this novella is an absolute must-read. Grief horror is a genre that delves deep into the human psyche, exploring the many ways loss can twist reality, and this story hits that mark with chilling precision.

The plot centers on a woman reeling from the sudden loss of her husband in a tragic accident. To salvage her relationship with her fifteen-year-old son, she takes him on a Christmas trip to a remote cabin her husband had already booked. The son is withdrawn and resentful, and the mother, desperate to reconnect, hopes this secluded getaway will help them heal.

But the isolation of the cabin isn't the escape she hoped for. When she begins to see and hear something monstrous lurking in the woods, the story spirals into a nightmarish descent from grief into pure terror. What makes this novella so powerful is how it captures the suffocating weight of guilt and sorrow. The mother is consumed by the belief that her husband's death was somehow her fault, a conviction that only deepens as she senses her son's silent blame. This emotional burden is more than just psychological—it becomes something terrifyingly real, a force that threatens to tear them apart, both emotionally and physically.

The Lindy masterfully intertwines the emotional devastation of grief with the visceral horror of survival against an unimaginable threat. The tension builds relentlessly, making you feel every heartbeat of fear and every pang of sorrow. This isn't just a story about surviving a monstrous presence—it's about the monstrous ways grief can consume us, turning love and loss into something far more terrifying than we could ever imagine. If you crave stories that blend raw emotion with intense horror, this novella delivers in every way. It's heartbreaking, terrifying, and impossible to put down.

I adore the cover of this book and think it encompasses the story well.
I enjoyed this story but I do wish it was a bit longer. I enjoyed the ending a lot but wish more happened in the first half. I did like the themes explored such as loss
And the horror aspect. This was a quick and easy read and perfect for a train ride.

I loved the cover of this book,

This was a short a brutal look at grief and all the horror that encompasses it.

Christine and her teen son Billy are celebrating Christmas in a remote cabin in the woods.,Spotty WiFi and just each other and their cat Haiku. Christine’s husband suffered a tragic fall hanging Christmas lights. The entire holiday is shrouded in anger and grief.

The story is a little disjointed, but I feel that was the atmosphere of the grief and isolation. Christine begins hearing her husband’s voice and sees a strange ethereal moose. Is it a moose? Monster?

Trigger warning for animal hurt.

This one wasn’t for me. Honestly, I felt confused the entire time and it was so repetetive. This story didn’t really give me anything unfortunately.

Reminded me a LOT of the babadook if it was written by Stephen Graham Jones. Really harrowing, really compelling, compulsively readable.

This was absolutely a chilling novella about grief and loss. A mother takes her son to a remote cabin in the Pennsylvania woods after her husband dies. Soon she discovers there is a figure in the woods. This book was atmospheric and haunting. My only wish was that I could read it in the middle of winter, but I absolutely loved this novella and recommend it to anyone who needs a spooky book in their life!

I'm not sure I can articulate what I've just read, but then I'm not sure Ryan can either.
I've read and enjoyed many fever dream style stories but Cold Snap felt more like the author had written all the plot scenes and made no attempt to glue them together. Whilst the overall disjointed effect certainly upped the tense pacing, leaving the reader no time to digest what on earth is going on, it felt confused rather than purposeful.

The continuous interjection of Christine's final moment with her husband realistically portrayed the trauma of his death but quickly became annoying, it appeared to be used as an interlude that destroyed any natural flow of the storyline.

Every move Christine makes is senseless- perhaps to be expected from a woman so deep in her grief but her son was worse. A stereotypical teenager obsessed with his phone yes but Ryan made him cruel rather than sad, silently watching his mother do everything wrong just to keep pointing it out and sighing.

I didn't like either character, I didn't like the writing style. The ending was thankfully abrupt and the meaning obvious if plenty bleak. I did enjoy the setting and the moose monster! The book is blessedly short so if you're looking for a little winter insanity then grab it, but set any expectations aside.

"A grieving mother and son hope to survive Christmas in a remote mountain cabin in Pennsylvania, in this chilling novella of dread, isolation and sinister spirits lurking in the frozen woods. Perfect for fans of The Only Good Indians, The Shining and The Babadook.

Two weeks ago, Christine Sinclaire's husband slipped off the roof while hanging Christmas lights and fell to his death on the front lawn.

Desperate to escape her guilt and her grief, Christine packs up her fifteen-year-old son and the family cat and flees to the cabin they'd reserved deep in the remote Pennsylvania Wilds to wait out the holidays.

It isn't long before Christine begins to hear strange noises coming from the forest. When she spots a horned figure watching from between frozen branches, Christine assumes it's just a forest animal - a moose, maybe, since the property manager warned her about them, said they'd stomp a body so deep into the snow nobody'd find it 'til spring.

But moose don't walk upright like the shadowy figure does.

They don't call Christine's name with her dead husband's voice."

But why was her husband hanging Christmas lights if they weren't going to be there for Christmas?

