Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC in return for an unbiased review.
I've previously enjoyed The Chalk Man & The Burning Girls by this author and was really looking forward to reading this latest publication.
A bit darker than previous efforts, I wouldn't rank this as my favourite CJ Tudor book, but it is well written and I stuck with it to the end and actually am glad I did.
A solid three stars.

Having enjoyed The Chalk Man & The Burning Girls, I looked forward to reading The Drift. However it is very different, a dark dystopian horror/thriller which was not for me. Nevertheless, it was so well written I carried on to the end. With obvious nods to the pandemic carried to Apocalyptic extremes it was cleverly and chillingly plotted and will have many fans.

Thanks to Michael Joseph, Random House and NetGalley for an ARC in return for an unbiased review.

I didn't like this at all I'm afraid. I have loved all her other books but this felt very different. People with their eyes hanging out, foreheads ripped off revealing brains....no no no - this is amateur horror not C K Tudor intrigue and brilliance. I struggled through and then skipped to the end. I'm not a huge horror fan normally so it could be why I didn't get this book. What I have read in the genre has been good and scary horror - this just felt like, well, dropping in halloween images and mangled body parts and making a mash up of the cliches. Nope, not for me.

Well written. Ideal for fans of old-school horror. The large cast of characters is whittled down by increasing gruesome means. It will be a hit.
With thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an early copy in exchange for an independent review.

This may just be Tudor’s best novel yet! I’m a huge fan of her work but this one was on another level. I just couldn’t put it down, each chapter sucks you in and leaves you wanting more.

Genre-bending, nerve-shredding, blood-chilling brilliance. A snow storm is raging, infection is everywhere, and no one is coming to save you. THE DRIFT is going to scare the pants off you all in 2023.

A coach carrying students from a prestigious academy crashes on a snowy mountain road.

A man with severe facial injuries reluctantly leaves the mysteriously-named Retreat to ski down to the nearest village to collect supplies.

Six people wake up in a broken ski lift to find themselves trapped with a dead body.

These three narrative threads are slowly woven to become one story in The Drift, a dystopian thriller by horror writer CJ Tudor. Figuring out just how they tie together was a fun ride, and while it’s not a book I’ll return to, I enjoyed it while it lasted.

“Anxiety puts both your mind and body under immense, prolonged pressure.”
― Lori Deschene, Tiny Buddha's Worry Journal: A Creative Way to Let Go of Anxiety and Find Peace

And pressure is what we get in ‘The Drift’ - lots of pressure.
A coach crash in a snowbound icy ski resort with a group of students on board, a cable car full of adults stuck mid journey, no power, and a mountain top ‘Retreat’, with an assorted bunch of people, all of these groups are somehow connected.

The chills don’t just come from the snow laden landscape but also from the dystopian world following a viral outbreak that has destroyed life as we know it.

Three separate groups of people just trying to survive, a storm of massive proportions on the way, added to which, some of the people in the groups may already be infected - and there’s no way out!

Lots of tension, wondering how the three groups are going to survive the nightmare with seemingly no escape. It’s also gripping waiting to discover just how the groups are linked, but with C.J.Tudor at the helm it’s all brought together nicely, and a difficult one to put down!

We hear the story of three different people in three different situations - an overturned coach full of trapped students, a stranded cable car full of strangers, and an isolated building with a group of people. A snow storm rages as each group tries to survive their situation. Will rescue come? Is there a killer? And what about the creepy Whisters...?

A dystopian thriller that keeps you turning the pages until the shocking ending. With twists and turns and three addictive tales that come together perfectly at the end. Creepy and tense, I really enjoyed this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of the book in return for my honest feedback.

I usually love C J Tudor’s books and she is one of the few authors whose books I read without checking the blurb first. Well, this time I got caught out, as it turned out to be a different genre from her other books. I don’t usually like dystopian or apocalypse fiction, even with elements of a thriller and this one was no exception. There were a lot of characters, which isn’t usually a problem for me but here I constantly had to keep a track on who was who as they weren’t distinctive enough, which somewhat distracted from the story. I am not put off reading CJ Tudor’s books in the future but will definitely proceed with more caution.

