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4.5 Stars Rounded up!

Grieving isn’t what I expected. You don’t see your loved one’s face wherever you go, haunting you on billboards and strangers. That’s a cliché. The reality is simpler, less melodramatic, and far worse. You just start to forget.

I want to start by saying I don't think I've ever disliked a character in a book more than Ashley Garver. He grins my gears and then some. But a sign of a good book is when an author makes you have an emotional reaction, right? At least for me that's how it works regardless if you like the character or not.

Darby is a college student and she just got word that her mom, who she hasn't always gotten along the best with, is sick with cancer. She is driving home from school for Christmas so that she can see her mom one last time. There's a huge snow storm and she ends up getting deserted at a rest stop. She's with four other strangers: Lars, Ashley, Ed and Sandi. Ed and Sandi are cousins, Lars and Ashley are two other random men - at least that's how the cars outside make it seem.

Darby is desperately trying to contact her sister and police in hopes that they can help them get out. However, the area they are in is a no service area. She is outside trying to find service when she notices something pop up in one of the cars. Did she just see a hand of a child?? Darby tries to shake it off but Lars gives her a creepy vibe and she ends up investigating. What she finds is horrendous. From here, the story goes into full action. Full of twists and turns. All I can say is Trust. No. One.

I flew threw this book so fast once I really got into it. I stayed up reading late (which I honestly don't do very often) and even after staying up late I was hyped up on what was going to happen. This is definitely a heart pounding, what's going to happen next Thriller. You want a thriller with a really happy or calm ending? Yeah, this is not the book that is going to give you that. There's violence, cussing, abuse (both child and adult), guns and more and it is like that throughout the whole novel. There were times when it was so graphic that I felt I physically feeling their pain! It's definitely a thriller, not a horror, but maybe some would say a little bit of horror. Either way, it's a very good thriller.

So why the 4.5 stars? The book started out slow for me. I know that may sound crazy to a lot of people but the first ~60 pages was a lot of anticipation and I figured this would just be another thriller that has a few twists and turns but isn't too intense. Obviously, I was wrong and this shot up to a 4.5 the last 220 pages of the book with non-stop action.

If you like thrillers and can handle the triggers above, definitely pick this one up. It published on January 15th. Thank you to William Morrow for my ARC of this book!