Cold Snap is a short and powerful novella about death, loss and grief in which a mother and son are haunted by a strange creature when they escape to a remote forest while dealing with the recent death of their husband/father.
Clocking in at just 120-odd pages, it's a story that packs a wallop of a punch despite its short length and is full of haunting visuals and melancholy and a powerful ending .
A memorable if sombre read.

I wanted more from this intriguing plot. More twists and turns. More suspense. More scare. More characterization. Instead, I got a lot of repetitive writing. Disappointing.

My gosh. What a powerful grief horror novella. Lindy Ryan perfectly captures the agonizing and distracted feelings of mourning a loved one’s traumatic death.

The novella opens with Christine and teenage Billy trying to create a Christmas celebration in a secluded cabin, without Derek, her husband and Billy’s father.

But there is a monstrous moose in the forest. This monster appears to be a manifestation of the overwhelming grief, guilt and simmering anger between mother and son and toward the missing Derek.

A well-written, heartrending and horrifying example of a grief horror novella.

I had to stop at 51% through because of (spoiler, but also trigger warning for those who can't handle it, like me) the brutal death of a cat, so my rating is for what took place prior to that. I love snowy isolation horror, but this didn't quite hit the mark for me. It's already such a short story, but the sentence "Derek's foot slipping" and it's variants took up a good portion of what little there is, and the rest edges on overwritten. I was pushing myself to finish, since it's so short, but after the horrific death of the cat, I just couldn't make it happen.

Christine, a woman riddled with grief and guilt after the loss of her husband, decides to pack up her 15 year old son to head off to a cabin getaway in the woods of Pennsylvania. Obviously suffering with the pain of losing her spouse, Christine starts to see strange things in the woods surrounding their cabin, but chalks it up to the moose the cabin owner warns her about. That is until she starts to hear it call her name to the sound of her late husband’s voice. Cold Snap examines the impact of guilt and grief through a haunting story of dark spirits lurking in the woods.

What I think the author did well with this novella is showing what grief looks and feels like through Christine’s and Billy’s interactions. There was an overall feeling of dread and tenseness throughout the book, and I felt like I could feel those heavy emotions. There was plenty of brutality and gruesome imagery through the flashbacks of Derek’s death and the death of Haiku, trigger warning for animal deaths. With that being said, this felt unfinished to me. It felt like it finished in the middle of a chapter and we were left questioning the purpose of this spirit stalking Christine. I also kept wondering if Christine was just falling down left and right or if she was blacking out kind of randomly because the scenes would jump so quickly from one to the next. Overall, I think this is a great, fast-paced novella that does a good job exploring grief. I could’ve used another 20-50 pages to wrap things up a little more, but thought it was great.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an eARC copy of this to review with my honest opinions.

Okay, so reading this book while in Alaska, the night before heading out to hike in Denali may not have been the *best* idea for my anxiety of running into moose.

This book is about the grief and guilt of losing a loved one before your eyes. However, it's also a book of psychosis, hallucinations, mutilation, and how relationships get bent and broken for those grieving.

Does the ending make sense? Kind of. Are there a lot of questions left at the end? Absolutely. Would I recommend this book? Not even to those fondest of horror and gore. Trying to keep actions straight would be a folly, and accept at some point this American woman will think and say "Aye". More than once.

Following the accidental death of her husband, Christine takes her teenage son and the family cat on a Christmas getaway to a remote cabin. Originally meant to be a family trip of “just the three of us and the trees”, Christine spends her time trying to retain a grip on her sanity despite her guilt, intrusive thoughts, vivid flashbacks, and the unforgiving elements that surround them.

Cold Snap is full of moments that jolt you in and out of reality, to the point that you begin to question what is real and what is imaged.
This was both a shining aspect of the book, as well as its downfall. The sudden inserts of flashbacks and intrusive thoughts were crucial to understanding Christine's fragile mental state, but the constant and unexpected delivery of them made the events that were happening in real time disjointed and sometimes confusing.

This novella has TEETH (and hooves and horns?!) Cold Snap is atmospheric and frigid, and I loved every second of it. A grieving mother and son pack their cat up in their car and flee to a remote cabin. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for the reader, no amount of distance is going to help them escape their grief.

What follows is a quick descent into chaos and horror. While this would be an amazing book for spooky season or when the snow is falling outside - I loved the ~cold snap~ in August. This was my first title by Ryan and I look forward to checking out more! I read this in a sitting and you should too. Check this one out if you like horror, snow, The Babadook, remote cabins, and the wilderness!

**Thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for the eARC of this frigid title!**

This thriller/ mystery was a quick read and to be honest, I am not even sure I know what was going on. I've been trying to figure out what I read and how to rate it. Honestly, though this book did not work for me. I understand what the author was trying to portray and where they were going. Yet, it still seemed to be missing something (and not just the ending). The characters were hard for me to connect to and I always felt at arms length from them. There is grief, loss, and trying to figure out how to move one, but for me the horror/ thriller element was meh. It didn't show up till the end and you couldn't tell what it was. Then the book just ends. It was like there was a whole chunk of the book missing. I wish this had been longer so that there was more to it. Maybe I would have liked/ understood it more.
There was some of the people being terrorized in an isolated cabin trope.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for an eARC of this title for my honest review.

4.5 stars ⭐️ Cold Snap by Lindy Ryan

Woah was this novella great. I flew through this and absolutely loved the way that this was told. I could genuinely feel Christine’s paranoia, grief, and especially her guilt. The last 30% of this book actually freaked me out. I was on the edge of my seat with each and every page. I would highly recommend this!

Cold Snap is a chilling novella about grief and guilt. It’s been two weeks since Christine Sinclaire’s husband fell off of the roof while putting up Christmas lights and died. Her husband had booked a cabin in the woods for Christmas week before he passed, so Christine decided that she, her son Billy, and their cat should still go up for Christmas. When they arrive, the property manager told them to be careful of moose cuz they’ll stomp a body so deep into the snow nobody’d find it until spring. When Christine starts to see a horned figure watching her in the forest, she assumes it’s just a moose. However, moose don’t walk upright and definitely don’t talk to her in her dead husband’s voice.

Thank you to Netgalley and Titan Books for sending me an advanced digital copy for me to review and enjoy! These are my honest thoughts and opinions.

Content Warnings: Gore; Animal Cruelty; Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) flashbacks; Loss of father/Grief

I'm torn on this novella. On the one hand, I thought Ryan did an excellent job of representing PTSD through the viewpoint character, Christine. While the flashbacks could get repetitive and intrusive in the narrative, that's exactly what PTSD flashbacks are like. I also thought that the grief shared between mother and son, and the tensions that caused between them, was well done. Finally, I thought the atmosphere of the isolated cabin was rendered well, as were some gritty details.

On the other hand, I struggled with the rest of the novella. It was never clear to me if we were dealing with a moose, a mythological or phantasmagorical being, a cryptid, a hallucination, or some combination of the above? I don't mind ambiguity, especially in horror, but it didn't feel like any one of these directions was built on enough to feel satisfying. Similarly, the ending just came out of nowhere. It wrapped up nothing and didn't seem to relate to anything in the novella prior. Totally willing to admit that may be an issue with me the reader and not the novella, but it stood out to me. I went back and re-read the last few pages over and over and it never felt right.

All in all, I think this was an okay read. If this sounds like something in your wheelhouse, it's fine. Not horrible, not great. Just fine.

The story revolves around Christine and her son Billy, navigating life after the death of Christine's husband, Derek. In an attempt to find solace, they embark on a getaway trip to the mountains, originally planned by Derek for Christmas.

Christine experiences a staccato rhythm of grief following Derek's death, haunted by the trauma of that moment, which leaves her startled by even the slightest noises that trigger memories of his passing. Throughout their journey, Christine is plagued by an ominous voice and figure, intensifying until the story's bleak conclusion.

While the book effectively establishes a descriptive atmosphere, it struggles to deliver a cohesive narrative and this often obscures rather than clarifies the events and the protagonist's imaginings. Despite the abundance of descriptive prose, the storytelling fell short, leaving me feeling perplexed and uncertain about the outcome. It's possible that my confusion stems from my own interpretation, but the narrative left many questions unanswered.

Thank you Netgalley and Titan Books for this advanced digital copy in exchange for my honest review.

It's a quick and easy thriller/mystery about a grieving wife trying to survive and be a good mom. I never knew what was actually happening or what the main character was imagining. Is the monster in the wood real? While the book is an easy read and had me questioning the sanity of the main character and wondering what would happen next, I also found it confusing.

Most important things first: Does the cat live? (view spoiler)

So, yeah, I have no idea what I just read. This started off as a fairly typical “people in a remote cabin in the woods have scary things happen” horror story, and then it got very, very weird. I mean, people are passing out and there's a moose and it maybe talks and everything gets fever-dreamy and I don't even know what that ending was supposed to be. And then I dozed off and had a half-dream that the food that I'd eaten at the Greek festival earlier in the day was drugged and that's why I couldn't understand anything that happened in this book … and to be honest, that's still my best guess as to why this story is so weird because the only other solution I can come up with involves the author and an entire sheet of LSD. One way or another, I'm positive that hallucinogenic drugs were involved.