A disturbing and very dark thriller set in a post pandemic future, possibly North America. There were too many characters for me to engage with the narrative and the three settings - bus, research station and cable car stretched my concentration. I have enjoyed the authors previous novels but this was not for me.

I did enjoy parts of this book but it is very bleak,also a bit confusing st times,more horror maybe than psychological thriller and wont suit everyone talking about a virus that is going to wipe out the world…..
Never been a fan of Zombies either but that all said ai did keep reading and ultimately am more glad did than not

I am a great fan of Ms Tudor but was quite left quite bewildered and disappointed by The Drift. Set sometime in the near future, in a undetermined setting (it felt like North America to me - but I could be wrong) and with a disparate cast of characters dealing with the fallout of a catastrophic global pandemic, it was a bleak and tense and (to me) confusing read.

Fans of The Chalk Man and The Burning Girls will find The Drift very different in feel and content. The writing and dialogue remains excellent but, apart from the odd flash of brilliance, I didn’t enjoy the overall experience. Perhaps I am suffering from ‘post real pandemic syndrome’ and that has affected my concentration and inability to engage with the plight of the characters (several who meet grisly fates) and I found myself not caring about them and wondering who they were in the first place.

I have read many positive reviews so my negative opinion will definitely be in the minority and this is just a personal honest impression, however many thanks to all concerned for allowing me to read and give a candid review of this (despite everything) impressive book.

I did enjoy this book but their was quiet a lot going on it it so I did get a bit confused at one stage but all in all a good read..

Stand up and take a bow CJ Tudor! What an exciting, well constructed, thrilling ride you took us on!
I was absolutely enthralled from the first page, to the last. Being completely honest, I could've done without the epilogue, but that's an extremely small gripe in comparison to the overall enjoyment of the novel. Highly recommended to my fellow twisty and turny, atmospheric thrillers.
Big thanks to the publisher and Net Galley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Michael Joseph and CJ Tudor for my ARC of ‘The Drift’ in return for an honest review.

I am a huge fan of CJ Tudor and this was another brilliantly plotted and written novel. There are three different stories, all totalling gripping, told with a backdrop of a pandemic causing mass deaths and lockdowns. There is an overturned bus full of students, a cable car unable to move and a chalet with ‘friends’. Outside there is a snow storm raging but it is clear that something is seriously amiss.

It was fast-paced, a page-turner and totally absorbing from start to finish. Gradually we learn how these three stories will merge.

Highly recommended

Hideously Immersive…
Three distinct and separate threads blend seamlessly into one in this often horrifying, intense and gripping descent into an unknown dystopian future. Survival becomes the name of the game and all that counts. As is usual for this author, extremely well written, effortlessly fluid with some wonderfully descriptive passages and a pacy, breathless narrative often laced with a bleak, dark humour. Atmospheric and wholly, hideously immersive.

I have loved this author since The Burning Girls and this one keeps me living the authors work. Brilliantly dark and atmospheric

