Hannah is being evacuated from her secluded boarding school due to a virulent infection, called Choler, which is sweeping its way through the campus. The coach crashes during a snowstorm however, & when Hannah awakens, only a handful of students remain alive. Hannah along with Lucas, Cassie, Ben, Josh, Peggy, & Daniel are the only ones left & they need to stay alive until they are rescued. The emergency door is broken & won't open, whilst the hammers to smash open the windows are all conveniently missing. Stuck onboard, the survivors search for a way out. Then Hannah notices that one of the dead students has the red eyes of a person infected with Choler, & as the daughter of leading scientist at the school, Professor Grant, she knows that he would never allow an infected person to leave the campus. When Ben also starts to show symptoms & is then found murdered, Hannah realises that none of this is coincidence, they are all meant to die, & the killer could be onboard with them.

Meg wakes up to find herself & five strangers are stranded in a cable car, high above the mountains. Karl, Max, Sean, & Sarah soon start to wake up, but none of them can remember what happened & they realise that they have been drugged. The sixth member of the group seems to still be asleep, but when Meg goes over the wake them up, she notices that they are dead. She also recognises them as Paul, a ex-cop whom she once dated. Realising that this gives her a motive, she pretends not to know Paul, & the group decide to dispose of his body through the floor hatch in the cable car. As time moves on they start to register that no-one is coming to their rescue & without food & water, they won't survive for long. When a second member of the group is killed, Meg realises that she is stuck in a confined space with four strangers & a killer is in their midst.

Carter lives in an isolated ski chalet with Nate, Julia, Caren, Miles, Welland, & Dexter the dog. The ski resort shut down years ago & they are the only ones there. A generator runs their compound & keeps it secure from the dangers lurking in the woods, but it has been on the blink lately, & a new one needs to be found. First, Carter is sent down to the village below for supplies but when he returns he knows there is something badly wrong. He finds Julia dead in the swimming pool,. & Nate is mortally injured. The compound has been keeping something deadly in the basement but the generator problems have meant that it is no longer secure, & it looks like something has escaped.

Wow what a great read! Three stories which start off as separate but gradually the reader begins to work out why & how they are connected. They are all set in a post-apocalyptic future when an infection known as Choler has wreaked havoc on civilisation leaving many people dead, the uninfected living in seclusion, & the infected who survive either become outcasts known as Whistlers (due to the noise from the damage to their lungs) or are herded onto 'farms' to contain them. The three main characters are all well chosen to allow the reader to become invested in their stories & what happens. It's fast-paced with twists & turns & unexpected deaths. I worked out the long term twist but some of the others came out of left field. It's extremely well plotted & well written. It's the type of book I will reread at some point & probably notice things that I missed before. Highly recommended.

TW: swearing, scenes of graphic violence, & one brief scene of sexual assault.

My thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Michael Joseph/Penguin Random House, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

An intriguing dystopian tale of survivors and survival starting with a coach crash, a cable car that breaks down high in the sky and a strange mountaintop laboratory all affected by a plague. We start off with lots of characters, all with bits of history gradually revealed but soon the numbers are reduced in violent fashion. It all gradually becomes clearer with surprises galore best read in a warm room as the snow falls down throughout. Good twist in the end too!

Hannah is on board a coach that has crashed and overturned on a snowy hillside, trapping her and all other passengers on board; Meg, an ex police officer, is stuck in a broken down cable car, high in the snowy mountains, unsure of how she and her fellow passengers are going to get out; they were all heading to The Retreat to escape a deadly virus that is sweeping the country, but the snowstorm raging around them has put paid to that. Carter is based at The Retreat alongside his associates, who are manufacturing a vaccine to hopefully end this disease but their generator is beginning to fail and could potentially cause a problem with the supplies stored in the basement. None of these people know who they can trust or how it will end...

