3.5 Stars from me
I was really torn between the 3.5 and 4 stars on this one but I think that’s possibly because of how much I wanted to love it having been a fan of C J Tudor‘s other books.
The Drift is told through three different characters, Hannah, Meg, and Carter who are each stuck in their own kind of nightmare scenario: trapped in a crashed bus, a stranded cable car, and a snowed-in chalet with the power flickering in a way that you just know means it’s going to cut out! At first, it’s not clear how their stories connect, but you just know something bigger is going on.
There’s a dystopian edge to the story too, with a viral outbreak playing a central role. Storylines like this of course hit a little closer to home post-pandemic and this adds weight to the characters’ choices and giving the story a bigger, more haunting backdrop.
I’ve read that this is going to be televised and I wonder if I will get into it more in that medium – I truly don’t know why the book didn’t hook me in as much as I’d hoped. The writing style was of course excellent and the story in theory appeals, I expect this is a me problem and not a book problem! My thanks to Netgalley, the author and Penguin Michael Joseph for an ARC in return for an honest review.
Blurb: Hannah awakens to carnage, all mangled metal and shattered glass. During a hasty escape from a secluded boarding school, her coach careened over a hillside road during one of the year’s heaviest snowstorms, trapping her inside 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 secrets–intact, they’ll need to work together or they’ll be buried alive with the rest of the dead.
A former detective, Meg awakens to a gentle rocking. She is in a cable car suspended far above a snowstorm and surrounded by strangers in the same uniform as her, with no memory of how they got there. They are heading to a mysterious place known to them only as “The 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.
Carter is gazing out the window of the 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.
The imminent dangers faced by Hannah, Meg, and Carter are each one part of the puzzle. Lurking in their shadows is an even greater threat–one that threatens to consume all of humanity.
Read and Rated 