L.K. Reads: “Dead of Winter”

Andddd we’re back, with another (long overdue) book review. 

I’ll be honest, while I set a lofty goal for my 2025 reading list and even planned out most of the books I wanted to read in advance—well, things never quite turn out the way you hope. 

Most of the books I actually read this year were written by Frieda McFadden. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the name, but for those who aren’t, here’s the short version: McFadden is a bestselling author whose somewhat controversial murder-thrillers are famous for their “unexpected” psychological twists that are either shocking or…not. While some consider her the Colleen Hoover of thrillers, I think she’s more like the M. Night Shamalan of her genre. Maybe with a slightly better success record, but you all can fight me on that in the comments. 

Brief aside, I’m hoping to put together a mega-review of all my McFadden reads for the end of the year, including my overall thoughts about her work as well as a tiered list of all the books I’ve read. While I’d like that to come out before the end of the year, I’ve learned my lesson about setting deadlines, as my immune system is once again failing me (and right before a huge move—yay!). So, expect that soon…ish.

BUT THAT’S NOT WHY WE’RE HERE!

No, today we’re exploring a much, much different thriller author—one of my favorites, in fact. Her name? Darcy Coates.

Coates is an Australian author who first broke onto the scene with her self-published novella, Once Returned, in 2013. Over the years she gained a reputation as a sort of ghost story writer, given that most of her novels featured some kind of paranormal twist, before being picked up by Sourcebooks’ Poisoned Pen Press in 2019. As of the time of this post, she has written over thirty works, from novellas and short story collections to stand-alone novels and book series, dipping her pen into both paranormal and very real, very traumatizing horror. 

I love Coates’ work. Her writing accomplishes what most horror or thriller authors can only hope to achieve: that spine-tingling, gut-wrenching, edge-of-your-seat experience that, more times than not, feels almost exclusive to horror in visual mediums. Coates, in my firm opinion, is a master of suspense and tension building, and her style is so captivating that I found myself devouring my first of her novels—a semi-paranormal forest horror titled Hunted—whenever I had a spare moment. 

Hunted provided a much needed jumpstart to my 2025 reading journey after a months’ long cold spell, and it remains one of the few books I’ve read in a long time that I would emphatically recommend to any and everyone. Frankly, it deserves a review of its own, and maybe one day I’ll find the time to collect my thoughts and put pen to paper.

For now, though, we’re taking one of Coates’ standalone novels, one that, for better and worse, leaves me with plenty to say.

Summary

Published in 2023, Dead of Winter is one of Coates’ more recent contributions to the horror/suspense genre, with some inspiration seemingly taken from Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. There are strangers, there’s isolation, and what’s more: there’s a murderer. 

Eleven people are brought together in the dead of winter on a trip to a remote mountain lodge in the Rockies when their bus happens across a felled tree blocking the road. Brian, the driver and tour guide, lets the passengers out to stretch and look around while he and a few volunteers work to remove the tree. 

Main character Christa and her boyfriend Kiernan leave the group for just a moment, eager to catch a glimpse of the beautiful mountains beyond the clouds threatening snow. Before they can make their way back, however, a blizzard descends, cutting the pair off from the group and eventually each other. Christa passes out and awakens in an abandoned cabin, surrounded by the rest of the group, who managed to rescue her from the storm. 

Kiernan is not among them. 

With her boyfriend presumed dead, and one of her hands immobilized from frostbite, Christa has no choice but to sit tight and trust that the help Brian has called for will, in fact, be there in the morning. But dawn brings with it no help, and an even more horrifying discovery: Brian’s severed head, impaled on a tree outside of their cabin. 

One by one, members of the tour group begin to go missing, their decapitated heads decorating the tree nearby. Tempers rage and tension builds as the dwindling survivors struggle to piece together the clues left behind in the blood and snow, desperate to unravel the mystery surrounding them before it’s too late. 