This is the latest thriller by Tudor, but is quite different to her other books as it is set in a dystopian future. Told from the perspectives of the three main characters; Hannah, Meg and Carter, who are all fighting for survival and none of them know what the outcome will be. It's a well crafted and rather unique plot, very uncomfortable to read at times as it's rather gruesome, but as with all of the authors other books, I was hooked from the start. It's a very busy book with lots of characters, some great twists along the way and an unexpected ending. I would love to see this made into a film/tv series one day.

I'd like to thank Michael Joseph Books and Netgalley for the approval, I will post my review on Goodreads and Amazon.

The Drift
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

‘Survival can be murder . . .

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.

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.

Carter is gazing out of the window of an isolated ski chalet that he and his companions call home. As their generator begins to waver in the storm, the threat of something lurking in the chalet's depths looms larger.

Outside, the storm rages. Inside each group, a killer lurks.’

We’re thrown straight into the action while slowly being drip feed information as to what has happened to the world and I literally couldn’t put this fast paced book down.

I don’t usually do gory thrillers but was drawn to this one after seeing some brilliant reviews, and I enjoyed the dystopian short stories in her last book, A Sliver of Darkness.

This is the first ever thriller that I’ve given 5 stars to on here but I really couldn’t fault it! Each of the plots could easily have been a book on their own and couldn’t wait to see how they would all come together at the end, plus the splattering of humour against all the blood and guts bought a bit of light relief every now and again!

A survival thriller set during a snowstorm? Yes, please! Never mind that it’s a dystopian future during a pandemic, because the virus is not the focus of the story. We are talking about survival.
There are a lot of characters to keep straight, which is perhaps the book's greatest weakness. But I just kept reading, trusting that it would all come together. And it did.

would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this gripping novel

a coach load of teenagers crash in a snow storm
a cable car stuck in mid air during a snow storm
and the retreat where survivors are struggling with survival against the elements and the virus

all three scenarios have their own chapters and with quite a few characters to get your head around it can get a bit confusing until you have them sorted in your mind

each element of their stories are a fight for survival against the elements and different people chasing them, why did the coach crash and the survivors couldnt get out

why was the cable car stuck with people on it

and the retreat where everyone was heading, was it the peaceful safe retreat they were all imagining....

and then there are the things in woods ..the whistlers....

didnt see the twist at the end coming...not a bad read

Sorry for late response

I reviewed The Drift for LoveReading.co.uk and chose it as a LoveReading Star Book and Liz Pick of the month for January.. I will also be featuring it on the LoveReading LitFest. Please see link for review.

Well this was a story of murder, virus and revenge....
This story bounces between four different sets of people. They all have different stories to tell but for most, the ending is the same......death.
A group of teenagers are being moved from their boarding school to a place of safety, where the destination is most definitely not safe. Their bus crashes and leaves them trapped in the middle of nowhere.......
A group of adults living together in a place called The Retreat, where experiments could help the ailing human race become unsettled as one by one the inhabitants start to die or disappear......
A group of adults are trapped in a cable car bound for The Retreat. It may not be an accidental breakdown and if not who has done this and why?.
While an unknown number of "Whistlers", the product of the virus and what everyone was trying to avoid becoming, pop in and out of the stories and seem to live in the woods out of most people's sight, for their own protection as well as others.
It was quite graphic in places and made me feel quite sick!!!. The emotion was high, bearing in mind these were all people who through no fault of their own, were trying to stay alive and to carry on living..
I loved every minute of this book and can highly recommend it!!. You'll be suitably sickened and scared in equal measure!!!!
I received this free arc book for an honest review.
#Netgalley, #michaeljbooks, #cjtudorauthor.

DNF @ 19%

I've loved the majority of this authors books, however this one just wasn't for me. There's 3 different characters in 3 different scenario that it felt like there's too much going on at once. If you like apocalypse, survival and viruses then this one will be right up your street.