I did enjoy the beginning. Well, perhaps “enjoy” is a strong word because it's all rather depressing, but I was definitely invested in the story because I am a big fan of the whole “broken people go into the woods and get monstered” trope. And then a moose maybe started talking and I'm sure there is some sort of deeper meaning to everything that happened but it obviously all went right over my head. The Goodreads blurb says it has something to do with “the horrors of grief and the hunger of guilt” so I guess I'll just go with that.

Moose aside, however, the most baffling part of this book is why Christine brings groceries into the house, cooks and eats dinner, and then puts the groceries away afterward. I mean, if it's all shelf-stable pantry-type stuff, okay, I guess. But there were obviously cold/frozen items and now that I think about it, maybe it was the main character who was on drugs because that is the only way that the grocery thing makes sense.

Anyway, if you enjoy fever dreams and (view spoiler) and defrosted groceries, definitely give Cold Snap a read – perhaps you'll like (and understand) it more than I did. 2.15 stars, rounded down.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Titan Books for providing me with an advance copy of this book to review. Its expected publication date is October 15, 2024.

3.5 stars (rounded up)

Just before Christmas, Derek Sinclaire tragically died after hanging Christmas lights per his wife’s request. Christine Sinclaire is riddled with grief and guilt and decides to escape the house with her 15-year-old son and their cat. They go to a remote cabin in the Pennsylvania Wilds to wait out the holidays. Christine is likely experiencing PTSD, as she keeps reliving her husband’s death. A moose/shadowy figure haunts Christine promising to grant what souls desire – their wishes.

Trigger warnings:
-death of a parent/spouse
-guilt and grief
-gruesome cat death

Thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for an Advanced Reader's Copy (ARC) in exchange for my honest opinion/review.

I enjoyed the cold, creepy atmosphere of this story and found it enjoyable overall.

(I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)

"Just the three of us and the trees"

This short novella follows Christine a wife and mother who is grieving the loss of her husband decides to take the family trip Derek had planned for them. She takes her 15 year old son Billy, and their cat to a remote cabin in the woods for Christmas. Billy and Christine are both grieving in their own way and are trying to navigate life without Derek. Once at the cabin Christine isn't just reliving her husband's death, but she is starting to hear her husband voice coming from a figure in the woods.

What can only be described as a shadow monster starts to follows the family. Things go from bad to worse quickly.

This chilling novella deals with a lot of grief and guilt. Christine reliving her husband's death over and over again and hearing the snapping of his bones will leave you feeling disturbed and horrified.

The emotional baggage these characters deal with act like a fuel for this creature that wants to ripped you to pieces.

This story is definitely one that will leave you thinking about it overtime even after you are finished with the book. I highly reccomend this book, this is my first Lindy Ryan but won't be my last!!

Sad and heartbreaking novella that examines grief and the trauma the survivors left behind experience. This book is as cold as the rural Pennsylvania cabin that serves as the setting. Ryan breaks your heart twice in this one, first through the incredibly honest look at the grief and trauma that is splitting apart a mother and son, and the during the truly pulse pounding climatic scene. Short but pulls no punches at all.

Cold Snap is a chilling, haunting, brilliant, and atmospheric novella about loss, guilt, and grief. This is a book which is unique and left me reeling and thinking about the plot after I finished reading. I often questioned what I was reading and have a feeling that I will read this novella for a second time just to let everything sink in. Like other reviewers have mentioned, I often wondered what did I just read?

Christine Sinclaire has decided to bring her son and their cat to a remote cabin in Pennsylvania which they have rented for the holidays. It has been two weeks since her husband fell off their roof while putting up Christmas lights and died. After arriving, Christine begins to see a figure who talks to her in her husband's voice.

As I mentioned above, this book is atmospheric and chilling. It oozes with grief and loss. I must give big props for Lindy Ryan for originality and setting a gloomy yet brilliant mood for this novella.

Lindy Ryan first came on my radar with her book, Bless Your Heart, and she left me feeling unsettled and chilled with Cold Snap. This riveting book can easily be read in one sitting.

I can't wait to read what Lindy Ryan writes next.

Dark, chilling, atmospheric, and unsettling.

Christine Sinclaire, recently widowed, packs up her fifteen-year-old son and the family cat and flees to a cabin deep in the remote Pennsylvania Wilds to wait out the holidays.

When Christine begins to hear strange noises coming from the forest and sees a horned figure between frozen branches, she assumes it's just a moose since the property manager warned her about them. But moose don't walk upright like the shadowy figure does. They don't call Christine's name with her dead husband's voice.

This was a captivating story filled with the most perfectly detailed imagery that had me shivering to the last page! I swear I could practically FEEL that icy cold air around me as the MC ran through the forest!

I found it to be just long enough to be a quick but intense read. I didn't want to put it down!! It definitely left me wanting more, but at the same time, the author was able to wrap things up in a satisfying way in the end.