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Jenny and Lisa are two sisters who love each other very much, but neither of them has had the opportunity to properly connect because of their large age gap. While one was off studying to be a doctor, the other was still in middle school. After graduating, Jenny decides to invite her sister to her lovely hometown of Snowfield in California, which doubles as a friendly ski resort. The two are excited to start making many wonderful memories, but the girls find the town to be completely devoid of people. Then they found the first body in the place they were planning to make their home.

The body is strangely swollen and still warm, their face frozen in a permanent scream. 150 were found dead, 350 missing. A great catastrophe has struck Jenny's beloved home, but the poor sisters have no idea that the terror has only just begun in the tiny mountain town. At first they thought it was the work of a maniac or a group of terrorists or cultists, or perhaps even some kind of unknown plague. But then they found the truth. They saw it in the flesh, and it was worse than anything any of them had ever imagined.

This book had trouble catching my attention at first. The dialogue was awkward, the setup seemed a bit cliche, and the way the characters reacted to death and horror seemed very hollow and unrealistic. However, after the first hundred pages or so, the quality of the writing skyrockets and the source of the catastrophe becomes much more complex and interesting then the premise would lead you to believe. Once Jenny calls the police from a nearby town, receives backup from a military Biological Investigations Unit and an eccentric British professor who was fired from his position for inventing all kinds of theories regarding an ancient enemy who has been responsible for countless mass vanishings all over the world for centuries such as the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony, Shaanxi Village, Mayan civilizations and ghost ships, things become way more exciting and interesting.

The combo of many mysterious tragedies from real history, a band of unlikely do-gooders in a desolate mountain town and a terrifying shapeshifting monstrosity that's like a fusion of Pennywise, Azathoth and Satan himself makes for a compelling horror thriller. It has a rough start, but the last 75% is great and presents many interesting questions and answers regarding religion, the origins of the Satan myth, historical tragedies, and whether humans are more capable of kindness or evil.

My Rating 4.2