I enjoyed the previous books by the author and was looking forward to reading her new story especially after reading the blurb and seeing so many people excited for it.
I love a good thriller type and while horror is not my go to genre, the mix of genres or genre bending how I would actually call this one, wasn’t really something I was looking forward.
I was invested after that first chapter to see where the story takes us and how they get away from that situation, if they actually get away. But halfway through, I just find that I don’t actually like all the violence and gore scenes, some to a high level adrenaline pulsing even. Which is always thrilling but somehow it didn’t worked out for me this time.
I’m looking forward to read by the author in the future because I never give up an author just because one story didn’t worked out for me as I know it will be a great read for so many other readers.

Very grateful to the publisher for my review copy through NetGalley

This book is far darker than anything she has written before, this dystopian horror really set my senses tingling. Set in a brutal future ravaged by virus where only the fittest (or richest) survive, we are taken on 3 seemingly distinct journeys.

Hannah is trapped with a small group of survivors following a coach crash in the middle of a treacherous snow blizzard. Meg is trapped in a stopped cable car with a dead body and a few other people she has never met before. Carter is holed up at a ski chalet with a few other people trying to survive the strange world they find themselves in.

Each individual has to navigate the group they are with; everyone seems to have an ulterior motive and trust is a dangerous game to play. As the tension mounts between the groups and the plot moves forward it soon becomes apparent there are far more dangerous adversaries to overcome than just the snow and the virus.

Scattered throughout the story are little nods to previous books that I really enjoyed discovering. There are shocks and scares that kept me on my toes and the atmospheric chill of the book had me reaching for my blanket. It's the utterly brilliant way that the link between the three characters gradually come into focus I have to applaud. What an immensely satisfying and brilliant plot twist.

If you are reading this review, what are you waiting for? Go grab a copy and thank me later!


My thanks go to the publishers and Net Galley for the advanced copy in return for an honest review.

I read The Drift by C.J. Tudor on a 30 degree day - that’s 30° Celsius, so around 86F, but I was quickly chilled to the core.

“At the start, there is simply relief at being alive.”

Hannah slowly regains consciousness to discover the bus she was travelling in, carrying a dozen or so students from Invicta Academy heading to The Retreat, has careered off the road and rolled part way down a mountainside in the middle of a blizzard. Hannah is trapped in the mangled bus with a handful of survivors, the bus driver is missing, and one of the dead shows signs of a deadly infection.

“As ever in this life, if you wanted to be saved, you had to do it yourself.”

The last thing Meg, an ex police officer and recovering drug addict, remembers is having breakfast in her hotel room, so she’s disoriented when she wakes in a stalled cable car as a snow storm rages outside. She’s not alone, there are four others stirring, all volunteers headed for The Retreat, and the body of a man she once knew.

“You’re either a good guy or you’re a survivor, someone had once told him. The earth is full of dead good guys.”

It’s Carter’s turn to ski down the mountain to stock up on provisions for the residents of The Retreat, a chore he hates given the threat of what lurks in the woods outside of the electric wire fence. On his return he finds the chalet is dark, Julia is dead and Nate is badly injured, but worse, the basement locks have been released.

In a post apocalyptic setting amid falling snow, three storylines eventually converge in an unexpected way in The Drift, telling a story of loss and hope, betrayal and compassion, death and survival.

Suspense wars with horror as each claustrophobic situation poses obvious and hidden dangers to the characters. The dynamics of each group are tense, confused and fascinating. Everyone is suspect, and has an agenda of some kind, assumptions are a mistake. The body count is high.

The complexity of the overarching plot is impressive. Each story thread exposes a new piece of information that often answers the questions others raise, and adds to our understanding of their world, one ravaged by a deadly uncontrollable virus, killing millions. One mystery will appear to resolve, only for another to be triggered. There is a cascade of surprises and shocks with the pacing well balanced between all three storylines.

With a compelling blend of horror and mystery, The Drift is an atmospheric, frightening, and clever novel.

I read this thrilling book in practically one sitting. The characters are easy to remember and the decisions they are forced to make quite believable. I particularly liked the swapping between the drama in the coach, the cable car and The Retreat. It added to that ‘just one more chapter’ which kept me up last night. I admit I am a fan of C J Tudor and now a huge fan of this latest book.

