'A grieving mother and son hope to survive Christmas in a remote mountain cabin, in this chilling novella of dread, isolation and demons lurking in the frozen woods. Perfect for fans of The Only Good Indians, The Shining and The Babadook.
'Two weeks ago, Christine Sinclaire's husband slipped off the roof while hanging Christmas lights and fell to his death on the front lawn. Desperate to escape her guilt and her grief, Christine packs up her fifteen-year-old son and the family cat and flees to the cabin they'd reserved deep in the remote Pennsylvania Wilds to wait out the holidays.
'It isn't long before Christine begins to hear strange noises coming from the forest. When she spots a horned figure watching from between frozen branches, Christine assumes it's just a forest animal—a moose, maybe, since the property manager warned her about them, said they'd stomp a body so deep into the snow nobody'd find it 'til spring. But moose don't walk upright like the shadowy figure does. They don't call Christine's name with her dead husband's voice.'
Grief is a powerful emotion, one that is perhaps the most debilitating we can feel. Grief destroys our lives when it first hits us, it's all we can feel, often in times when we have no choice but to push on and keep on moving when all we want to do is lie down and lose ourselves. When grief comes with the loss of a loved one it's at its worst because it's not just the emotions of the loss you have to deal with, but the reality of it as the world around you changes to reflect that; yet we're often forced to continue our lives, going to work, going to school, talking to strangers, living out lives as if our world hasn't come crumbling down. Grief also lingers, even long after the event that brought it on, sometimes taking you by complete surprise it the most unusual times. Despite the power of grief it's one of the emotions that we're perhaps least equipped to deal with, and because of that it's one of the most destructive.
Grief is the central theme of Lindy Ryan's Cold Snap, which tells the story of Christine Sinclaire, who lost her husband to a sudden tragedy just weeks before when he fell from their roof whilst hanging Christmas lights. Standing beside him at the time, Christine was unable to save him, and was forced to watch as he fell to his death, snapping his back on a railing on the ground below. Unable to process these tragic events, and failing to connect with her teenage son Billy, Christine retreats into the last thing her husband wanted the three of them to do, travelling to the Pennsylvania woods for Christmas. Loading into her truck with the Christmas dinner supplies, presents, and pet cat Haiku, the bereaved family travels to a remote cabin in the snow covered forest. However, once they arrive Christine becomes convinced some strange creature able to talk in her husband's voice is watching her.
The set-up for Cold Snap definitely intrigued me. I enjoy horror, remote winter locations are one of my favourite environments, and strange, spectral entities tick my box; alas, I came away from Cold Snap not just terribly disappointed, but also incredibly bored.
Cold Snap is a relatively short read, barely more than a hundred and twenty pages in length, and I have to say with all honesty the short page count was something of a mercy to me, as despite the length I kept checking how much more of the book there was whilst reading it; and if it had been longer it would likely have ended up on my 'did not finish' pile. I have three main areas where Cold Snap failed to do anything for me, confusing and twisting narrative, repetitiveness, and lack of resolution.
At the start of the review I said how grief is a destructive emotion, one that can ruin your life and mess with your mind, and I'm familiar with how it can cause blanks in memory, and how when it wears down your mind it can cause you to become disorientated and even confuse reality. I think that this was where Lindy Ryan was trying to take Christine's narrative, but more often than not the book ended up feeling more like a spiral into madness than grief itself. Christine acted like she was on a bad drug trip, or spiralling because she was missing needed medication. She would become obsessed over tiny, strange things whilst forgetting basic everyday stuff, having almost manic moments at times. Other times she'd black out halfway through a task, coming to in another location or in the middle of a task. There were multiple times where I wasn't even sure if this was even happening to her or not though, as Billy wouldn't seem to react to her mania or blackouts, going about his day like everything was normal to him. Christine quickly became an unreliable narrator, and one that made little sense most of the time.
This played into the second criticism, of Christine's repetitive nature. Every few pages Christine would obsesses over something, often repeating the same phrases over and over again, or going back to a subject that had no relation to the moment that she'd already gone to a dozen times. 'Derek's foot slips. Derek's foot slips. Derek's foot slips.', 'Just the three of us and the trees. Just the three of us and trees. Just the three of us and the trees. Just the three of us and the trees.', 'Derek's foot slips. Derek's foot slips. Derek's foot slips.', 'Remember why you called it a blankety? Remember why you called it a blankety?', 'Just the three of us and trees. Just the three of us and trees.', 'Blankety. Blankety. Blankety.', 'Derek's foot slips.'. Over and over and over and over again. A quarter of the book feels like a repeat of a phrase, or a question, or a thought that Christine has. Yes, it plays into themes of grief and trauma and how it wears the mind down, but boy does it make it hard to connect to the character, follow the story well, or care about what I'm reading.
For me the biggest problem was the supernatural horror element, and how nothing really comes from it. To spoil some of the book a little, Christine sees a man, maybe a moose, maybe a moose man, that talks like her husband, haunts her from the trees, might not be real, but is definitely real as it kills the cat and destroys the car, but is also not a real moose, but might be a real moose. The book gives no answers, no hints, and no satisfaction. The creature is hardly in the book too, with the majority of it centring instead on Christine and her insanity, and by the time the creature is shown to be actually 100% real and a threat it's a single chase scene until the book just ends. When I say it ends I mean it just suddenly stops. There's not even an attempt at a resolution, satisfying or not, and it comes across like Ryan was simply done with the story and didn't want to do any more. After slogging through one of the longest, most unsatisfying hundred pages I was rewarded with absolutely nothing at the end.
I understand that my review sounds harsh, and that I'm probably making some people who enjoyed the book angry as I'm missing something that made them connect with it and love it (I've seen the reviews and there are people who adore it). I think part of this is that Cold Snap was one of the first books I read in a long while as I've been dealing with some health issues and reading hasn't been easy for months now, and that it felt like I got nothing in return of the time and effort that went into reading the book. Perhaps I'm judging it harshly because of that, and if I was healthy and doing well I would have connected with it more, but for where I am at the moment it ended up being one of the most disappointing books I think I've ever read. Perhaps your experience with it will be better, I actually hope it is if you go to the effort of reading it; but for me, Cold Snap was a huge missed opportunity.
