The Lodge is set in the Scottish Highlands through Christmas, when a accidental death occurs, and the young constable who is sent to the hunting lodge to help gets snowed in with the other guests. When some strange occurrences begin, and other guests begin to get hurt or go missing, they start to suspect something is hunting them. What happens when the hunters become the hunted?

The Lodge has an interesting premise, and when I first read the synopsis I expected a bit of a locked room style mystery. What I wasn’t expecting was a supernatural story, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just wasn’t quite what I was prepared for. The synopsis does make it sound as though we’re getting in to a mystery thriller, so supernatural sometimes does suit that if done well.

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t think The Lodge did this well. For such a short little novella, there is a lot of filler as we’re given background stories about the constable, and the other guests staying at the lodge. This took up a large portion of such a small book, and while it was important to the story, it felt like it overshadowed the actual current events taking place. It lost the bit of thrill and suspense you have wondering about someone who just was gruesomely killed, when you’re suddenly jumping timelines for background of when two characters meet at school. It made is feel disorganized and lacked the excitement I was looking for.

I also found the ending to be a bit preachy, when it all comes together. It felt heavy handed, and the supernatural aspect to it felt silly. It kind of lost all of its redeeming qualities when the message of the story came together for me, especially when it came to Elena.

I can see how this could be a fun novella for some readers, but unfortunately it just didn’t work for me,

I requested The Lodge for review because it sounded like a gory horror set in one of my favourite places on Earth: the Scottish Highlands. I was hoping it would be an atmospheric and spooky read, but I immediately felt let down by the writing style.

The writing felt very juvenile, with lots of exclamation marks within the prose which I do not like. It tends to feel childish and stunted when authors do this, especially to the extent the author of The Lodge used them.

There was also a lot of info dumping, which is not something I typically expect from my horror books. One moment I was reading about the goings on at the hotel, and then I was suddenly switching to what was basically a biography of one of the characters, which talked about what seemed to be their entire lives up until they got to the hotel. It was boring, it was jarring, and I didn't care for it. I feel like this could have been done much more smoothly, if it was even necessary.

Because of this writing style (and the instalove that had?? no?? place?? in such a horror book, I wasn't able to get into the book and I've had to rate it quite poorly. I didn't enjoy it at all.

Freaked me out. Totally freaked. At times i put it aside because i was home alone an sc my only thankfully thing is i have two dogs with perfect hearing because everything i heard freaked me and i could only rely on my dogs ears pricking up. If this author intended to give me nightmares they succeeded!!

Ekkk I am telling y'all I was so excited for the ending of this book because I had no idea what was going to happen! Chris Coppel did an excellent job writing this one. His storyline was awesome and really made the pages come to life. Go and read this one!

In the Scottish Highlands, policeman Andrew is called to examine a dead body at a newly ripened hunting lodge. And then the body disappears. As the guests and proprietors are snowed in with Andrew, they all slowly begin to disappear, and Andrew must figure out what's happening.

This wasn't amazing. The prose was serviceable, and the characters not incredibly Wells drawn. But it is a fun enough, quick enough read with some requisite tragic back stories. I'm always a sucker for winter isolation horror with strange disappearances.

A super quick read that I'm not entirely sure how to feel about. It was gory, terrifying, and unsettling, though I think what didn't land well for me was the bits of humor throughout - I wasn't sure how to reconcile the horror with the humor. I think this is just me, though, and horror fans may enjoy this one more than I did!

This book blew me away! I was unable to but it down. Perfect, dazzlingly, very well written. The details the author described throughout the book was so amazing. The characters and storyline were fantastic. The ending I did not see coming Truly Amazing and appreciated the whole story. This is going to be a must read for many many readers. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! No spoilers. Beyond amazing I enjoyed this book so very much. The characters and storyline were fantastic. The ending I did not see coming Could not put down nor did I want to. Truly Amazing and appreciated the whole story. This is going to be a must read for many many readers. Maybe even a book club pick.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to preview The Lodge by Chris Coppel. Well, this is a real different book. It has all the parts and pieces of a scary as hell book. A mansion, an oncoming snow storm, a strange group of guests, and stuffed animals. But these are not your nice cuddly stuffed animals,,,no they have been stuffed by those who hunted them. I think there is some resentment there...
Quick read - fun and very gory.
3 stars.

Was not a big fan of this book. The writing was not good for me, the characters didn't read as realistic, it lagged at times even though it is a short read, overall not a fan.