Disclaimer + Spoiler-Free Review

(This review WILL divulge spoilers for Dead of Winter. To accommodate readers interested in learning more about the story without giving away too much, I’ve included a brief spoiler-free section here. For those interested in my final thoughts and rating for Dead of Winter, see the bottom of this post.)

So, full disclosure, Dead of Winter is not my favorite of Coates’ novels. Does that mean I disliked it? Absolutely not. 

While not the best example of what Coates is capable of, this book is still an excellent demonstration of how well she blends different storytelling elements together to create a truly frightening horror experience. Her descriptions of the bleak landscape surrounding the cabin, the labyrinth of giant pine trees that make everything look exactly the same, and the sickening scenes of murder and mutilation make you want to put the book down and yet push forward even still. At no moment is there a single character you feel that you can trust. Everyone is suspicious, no one has an alibi, and when the truth is finally revealed, you don’t feel any sense of vindication or relief. All you feel is dread.

*Spoilers Ahead: You’ve Been Warned*

What Works

The Horror

Like I mentioned in the spoiler-free section, Coates’ descriptions truly carry this story. Hell, the atmosphere was enough to make me cold, and (as of writing this) I live in the tropics. Her writing pulls you in and keeps you prisoner. It’s not enough to sympathize with what Christa and the others are going through. Coates’ attention to each and every detail—their breath visible in the freezing air, the neverending snowfall that swiftly covers any and all discernable tracks, the frosted glass, the impenetrable dark once night falls—makes it so that you are there, snowbound in a claustrophobic cabin with dwindling supplies and a killer on the loose. 

Then there’s the tension, which creeps higher and higher with each new disappearance and subsequent murder. Coates provides names and backstories for each character fairly early on, so when someone dies, it hits home. 

Take Miri, who is introduced with her husband Steve while the group is still on the tour bus. She’s a pleasant woman with a Southern twang, and provides a soft complement to her rough-and-tumble husband whose primary interests are hunting, fishing, and drinking. Her presence is one of the more comforting among the cast, so when she’s the first to die (after Brian, whose death was foretold in the book’s summary) it feels like a punch to the gut. You rarely expect the deaths as they occur, and absolutely no one is safe. 

There’s even a scene where Greyson, the teenage son of one of the other guests, is found hanging upside down from a tree, his neck dripping blood onto the snow as his severed head hangs from the branch above. 

Coates pulls no punches when it comes to brutality. From decapitated bodies and heads hung like Christmas ornaments to bloodied teeth left on a windowsill and frozen, mutilated corpses hidden in tool sheds, this book is filled with vivid and disgusting imagery that effectively conveys just how much danger the cast is in. There is no fade to black, no details are left to the imagination, and no one, not even a child, is safe.

Pacing

Violence and gore can make for a startling read, but without a careful build up, a story’s horror will ultimately fall flat. Coates handles this with her painstaking pace. At just over 350 pages, Dead of Winter doesn’t span much more than a few days or a week in-universe, but every moment feels like an eternity. The raging blizzard, coupled with dwindling resources and no way to contact the outside world, makes time feel more and more like an illusion. Almost no one gets any real sleep; even Christa, our lens into the story, only gets a couple of hours overall, which further blurs both her and our perception of time and reality. Cold, sleep-deprived, and starving is already a recipe for a bad time; toss in sporadic murders each time the group seems to make a little progress, and you have a recipe for what surely feels like hell. 

Though the lack of consistent action might frustrate some, I appreciated Coates’ slower pace. It made the mystery that much more engaging. Was the killer an outside force, stalking and watching their every move for a chance to strike? Or were they part of the group all along, taking in whatever insight they could before offing the biggest threat? 

Putting time between murders, forcing the group to talk and plan and wait without any reassurance that they were right or that they’d wake up alive, only furthered the tension of the story, which kept me turning page after page, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The Twist…Sort of

This is where my review starts to take a turn. Towards the end of this book, there is a twist that is so phenomenally done that I didn’t see it coming until a page before it happened, maybe less.

