Library Loot Mini-Reviews: To Gore or Not To Gore

I saw a mention of Dead of Winter by Darcy Coates somewhere and even though my only previous experience with this author was a rather workmanlike Gothic, I was all in from the jump. What we have here folks is straight-up cotemporary horror suspense and I inhaled every gruesome word of it.

Christa is heading to a secluded lodge in the Rocky Mountains at the behest of her boyfriend with a small tour group when disaster strikes.  When their bus gets stuck on the road thanks to a downed tree, the boyfriend convinces Christa to go to a nearby lookout point. She thinks he's going to propose, what really happens is the weather kicks up, they get lost, they get separated and Christa eventually finds herself taking shelter in a hunting cabin. That's where the rest of the tour group finds her.  She thinks they're safe. They just need to wait out the epic snow storm.  Um, yeah - not so much.

What we have here is part locked-room and part survival story.  Then the bodies start dropping and the paranoia sets in.  I'm a sucker for suspense stories with survival, man vs. elements plots and this one is compulsively readable.  It's also fairly gory.  I have a high tolerance for gore but for those of you who don't two words: multiple decapitations.  I had the whodunit pegged early on, but the motive kept me guessing and Coates does a good job with misdirection and red herrings.  

A couple of things of note however: 1) this book desperately needed an epilogue.  There's some loose threads regarding a couple of characters I wanted tied up.  Also 2) Coates is Australian, which fine. I can read things like tyres instead of tires.  What wasn't fine?  Christa is American (OK, US'ian) and the story is set in the Rocky Mountains. When Christa is sizing up a secondary character she would not gauge his weight in kilos.  Unless they're a transplant from somewhere that the metric system is the standard unit of measure - nobody in the US thinks in kilos in terms of weight.  Yes, I'm nitpicking - but let me tell you how much that yanked me right out of the story and had me Googling to see where the author was from.

Final Grade = B+

It's thanks to the SoCalBloggers (waving to Nikki!) that I picked up The Soulmate by Sally Hepworth.  If you like suspense, but aren't a fan of gore, this one may be more in your wheelhouse.  It's domestic suspense but without an unreliable narrator or gaslighting!  A dang unicorn!

Pippa and Gabe have an idyllic marriage.  Blissfully in love, two beautiful daughters, and a picturesque home on a beach cliffside they couldn't believe they were lucky enough to afford.  It was after they moved in that they realized why they could afford it.  Unbeknownst to them, there's a portion of the cliff that is a "favorite" spot for people contemplating suicide. With the first person they see, Gabe goes out to talk to them. Charming and disarming Gabe has so far talked down seven people from the cliff.  Then, there's number eight, which is where the book opens.  This woman jumps.  And Pippa was watching from the window.  It sure looked like that Gabe may have...pushed her? No, that can't be right. 

What follows is a story told in alternating points of view between Pippa and the dead woman, Amanda.  Yes, a dead woman is one of the narrators. I know it sounds cheesy, but it actually works.  What also works is how the author ultimately ends up weaving their stories together - it's pretty clever actually.

I kept expecting this story to take a sinister, Machiavellian turn, but it never does.  This is what I call "disquieting suspense." Also, mental illness plays a fairly healthy role in this story - the sort of mental illness that many readers may have experience with in their daily lives.  This will either be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your point of view.  It worked for me, but I'm also not living with mental illness directly in my day-to-day personal life so....mileage is going to vary here.

A quick, engaging listen on audiobook and it's the book that helped pull me out of the dreadful slump I went through in June/July - so bravo!

Final Grade = B+