Another chilly thriller perfect for the cold January days. This is my second snow-filled thriller this month, so I added an extra blanket to my reading spot (who can afford to put the heating on at the moment?) and pulled my Chihuahuas in closer for their doggy heat.

First of all, I can’t believe this is my first C. J. Tudor book. I have heard so much about The Chalk Man and The Burning Girls but apparently never got around to reading either! I will have to add them to my never-ending TBR and try to get them both read this year – I have twelve whole months, but then again, Authors keep on bringing out new books!!! I seem to be easily distracted – As they say, buying books and reading books are two very different things.

The first rule of survival. Know when to run and never look back. Also, don’t be last.”
At the top of a mountain is the Retreat which is surrounded by wilderness, wild animals, and another threat even more terrifying. High on the mountain is a cable car transporting six recruits to the Retreat that has snapped and is lying precariously in the snow, hanging by a cable. Further down the mountain a bus filled with students, also on the way to the Retreat (for their safety) has careened over a hillside road in one of the year’s heaviest snowstorms and is stranded on its side.

The book is split into these three stories; Carter is at the Retreat, which is an abandoned Ski Chalet that he and his ragtag compatriots call home. Together, they manage a precarious survival, manufacturing vaccines against a deadly virus in exchange for life’s essentials. But as their generator begins to waver, the threat of something lurking in the chalet’s depths looms larger, and their fragile bonds will be tested when the power finally fails… for good. Meg, a former detective awakens to a gentle rocking; she is stranded in the cable car that is suspended far above the snowstorm and surrounded by strangers in the same uniform as her, with no memory of how they got there. They are heading to the mysterious Retreat; but when they discover a dead man among their ranks and Meg spies a familiar face, she realizes that there is something far more insidious going on. Hannah awakens to carnage, all mangled metal and shattered glass. She is trapped inside the crashed coach with a handful of survivors, a brewing virus, and no way to call for help. If she and the remaining few want to make it out alive, with their sanity… and sec and secrets intact, they’ll need to work together or live with the rest of the dead. The imminent dangers faced by Carter, Meg, and Hannah are each one part of the puzzle. Lurking in their shadows is an even greater threat… one threatens to consume all of humanity!!

“You’re either a good guy or a survivor, someone had once told him. The earth is full of dead good guys. It was a salient piece of advice. Of course, the person who had imparted it was dead.”

I absolutely loved this book, it was smart and caught my attention from the very beginning and kept my attention until the very end. I couldn’t wait to pick my kindle up every chance I got to continue with the story, and if I didn’t have to do boring things and very adult things like work and heaven forbid – look after my kid, then I would have been finished with the book a lot sooner. I love the wit in the author’s writing and lost count of the number of quotable sentences there are – I would, and wanted to put them all in this review, but that would have made it way too long, so I’ve noted some of my favourites! It wasn’t easy! The book kept its steady pace throughout (I’m a big fan of that) and the closer you get to the end, the shorter the chapters are, giving you a faster pace and an impending sense of danger. Just past the halfway point, you begin to see the three stories connecting – and there is one hell of a clever twist. The author really trusts the reader to figure it out by themselves instead of spoon-feeding and overexplaining, which I also loved.

Highly recommend this if you love smart, action-packed horror/thrillers that require some brain power to figure out.

My thanks to the author and Penguin Random House for my advance copy to review via Netgalley. Due out 20th January 2023.

“People are not black and white, and we all see situations in different ways. One person’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist. One crazy genius is another’s dangerous psychopath. One person’s leader is another’s oppressor. That is how society rumbled or crumbled.”

“The dehumanising had been gradual but deliberate. Fear was all part of the plan. We’re always closer than we think to the edge. Every day we’re just teetering on the precipice. We just never dare to look down.”

This book was so clever! Honestly I was not expecting the way things to pan out the way they did, but when it did I was there for it. CJ Tudor is an amazing thriller writer and I have enjoyed her previous books although they are all very different.
The 3 scenarios in this book were told from 3 different POVs -Hannah, Meg and Carter and I was on the edge of my seat for every one on them. Going from one scene to the next was such a thrill ride. Nail biting just doesn't seem to justify it enough. Terrific dystopian near future thriller set in the icy snow peaks. Wonderful!