Then, there’s…another one. Let’s focus on the good one first!

About ¾ into the book, we get a major reveal. Up until this point, every character in this group was a stranger. Sure, you have the couples, and the father-teenaged son duo, but outside of immediate dynamics like these, no one had any real connection to one another.

Or so they thought.

Over the course of the story, we learned key details about each individual, like their occupations—there’s a retired 911 dispatcher, a mechanic, a DJ, a trucker, a veteran—and their reasoning for taking this trip. However, we also learn through one character, Alexis, that not everyone is as innocent as they appear. One of them…is a killer.

No duh, you might say. That’s the whole premise of the book! But there’s more.

See, Alexis didn’t buy her ticket. It was sent to her anonymously, in a condolences card. Some time before the story began, Alexis’ younger sister, Janet, died. The police ruled it a suicide, but Alexis didn’t believe it. She kicked up a fuss, researching all she could about the day her sister died, interviewing neighbors, even posting online about it. And soon, her efforts paid off. People began paying attention. It became a sort of “cold case” among online true crime personalities. Like Alexis, many started to believe her sister’s death was no accident, and it certainly wasn’t a suicide. 

Then came the card, along with the ticket and a message. You’re right. I killed her. Let’s meet. 

Alexis, as it turns out, isn’t here on vacation. She’s here to catch her sister’s murderer, invited by the killer themselves. 

After Alexis shares this info with Christa, she is beaten unconscious by the killer, forcing Christa to share her insight. This opens up Pandora’s box because, as it turns out, not a single person on this trip paid for their tickets.

Steve the trucker won a raffle neither he nor his wife recalled entering.

Hutch the DJ was sent by an anonymous client to scout potential wedding venues.

Alexis received hers as a taunt, a brazen trap set by the killer she hoped to catch.

Denny the mechanic found them in an envelope under his door, believed to be from a caring neighbor after the death of his wife.

Blake the 911 operator got hers in a card as thanks for her “many years of service.”

Simone the veteran was gifted hers by a friend, who had to back out last minute. 

Everyone in attendance somehow received their tickets via an unknown third party. 

But wait, there’s more. 

See, we learn early on that Christa isn’t just here on vacation. She’s not even here just for Kiernan, although he plays a big role in her decision to go. Two years previously, on August 8, late, rainy night, Christa was involved in a car accident. A young man with bloodshot eyes and reddish hair began tailgating her, even swerving into the opposite lane to get around her. Frustrated and tired, she refused to let him cut her off. A semi truck appeared in the opposite lane, ultimately forcing the man to swerve off a bridge and into the river below. His body was found the next day, tangled in the weeds downriver. 

From Christa’s flashbacks, we learn the boy’s name was Liam, and that he had been driving erratically after a major fight with his girlfriend. After the crash, Christa, the semi truck operator, and another driver tried to help, as did a rescue team, but no one was able to do much in the rain, leading to Liam’s eventual death by drowning.

The incident haunted Christa for years. She became a recluse, quitting her job and isolating herself out of guilt and fear that the universe would one day seek revenge for her role in an innocent boy’s death. Then Kiernan came along, and she started to enjoy life again…until their trip to the mountains. 

Any writer worth their salt knows the theory of Chekhov’s gun: if a gun is introduced in a story, by the end of that story, the gun must go off. It’s considered poor writing to introduce any major plot points and not pay them off, so as I’m sure you’ve guessed, Christa’s past trauma doesn’t stay in the past. 

Further discussion among the group reveals just who each member really is, and what ties them all together: August 8. The day that Liam died. 

Blake, the retired 911 operator, hung up on Liam’s desperate call while his car sank in the river; she thought it was a prank. Steve and Miri were in the truck that drove Liam off the cliff, while Hutch was the other driver who tried to help him but gave up. Simone, the veteran, had been employed by the rescue team that didn’t deploy until the morning. 