Thanks to NetGalley and to Penguin UK for providing me an ARC copy of this novel, which I freely chose to review.
I discovered C. J. Tudor when she published her first novel, The Chalk Man, and I had no doubt that her name would become a familiar one for many readers. I have read several of her novels since (all of them, if I’m not wrong), and I also have a collection of her short stories already waiting on my reader. I am happy recommending her books to readers who love thrillers with a touch of menace and more than a few drops of dark humour. Her writing is fluid and engaging; her plots are gripping, and her protagonists always have a surprise or two in stock for us. She is the real deal.
All of this is in evidence in her latest novel, which is due to be published in January 2023.
The description of the plot is sparse, and that is for a very good reason. As you can guess, the action of the book is divided into three settings, and readers of classic mysteries will soon realised that they all seem to be variations of the isolated location mystery: a number of characters are locked (sometimes physically, sometimes not) in a place that is not easily accessible to others, where strange things start to happen (characters disappearing and being murdered are the most common). One of the characters becomes the de-facto investigator (sometimes a real investigator, sometimes not), and readers follow this character’s attempts at finding out what is going on. So, here we have a similar situation, only that we have three stories taking place in three different locations, in a fairly dystopian version of the not-so-distant future (although nowadays not quite as outlandish as it might have been a few years back) where the population has been decimated by an infectious illness. We have two groups of survivors headed to the same safe place, and the third is a group of people actually working and living at that safe location. I can’t share too many details of the story without revealing too much, but I can say that two of the characters whose point of view we follow are women (one, Hanna, a young student, and the other, Meg, an ex-policewoman), and then there is Carter, who works at the Retreat. All of them are survivors, all of them keep secrets, and you would be right if you thought these groups must be connected somehow. But no, of course, I can’t tell you how.
Those readers who worry about different storylines and points of view making things confusing don’t need to worry. Although the three stories are narrated in the third person, each section is clearly labelled, and the three characters are quite different in their thoughts and outlooks, so confusion should not be an issue. For those who appreciate having advance warning, there is violence; there are pretty graphic scenes that have made some reviewers class it as horror (I think it is a combination of both thriller and horror, but I love horror, so that is a plus for me), and there is nothing cozy about the story (even though there is a dog and... No, I can’t say). Also, those who prefer not to read and/or think about pandemics after COVID-19 might want to give it a miss.
Anybody who doesn’t fall into these categories appreciates a well-written, tightly plotted, and gripping story (stories) that will keep their mind going and wandering about what is really going on and who is doing what should read this novel. I liked the two female protagonists in particular (not that they were without their issues and contradictions), but even in the case of the male, their circumstances and their sheer determination to keep going made me side with them and keep reading. The story centres on the plot, which is beautifully and cleverly constructed, but the characters have to face many personal and moral challenges, and some of the questions and decisions they have to make will have all readers wondering about right and wrong and about what they would do if they were in the same circumstances.
Despite the tense atmosphere and the dire straits, the characters find themselves in, or perhaps because of them, the author also offers us some glimpses of humour (mostly dark), some beautiful descriptions, and thought-provoking reflections that allow us to catch our breath. There are some wonderful little details that we only become fully aware of at the end (oh, and I love the ending, mini-epilogue and all), and I am very impressed by the talent of the author to make all the pieces of the puzzle come together seamlessly. People who love a mystery will probably start to tie some threads early on, and some will be faster than the characters (although, of course, we have more information than they have, and we are not under the same kind of pressure), but, my guess is that most won’t be disappointed when everything is revealed.
In sum, this is another great novel by C.J. Tudor, and one that I am sure will keep her followers coming back for more. And those who haven’t read her yet, if you like the sound of this, what are you waiting for?

I leave you a few quotes, although I recommend checking a sample online if you aren’t sure the writing style will suit your taste.
‘Here’s the other thing my grandpa taught me. You´re either a good guy or you’re a survivor. And the earth is full of dead good guys.’
One of the characters, when asked why they care, says:
‘Because caring is all we have left. If we stop caring —about life, about other people— who are we? What have we become?’
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, it’s also a oneway street. No going back.

Tudor's best yet! I read this straight through in one sitting which meant staying up to 3.40am and I have no regrets!

Three timelines - each gripping in its own right. Significant and immediate danger against a backdrop of a world hit by a pandemic where society has been rocked by mass deaths, lockdowns, isolation and the race to engineer a vaccine. Scarily plausible and familiar.

I enjoyed the fast pace, the bleak and claustrophobic settings, the active female characters, the additional intrigue from the structure alternating between three points of view and the slow dripfeed of info relating to how these will merge. I also appreciated the themes of outsider status, ethics, and how far is too far in the quest to survive. Tudor explores at what point does someone lose their humanity. Horror, dystopia, thriller. Fantastic!