I need to preface this review by stating that from looking at the cover and reading the blurb, that I had expected this to be a spooky supernatural thriller with a serious tone. What the book delivered was far from that: campy Christmas horror and vengeful furniture. The set-up was pretty good, a mysterious death occurs in a forboding-looking hunting lodge filled to the brim with disgusting trophies and animal furniture.

I’m glad that I could be eased away from my expectation of a serious book from the earliest chapters. The protagonist was a seemingly bumbling constable that doesn’t seem all that fit for the force and the pages are filled with flirting with one of the hunting lodge employees who is openly vegan.

The story tries to misdirect the reader but it all was pretty predictable from start to finish. The first half of the book, unfortunately, drifts randomly into the backstories of the four main characters, most of which don’t have anything to do with the plot. It seemed to be an attempt to make the reader care about the characters while also providing a distraction from the one backstory that matters, which again was not really needed because it was already kind of obvious.

There was some decent creature horror and at times a creepy atmosphere, but it was sparse compared to the romance and comedy. I also dislike when books have to explain exactly what is causing the supernatural phenomena. The explanation made me roll my eyes and the epilogue was entirely unnecessary.

When I finished I felt really conflicted about what to think about the book. This was one of the rare cases where I thought that the story was so utterly ridiculous it bordered on being bad, but the creative creature horror and well-placed jokes made for a somewhat enjoyable experience. It was the type of campy B-movie horror that will delight the right kind of reader. This book was a swing and a miss for me, but I can appreciate what the author was trying to do.

For me The Lodge was a four star read.... now, who the hell do I recommend this grotesque book to?! 😂
.
If you are squeamish - stay away from this book. If you are afraid of animals, don’t like graphic violence, or the horror genre - stay the hell away from this book!
.
BUT! If you are weird like me and WANT a little fright in your life... then give this book a shot.

YEeessSS I love this soo much and will be buying a physical copy to share with my mom and sister. Page turner and did not dissapoint. Very good read for the winter storm I am trapped in right now!

I love a good horror, especially a strange one. This was a both gory and funny. It's a good intro to horror book for people looking to step into the genre. It was super entertaining, and I loved the plot. It was really easy to follow and I read it in day.

What an unusual slightly strange story, but that is no complaint

I was intrigued with the storyline right from the beginning, and just had to find out what was going to happen

Thank you Netgalley and Publisher for Arc

This book was not for me. It was too weird and I couldn't finish it. I was mistaken by the cover, and the description did seem interesting, although a bit far-fetched.

This book was provided by Netgalley, in exchange for a fair and honest review. Thank you very kindly to both Netgalley and the Author for this opportunity.

My dad was a hunter. Every autumn season, he'd get his hunting gear, load it up in his truck, and head out with the hopes of bagging a deer. That deer would be the source of nearly all of our meat for the following winter and early spring. I helped butcher one year's deer once, when I was a kid -- I got to hold the ziploc bags while my dad and neighbour parcelled out the meat carefully.

We were always taught two things: if you can't guarantee the kill with a single shot, you don't take the shot; if you can't use as much of that animal as possible, you don't take the shot. Sport-hunting was (and still is) a disgusting concept to me, which is why I was so intrigued by this book.

There's a sort of juxtaposition between a hunting lodge -- solid, scrubby, sometimes grimy places meant to act like permanent camps -- and rich folk with guns, shooting things for the thrill of it rather than out of necessity. This Lodge is solid, but not scrubby -- it's large and shiny and clean, designed to bring the wilds indoors so the rich guests can play with their Rich Guest toys. We're introduced to the place as a snowstorm is closing up behind Andrew, the main character, and left to get to know it.

The main points that I'd like to address are:
- Various uses of imagery throughout the book, and how I enjoyed them
- The lack of impact from most of the scenes that should've been emotionally-charged
- The backstory additions, and Andrew’s ‘flashbacks’
- Elena.

Imagery.
There’s something absolutely delightful (in a rather wicked sort of way, I think) when normal, everyday things become totally aberrant and turn on you. A mounted stag head might frighten or disgust someone, but they’re commonplace enough that a lot of people simply don’t question them. The fact that a severed head has been attached to a wooden plaque for all to admire has, at some point in time, lost the grisliness of the reality of it. (The antlers from my dad’s first kill hung in our downstairs living room, holding up a hideous paper mache parrot that I loved.) Taxidermy takes it a little bit further -- the attempt of showing off the animal as it was when alive, trying to convince the viewer that it isn’t as dead as it really is. No amount of glass, wire, and careful stitching can bring back whatever electric reality they had while alive, no matter how skilled the artist.

