Title: Shiver by Allie Reynolds
Rating: 4 stars (🌟🌟🌟🌟)
Publisher: G.P. Putnam & Sons
This was the perfect read for a snowy weekend (especially when the Superbowl is... not as good or competitive a game as you had anticipated). This totally saved my Sunday night with a taut conclusion.
There's quite the cast of characters and none of them are loveable but they were interesting. Each kept me engaged wondering what were their motivations, secrets, lies and prospects of being the murderous one of the group. The answers came slowly as the story is told from one POV (Milla's) and it's clear that Milla isn't the most forthcoming narrator either. The interpersonal relationships were sliding scales and Venn diagrams that kept me on my toes with each revelation. This also rose the tension to a crescendo when the Big Showdown happens on the sheer depths of the mountain.. I loved the surprises & was not sure who would make it off the mountain alive or in what condition. There's an epilogue that ties things up tidily for the survivor(s).
As ever, accepting invitations to remote destinations with complicated acquaintances is a poor and dangerous choice. And I still can't pass up one of these tales.
Recommended.
Summary: When Milla accepts an off-season invitation to Le Rocher, a cozy ski resort in the French Alps, she's expecting an intimate weekend of catching up with four old friends. It might have been a decade since she saw them last, but she's never forgotten the bond they forged on this very mountain during a winter spent fiercely training for an elite snowboarding competition.
Yet no sooner do Milla and the others arrive for the reunion than they realize something is horribly wrong. The resort is deserted. The cable cars that delivered them to the mountaintop have stopped working. Their cell phones--missing. And inside the hotel, detailed instructions await them: an icebreaker game, designed to draw out their secrets. A game meant to remind them of Saskia, the enigmatic sixth member of their group, who vanished the morning of the competition years before and has long been presumed dead.
Stranded in the resort, Milla's not sure what's worse: the increasingly sinister things happening around her or the looming snowstorm that's making escape even more impossible. All she knows is that there's no one on the mountain she can trust. Because someone has gathered them there to find out the truth about Saskia...someone who will stop at nothing to get answers. And if Milla's not careful, she could be the next to disappear...
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