Format: Audio 

This is actually a really hard book to review and I think a lot of this stems from the format in which I read it which I’ll go into in more depth shortly. But first, I loved: 

The atmosphere: There is something hauntingly beautiful about Rachel Greenlaw’s writing and descriptions, in general but particularly of the mountains. They felt almost like a character themselves. 

The mystery: I had so many questions while reading this. Were the mountains actually alive? Who is the man that appears with the frost and disappears with the thaw? Just where did Mathieu come from? What happened between Carrie and her friends? We do get answers to a lot of these (let’s be honest, I’m still questioning the mountains) but the mystery kept me guessing throughout. 

The relationships: There were so many interesting relationship dynamics to unpick: Carrie and Jess; Carrie and Tom; Carrie, Tom and Jess; Carrie and Cora; Cora and Ivy; Cora and Howard; the Morgans and the rest of the town. It was so impressive how the author managed to explore all of these in such a satisfactory way. 

But I wasn’t as invested in this story as I expected to be and while I can appreciate the plot and the writing, I didn’t feel for the characters and their storylines as much as I wanted to. I do think a lot of this stems from listening to the audiobook. As an audiobook this just didn’t work for me. I have no doubt it works for a lot of people, but I really struggled to distinguish between the characters when listening and it required a lot more concentration as a result. This wasn’t the easy listen I gravitate towards and the need to really concentrate meant I couldn’t appreciate the storyline as much as I normally would. 

So, a really well done, atmospheric story that I’m sorry I didn’t love more.