The Lodge plays on different layers of fear with some of its imagery; the mobility of something that Absolutely Should Not Be Mobile, the perceived inferior intelligence of a living animal being entirely turned on its head, and the very real truth that us, as humans, are little more than meat ourselves. The cool, clinical addition of butchered humans to a meat locker, as if they belonged there just as much as any deer or side of beef, was weirdly awesome in the way that only horror media can (and should) portray. More than anything, a quiet moment of calm with two Entities of Mind-Twisting Nature in front of a fireplace was my absolute favourite bit -- the simplicity of it, and the unexpected tenderness, and the neat way it juggled ‘Terrible’ and ‘Delightful’ between both hands.



Emotional impact.
So, there was a lot potentially going for me, in this book. I liked the concept, and the location, and a fair number of the things presented. It’s a huge shame that, while I could see the bullseye this story was aiming for, it missed the target entirely.

Horror as a genre is an incredibly emotional one. It taps into our fears, or hints at desires that perhaps should remain hidden forever, or provides an outlet for injustices that lets the characters (and authors) let go entirely… but I felt nothing like that from this. It was, ironically, bloodless -- characters living through hellish, confusing scenarios while being trapped in one building together, and I felt nothing, because it seemed as if they felt nothing.

We are invisible companions to the characters, whether we like them or not. We ride in the story alongside them, seeing their struggles and pain, and feeling it alongside them. We should be shown what they’re feeling, so that we can experience it with them -- simply telling us, point-by-point, isn’t enough. We all have our own reasons for connecting with a character -- perhaps it says a lot about me that I connected most with the ginger cat -- but that connection isn’t optional. I felt absolutely nothing for any of the people. Nothing about them drew me to them; none of their backstories appealed to me or my nature; sadness or misfortune didn’t stir my heart for them.

And yet, a dead ginger cat with a broken leg did.

Backstory, and Andrew’s flashback segments.
I’ll admit, these grated on me so much. There was no reason for them to be included in the story, and all they did was kick me from the flow of the plot. They give us a whole lot of information that we really, truly, absolutely don’t need -- all of this information could be woven in organically with the characters interacting with one another, or how they act and think on their own. Any tension that the story might’ve been building up to was broken by the inclusion of a backstory info-dump, instead of using those words and time to let the characters do the work. This is a story about them, presently, as they are; if they want to tell bits of their past, let them do it in situations that allow them to do so.

Information like this is important and often vital for a writer to know, but it is not vital for the reader to always see behind the curtain. Any curiosity for them as characters, as people, is nipped in the bud when all of the information is neatly handed to us in a docket that has nothing to do with the current story events.

Barring Andrew’s. His did, but it wasn’t always obvious. I could see what the author was intending with his, but I just don’t feel that it worked out. The information bloat caused by the other characters’ backstory inclusions just watered-down his, which actually were important to the story. If they were being used as a smokescreen to help keep his personal knowledge of the situation hidden until the last possible moment, treating it like a bit of a false red herring, then that’s just...frustrating. A little bit of readjusting, and some spit and polish here and there, and those flashback scenes of his would’ve moved along with the current story neatly, coming to a close and giving us the final twist of the book right when we were supposed to get it. I was left annoyed and disappointed by this, as I could see the intent was right there, but it simply didn’t work out.

Elena.
Or -- male writers perhaps don’t always realise that the way they’re writing a female character Isn’t Working. A lifetime of tiny, lived experiences adds up and is immediately noticeable to certain people, yet perhaps not to the writer. I am nonbinary, but grew up in largely female spaces, and I was taken aback by the amount of times I did a double-take at something Elena would do that just… wasn’t realistic. Didn’t make sense for a young American woman to do. And yes, everyone is unique and different, but certain things just didn’t make sense, or took on a different cant as she is a woman-being-written-by-a-man.

It’s extremely, extremely weird for a young woman to be so touchy-feely with a man she just met -- especially a cop, and especially as there was just a death on the property. It was boggling to me that she would grab Andrew’s hand to lead him from room to room, or kiss him on the cheek, or compliment his eyelashes -- this is bizarre. Especially bizarre for a woman who, as we later see, is apparently very concerned about her legal documentation in the face of cops.