I have never read a book like this one! It is absolutely bloody brilliant!

This chilling apocalyptic thriller had me racing through the pages, hooked from the start, I craved my next fix of the story each time I had to put the book down. It is certainly not a book for the faint-hearted, but if you don’t mind something a bit darker that will chill you to the core, then this is an absolute must-read!

Hannah and a group of others were heading to a place of safety after being evacuated from their school. They don’t quite make it there and find themselves trapped inside a coach after it crashes during a snowstorm. Those that have survived must work together to find a way out and get help. Will they make it?

Meg wakes up to find herself trapped with five others in a cable car that has stopped moving on its way up the snowy mountains. Dressed identically, stripped of their belongings and with no memory of how they came to be in the cable car! They initially hope that there is a technical glitch and that they will start moving again soon, but it soon becomes apparent that they won’t!

Carter lives and works at the retreat with other survivors. Those that live there have had things ticking over quite nicely, but when the generator packs up and their supplies begin to diminish, things start to go horribly wrong and the bodies begin to pile up! Will those left work together? Or against each other?

This fast-paced, action-packed thriller has not one but three gripping storylines that take you on a high-octane journey through the snowy mountains. This has to be one of the most atmospheric books that I have ever read, jeez I almost got frostbite just from reading it!

The high level of description put me right there on the coach, in the cable car and at the retreat, each chapter played out in my mind like a scene from a movie. I didn’t trust a single character; each one gives you more than one reason to doubt them and their motives. I didn’t even try to guess where each story was going and if they would connect, as I was so engrossed in the moment. Each twist and turn had my jaw on the floor, and nothing about this book was what I expected. I loved it!!!

I’d describe this book as Contagion meets 28 Weeks Later in the snow! If you catch my Drift!

This is my first C J Tudor book and it most certainly won’t be my last. I love the way that she crosses the bridge from thriller to horror. Move over Stephen King!

Thank you so much to C J Tudor, Penguin and NetGalley for my copy of this fantastiac book.

I have enjoyed CJ Tudors previous novels.

This one was a little different as dystopian which is not normally what I would enjoy.
This book had twists and turns and was very dark.
I enjoyed how it came together

This is a great thriller, well written with several different storylines, great plotting. It was more of a horror than I was expecting, having not read CJ Tudor before, I found it a little much perhaps but that didn't take away from the thriller aspect of the storytelling, just ramped up the anxiety! I would read more of her work and would recommend.

4.5 of 5 stars
My Five Word TL:DR Review: Clever, ever spiralling downwards, horror

Well, this was a surprise. I don’t think I looked at the description for this one at all before I picked it up. I really like the author’s style and quite often these days prefer to pick up my reads knowing as little as possible. So, yes, this was a surprise. A compelling read, totally engrossing in fact, it’s not going to give you a grin on your face when you’re reading but it will keep you turning the pages into the early hours and it’s just the most unusual combination of post apocalyptic survival meets locked room mystery (well mysteries to be correct) that I’ve ever read.

I really don’t want to give away too much about the plot with this review because I’m keen to avoid spoilers, primarily because the story follows three POVs and certainly one of the ‘big’ intrigues is trying to figure out how these three characters are connected. What I can say without giving away too much is this is a novel that takes place in the near future (I don’t recall seeing any dates but that’s where I would hazard a guess). A pandemic has changed society beyond recognition killing great swathes of the population. Those that survived, known as Whistlers because of the noise they make when breathing, are altered into an almost zombie like state, a few becoming violent and bloodthirsty. The remaining population are basically trying to stay alive whilst hoping for a cure. I would say, before going further, that this isn’t a typical zombie apocalypse type story so if that isn’t usually your type of read then this may still be of interest. Of course, the Whistlers still play a part here, this is horror and it can be quite bloody and brutal in parts, but this is more a suspenseful thriller, a race against time and a locked room style mystery that is positively claustrophobic.