Even Denny, the mechanic, who seems to have no tie into the events of August 8 whatsoever, is connected: his shop serviced the trucks that Steve’s company used. And, as Steve points out to the group and to us, he couldn’t stop that night because his emergency brakes failed. 

It all becomes clear. This group isn’t here by pure coincidence. They’re here by design. And the killer wants revenge. 

When I tell you that this twist had me in awe. Words can’t convey just how impressed I was with how Coates’ handled this scenario. While victims being connected isn’t exactly new in the Whodunnit genre, the fact that Coates effectively convinces the reader that these characters have nothing in common, before dropping that bombshell on us, is spectacular to say the least. 

You know Christa’s past is going to come up, and eventually you start to see patterns in one or two of the characters’ histories. But at no point did I fully realize just how carefully connected these “strangers” were, nor did I understand just how much thoughtful design had gone into making sure the killer had them right where they wanted them. 

*sigh* Speaking of the killer…

What Didn’t Work

The Twist…Sort of

So, who is the mastermind behind this nightmare? Who among our cast of characters is secretly a vicious, cold-blooded butcher eager to right everyone’s wrongs?

It’s…it’s—!

Kiernan. 

That’s right. Kiernan—Christa’s boyfriend, the one who existed for all of two chapters before getting lost in the snow and supposedly dying—has been hiding out at Blackstone Lodge this entire time, killing off the tourists one by one. Kiernan is the man behind the slaughter.

*Cue Living Tombstone*

Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading a lot of formulaic thriller novels lately—or maybe it’s because I rely on the old manga rule of “No Body No Death”—but I saw this twist coming a mile away. Coates even tries to derail any suspicious readers with a red herring in the form of a dead body wearing Kiernan’s clothing, minus its head. Christa and the others assume this must be Kiernan. 

There’s just one problem with that theory. 

After waking up in the cabin, having just been rescued from the blizzard that separated her from her boyfriend, Christa sees who she believes is Kiernan, only to realize that it’s actually Brian, their tour guide. She remarks how similar in build both men are, which seems to be a throwaway line at the time. However, a pattern soon emerges. Every victim after Brian has their heads impaled on the Death Tree™, with their bodies left close behind. Miri’s is left in a pool of snow and blood, and Greyson’s is hanging from the tree, but Brian’s? Nowhere to be found. 

Christa also mentions later, after the group returns to the cabin, that she’s thankful Kiernan’s head hasn’t been added to the tree yet, even though the killer added every other victim’s head immediately after their death. It’s clear the killer enjoys showing off their kills, so why would they take Brian’s body and Kiernan’s head and not show them off? This tipped me off almost instantly that Kiernan wasn’t really dead. 

We get confirmation of this alongside Kiernan’s big reveal in the last few chapters where, via exposition dump, Kiernan explains how he was the one behind everything, with his goal to kill everyone involved in the events of August 8. 

But why? Well, this answer is also a little obvious (if not a bit convoluted). 

Shortly before she’s attacked, Alexis tells Christa she thinks she’s discovered who the killer is, and has written the answer in her journal in secret code. Upon decoding the journal, Christa finds a meticulous timelog of every person’s actions and movements down to the minute. Alexis used little symbols for each character: a fish for Steve, who loved fishing, a cross for CHRISTa, etc. 

Here we get a seemingly random aside from Christa, who deduces that Kiernan’s symbol is a shamrock. She acknowledges her boyfriend was of Irish descent, but recognizes Alexis couldn’t have known that, and sums it up as her using Kiernan’s reddish hair, green eyes, and Irish name as justification. 

Hmm. A character with reddish hair and an obviously Irish name? Where have I seen that before…

Yeah, spoilers, Liam was Kiernan’s little brother. 