The way that Elena is written is… a little alarming, to me. She’s pushy (literally in one case, when remarked upon by Andrew) and is very comfortable hopping into Andrew’s personal space at a whim. She doesn’t accept his reasons as to why he’s been assigned to their little Scottish town, and consistently pushes at him for the ‘real’ reasons behind it. She is shown to be apparently considerate, compassionate and empathetic, showing incredible distress when she witnesses the shooting of a deer -- she’s a vegan, and hates the killing of animals, yet despite this she chooses to stay at the lodge, where she’s determined to ‘try to change a mind or two’ about hunting. I think this is all meant to show that she’s warm and outgoing -- but it doesn’t come off that way. It’s disrespectful, invasive, inappropriate behaviour, and it’s never questioned why this isn’t shown as what it is in reality. It’s not questioned that it isn’t up to her to change the minds of hunters -- why would anyone choose to stay in a place that is clearly traumatising for them to be in, for such a flimsy and naive reason? The reality of the question behind this is that it’s often put onto women to be the fixers, the changers. The reality is that nobody would willingly put themselves through this sort of trauma unless they had absolutely no other choice. The reality is that a lot of people don’t see that there’s anything uncomfortable or wrong about a character like Elena -- that troubled me more than any of the gleefully gruesome imagery during the more actionable parts of the book.

If you are a male writer, and write your male protagonist describing his female love interest with the phrase ‘just something about her’, slam on the brakes and figure out what that something is. Develop her character and show us what the Something About Her actually is.

Conclusion.
Unfortunately, a fun concept and nifty location setting can’t carry a story on their own. I very much wanted to like this, but too many things were knocking me right out of the story instead of letting me glide along with it. Too many things didn’t work, or didn’t make sense, or didn’t hit the way they should’ve. This is a 1.5/5 for me, rounded up to 2 stars.

I’d like to thank Netgalley and the Author once more for giving me this opportunity.

“I wish the animals could shoot back.”

Nestled in a remote area of the Scottish Highlands, The Lodge has opened for business and welcomed its first guests. In previous incarnations it had been a farm, then a vegan mindfulness retreat, but now it was open to the hunters and shooters of the world, offering freshly killed and local meat in its restaurant and local malt whiskeys in its bar.

The small town of Kingussie is Constable Andrew Whiting’s first posting since graduation; unlike most new recruits seeking the excitement of the city positions, it was one he had specifically requested. When the call about a sudden death at the newly opened B&B comes in, it is he who goes out in the worsening snowstorm to investigate. One of the guests has choked on a bone during dinner, so all Andrew needs to do is report in and arrange for the body to be collected – unfortunately, the snowstorm has other ideas.

Stranded at The Lodge with no phone service and no way out through the increasingly deepening snow, Andrew must cope as best as he can. Unfortunately, his training never covered what he was supposed to do when the animals fought back...

The Lodge is a quirky combination of gory horror, comedy, and light-hearted mystery. I love the premise – I find the idea of the animals fighting back to be quite karmic - and quickly became engrossed. It’s not massively long or overly complicated, so rattles along at a fair rate, and I ended up reading it in one sitting. The plot deteriorated the further along I got, and I found myself quite disappointed by the end by how overly explained and pat it became, but it an enjoyable enough read for what it is, especially if you’ve only got a couple of hours to fill.

I received an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was *kinda* stupid, but very entertaining! The plot: A snowstorm traps a group of people at a fancy hunting lodge over Christmas. The hunters start dying in strange ways, and the cop investigating the deaths starts to realize that the animals (both dead AND alive) are fighting back. For me, this definitely fell more on the line of comedy than horror. Another plus? It was a super fast-paced read. Overall, I wasn't sure what to expect, but it ended up being a fun ride.

Imaginative, Original Storytelling.....
When a local police constable responds to a report of a death at a local hunting lodge in a remote and snowbound part of the Scottish Highlands a bizarre series of events unfolds. Imaginative, original and entertaining storytelling providing an engaging read.

Ok, so this was definitely not what I expected after looking at the cover and reading the blurb.
Im, as a reader, very much into thrillers about group of people stranded somewhere and then BAM! one (or more) of them is dead, so I was excited to read it. Unfortunately I was disappointed with the direction the book has taken and with the ending.

So the book is described as a thriller, but it's definitely not one, so dont be fooled. It's also not a horror, even though it sways towards it - it has somw "horrory" events, but they are not scary (and I get scared EXTREMELY easily) just sort of gory (but also not gory enough).

The writing itself is good and it's a fast read.
I wasnt very impressed with the "background" parts. Most of them could have been written as a 5 lines long dialogues, instead of 10 pages lonng stories
There was no point in presenting us this whole elaborate story of some of the characters since it had zero impact on the plot.

Im sure lots of pople will enjoy this book, unfortunately I was not one of them.