[Review] The Drift A Novel - C. J. Tudor

Summary: Hannah awakens to carnage, all mangled metal and shattered glass. Evacuated from a secluded boarding school during a snowstorm, her coach careered off the road, trapping her with a handful of survivors. They’ll need to work together to escape—with their sanity and secrets intact.

Meg awakens to a gentle rocking. She’s in a cable car stranded high above snowy mountains, with five strangers and no memory of how they got on board. They are heading to a place known only as “The Retreat,” but as the temperature drops and tensions mount, Meg realizes they may not all make it there alive.

Carter is gazing out the window of an isolated ski chalet that he and his companions call home. As their generator begins to waver in the storm, something hiding in the chalet’s depths threatens to escape, and their fragile bonds will be tested when the power finally fails—for good.

The imminent dangers faced by Hannah, Meg, and Carter are each one part of the puzzle. Lurking in their shadows is an even greater danger—one with the power to consume all of humanity. (Pub Date: Jan 31 2023)

 

Calling this chilly isn't to make a pun, this was scary in many degrees, even if it's not a book I'll remember for life. 

This is probably another child of the quarantine. Even though we could say we have three different stories happening in the same universe, they're all claustrophobic. The world is facing a highly contagious disease and each of the three main characters are doing their best to survive. One is stuck in some sort of refuge but that is running down and without much hope of getting help, so they need to fight for themselves. One is on a cable car to get there when the car gets stuck and the group gets desperate. And the other in on a bus full of students from a boarding school going to a retreat as well, when it gets into an accident in the middle of nowhere. 

More than wanting to know what would be of all of them, I was mostly curious about how the stories would connect and got a good explanation to it. It mustn't have been easy to plan for all of that, either, even if it's not so complex.

There is a lot of action and plot twists, but having three basically independent stories made it hard to follow the side characters. Even harder when a lot of them died along the way. Like, I've finally got to understand who this name connects to whom in this scene, why did you have to kill them? That shows it was also hard to care much for them.

Still, if you like action and some scares, this is a book for you. In the end the plot didn't deepen as much as it could in such an apocalyptic world. I imagine Tudor wants us to read it more than once to catch details we wouldn't on the first read, and I don't think I will do it. This or that detail didn't sit well with me either when I started contextualizing with reality, it made me uncomfortable the book could transmit the wrong social message when we're still fragile about the pandemic. 

It's good for a momentous fun at least, for that it will work like a good page turner should.

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Rating: 3 out of 5.