We have three key characters. Hannah, a young woman trapped on board a coach that has careened off the road killing a number of the passengers in the process and effectively leaving the others trapped on board. It doesn’t take long before a couple of characters figure out that the journey was sabotaged before it set off. Meg is an ex police officer who wakes up to find herself on board a cable car, she has no idea how she got there, her personal possessions have been removed, the car is stuck (very high above ground) and a storm threatens, on top of that there are others on board and one of them is already dead. The final character is Carter. He is based in a retreat with a number of other characters, the place is protected by electric fencing and digital locks but unfortunately the power seems to be faltering and with it any semblance of security (not to mention the locks on the doors in the basement).

I found this totally absorbing and I loved the way the stories eventually come together because it was completely unexpected – which could of course be simply a result of my tiny brain not making the necessary leaps to connect the dots – but, I think it’s very clever, well executed and compelling.

The writing is excellent, the characters really jump off the page, the pacing is perfect and there’s a steady stream of action mixed with periods of reflection. The dialogue is really good and manages to prevent the book from becoming dismal or too dark.

On top of this I loved that we start off with a number of players in each story and eventually they become less in number. It’s like a less cosy version of an Agatha Christie novel (think, for example, of And Then There Were None). Gradually, we lose characters along the way, the central POVs eventually start to discover more about their companions and eventually the reveals are made, with much drama and jaw dropping.

In terms of criticisms. Well, this isn’t a laugh out loud sort of story, the characters are in a fight for survival and quite often make shocking decisions. At the end of the day they’ve become almost immune to death and used to making tough decisions to stay alive – as is stated during the story ‘the earth is full of dead good guys’. The thing is though, this could very easily become the type of read that feels too dark and maybe drags you down but that’s not the experience I had. I think I was too caught up in the mystery of the three and how they would come together combined with the intrigue of each of their own separate stories and how they would each overcome the difficulties they were facing.

I enjoyed this very much, it was quick and clever, darkly humorous at times, horrific at others and frankly unputdownable. A cunning plot executed with confidence and ease.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the author, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

The Drift is an apocalyptic, dystopian horror with a chilling murder mystery at its heart. Three groups of people in three different locations, each fighting for their lives. Who are they and how do they intersect?

In The Drift, C.J. Tudor brings together the horror and mystery elements of her writing in the strongest way yet. This is a genuinely horrific story, not least because it brings to the fore memories of the pandemic, which for some have barely faded.

This is dystopian fiction, but like a lot of dystopian fiction I am currently reading, it doesn’t feel all that far away. The horrors that C.J. Tudor is projecting may be fiction, but they are also all too believable.

The locations are freezing, presumably due to climate change. Two sets of people are trying to get to The Retreat. One group is on an upturned bus after an accident. They don’t know each other and the trust is low between them. Trust is also low in the cable car suspended by just one cable now and its occupants are stranded.

Getting out of these precarious situations would be difficult enough in any circumstances, but knowing that outside there are other serious challenges to life facing them, makes this a really tricky scenario. Pretty much no-one in The Drift is who they claim to be. Add a killer to the mix and the tension is ramped high and only gets more nail-biting as the book progresses.

The Drift is like a cross between Contagion and The Walking Dead. There are plenty of unlikeable characters and one or two who you really feel have had a really bad deal from life and that makes you want to root for them. But getting to their destination isn’t necessarily the great goal it seemed to be when they set out. In a well-paced novel, the snow is constantly shifting and what lies below is ever more horrific than the original landscape implied.

There is danger and duplicity in every scene and Tudor does not flinch from including some pretty grim scenes, making this an icy, disturbing story where your blood really will run cold.

Verdict: The Drift is dark, menacing and a true horror story. I would genuinely caution you if you have a nervous disposition, because this is a no holds barred C.J.Tudor and that makes this a scary and very brutal read, exceedingly well executed in plot and style.