2.5 stars!!!
Cold Snap By Lindy Ryan is a horror holiday novel? Who really knows. At first this book feels like it has all the elements for a good story but somehow falls short in its delivery. The story centers on a grieving mother and her son trying to keep the holiday spirit alive, despite her husbands recent accidental death. From the story you gather that her husband fell of the roof, and she didn't reach his hand in time, because of this she feels extreme guilt. She ends up staying at this cabin with her son and some weird events start to take place. Voices are heard, a killer Moose is on the loose, and their cat gets mutilated by said Moose.

While it was a story of grief and guilt, I thought the plot overall fell short. The author spends the first 50-60% of the book harping on these flashbacks the wife has and her conversations with her son, who just seems to grunt at everything. Besides the chase at the end and the scene with the cat, I kept waiting for actual horror elements. I was very confused at how abruptly the book ends, without any explanations.

Thank you netgalley and the publisher for a ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Reading this makes me shiver. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise, and it was quite uncomfortable.

The eerie atmosphere added to the unsettling feeling within me. And what happened to the cat—Haiku. OMG. I don’t even want to go there. That alone made me close the book and breathe for a while. It was suffocating.

If you’re not brave enough to read about animal mutilation, don’t even bother picking this up. I had to stop reading at that point. Nope! I can handle anything—the darkest, most disturbing thriller, the dirtiest, bloodiest Splatterpunk—but not this. No, sir.

To Titan Books & Netgalley: Thanks for the ARC. I tried to finish it, but I failed. Miserably.

thank you net galley for the arc copy. this is about christina who is dealing with the death of her husband. this story was good, just left me wondering if she was really losing ,or if these thing are really happing.

Christine and her son Billy are going up to an isolated cabin in the mountains that her husband booked before he died suddenly. Christine and Billy debate on canceling the cabin rental, but Christine needs time away from home, the place where her husband died, to clear her head. Throughout the story, she’s reliving the incident and everything serves as a reminder. She tries to be the parent her son needs, but she has survivor’s guilt and feels that it would’ve been better if she died in place of her husband. Christine, sees a creature in the woods that resembles a moose and then strange and terrible things start to happen around them. Christine and Billy are miles away from another human, snowed in with a vehicle that isn’t equipped for traveling in snow.

This story depicts a good picture of PTSD from a recent trauma. Some things seem repetitive at first, but then you realize it’s an example of how everything makes you think about the event that changed your life. The sayings Christine repeats in her head begin to take on deeper meanings throughout the book. While reading this it’s difficult to tell if it’s an unreliable narrator-type story or if the creature is real.

I enjoyed this book, I can see why some people might not like it. I’m not much of a horror reader, but I love weird books and this was quite creepy and weird. There is also some gore and other triggers to be aware of. As a mother and someone who lives in an area that gets great amounts of snow and has moose, I connected with the story. The ending was one that left you saying “What? Seriously, that’s how it ends!?” which you either love or hate. I personally, liked the ending. This would be a great story to have for a book club to have conversations about how everyone interpreted the ending.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the tropes. I think this book would be fun to discuss with others who’ve read it and can discuss the spoilers. I look forward to finding more works by this author.

Thank you to Netgalley and Titan Books for allowing me to read this book early for an honest review.

Oh wow! I was hooked by the end of the first paragraph and could completely imagine being Christine on that cold winter night.
Overall, the description made me feel like I could see and hear everything I read, totally absorbing me into the story. An eerie setting in the middle of the woods was perfect for building tension.
I particularly liked the Stephen King references but previous knowledge of any of his stories is not essential to enjoy this novella.

The constant references to the tragedy at the start of the book and the snapping in and out of reality created quite an unsettling atmosphere which I thought worked really well. Great to read by the fire on a cold dark night!

This was one of the most unnerving stores I’ve read in a long time. From beginning to end there was a sense of creeping dread that never goes away.

I read the whole thing in a single sitting.

I really appreciated the message the author was conveying in the Novella Cold Snap about grief and loss but the writing style and the way the second half of the story went just didn’t do it for me.

This was interesting, albeit a confusing read. I didn’t really know what was happening but I still felt uneasy reading it. The entire book conveyed a feeling of being watched. The writing itself was easy to digest, it’s more the plot I struggled with. A mixed bag for sure!

This novella sadly didn’t really work for me. It had a lot of elements that I love in horror (Christmas, isolation, a snowy mountain, a strange creature) but it didn’t all come together. I did love the setting and atmosphere, but the plot felt confusing.

Christine repeatedly revisits the death of her husband in her mind and while I assume the point of these sentences spliced into the narrative was to show how grief tends to forcefully inject itself, I did just find it a bit repetitive after a while. Then when the spooky things started happening I often found myself confused by what was actually going on. I don’t mind a story where the reader is left unsure about whether something is real or all in a character’s head, but the execution here left me confused about what was supposed to be happening (whether real or imagined).

But this might work for anyone who's after a snowy setting and a fever dream feeling ending!