Maybe this wasn’t as obvious for others, but seeing as Kiernan and Liam are the only two characters with noticeably Irish names in the book, combined with Christa’s weird and sudden emphasis on Kiernan being Irish-American (as if we couldn’t tell), it felt super obvious that these characters were connected in some way, so a lot of the shock factor was lost. 

After Liam’s death on the bridge, Kiernan’s family fell apart. His father committed suicide and his mother became catatonic, forcing Kiernan to drop everything and look after her. He made her a promise that everyone involved in Liam’s death—everyone responsible for ruining their family—would suffer.

Kiernan blamed everyone even tangentially involved in August 8 for his little brother’s death, and took it upon himself to exact revenge. He reveals to Christa that he started hunting down and killing people one by one, including Liam’s ex-girlfriend, Janet, whose death he framed as a suicide. Sound familiar?

Once Alexis started snooping around, Kiernan knew he had to rethink his approach, and the Blackstone Lodge trip materialized. He planned the whole thing from start to finish, sending out tickets to the remaining key players from August 8 who he’d yet to finish off. But one in particular needed persuading: a young woman who had isolated herself out of grief, whose car had forced Liam off the road and into the river below, who Kiernan held most responsible above all the others. 

Christa. 

Kiernan admits to stalking Christa and orchestrating every facet of their relationship, even planting an engagement ring on Brian’s body to convince her of his death and truly make her suffer. Now, as the last survivor of the mountain massacre, she’s helpless to stop him from finally taking revenge for Liam’s demise. It seems like the perfect plan.

Until you think about it for more than five seconds. 

Let’s look at the murders before the trip happened. You’re telling me that at no point did anyone—not the police, not the family or friends of the deceased—consider that these deaths were suspicious? Sure, Kiernan says he tried to make them all look like accidents, but are you telling me that only Alexis cared enough to look a little deeper into her loved one’s demise? 

We’re never told exactly how many people Kiernan killed prior to the trip, but judging by his skill in the book, we can fathom he’s got a good deal of experience. So any significant number of people die, seemingly by “accident,” without a year and a half of a tragic accident, and no one connects the dots, even in theory?

But L.K.! you cry. You didn’t realize it until the book was almost over! 

Okay, fair. And maybe I’m being a little nitpicky here. I’m just wondering how Kiernan was able to get away with murder for so long before being undone by a girl in her twenties with a penchant for true crime. 

But, hey, let’s suspend our disbelief on that one and move onto my other issues.

Aside from how obvious the twist was, I didn’t really like it all that much. Perhaps it’s because we don’t get to know Kiernan much as a character before he’s supposedly lost to the snow, so his actions in the last few chapters don’t come as much of a shock to us as they do to Christa.

This man brought her out of her shell after self-isolating for so long. She thought the world of him, and leaving him in the snow for dead ruined her. We should be aching for Kiernan the way Christa is, and we should feel the same betrayal and heartbreak she does when the truth comes out.

But, we don’t. It’s hard to feel much of anything because we didn’t really know him; all we know is what Christa (rather repetitively, to be honest) tells us throughout the story, which ultimately feels more hollow than anything. 

Kiernan wasn’t built up to be a villain; he just is one. And he could have been a good one, if Coates had devoted the time to building him up as anything other than an obvious—and, dare I say, one-dimensional—twist villain.

While I sympathized with Kiernan and could appreciate the genuinely amazing qualities he had as a villain—the scene where he reveals everything to Christa with a smile and a tender, loving tone gave me chills—we just didn’t get enough time to really sell this side of him, and that is truly to the story, and this character’s detriment. 

You’re the Killer! No, You’re the Killer! We’re…All the Killer?

A common trait of the Whodunnit genre is one or a few red herrings—that is, clues, either in the form of items or people, designed to throw the reader off track, making the mystery that much more difficult to solve. 

Dead of Winter has a few of its own, like Brian’s body dressed in Kiernan’s clothes. However, most of its red herrings come in the form of other characters.  

There’s Denny, a gruff older man of formidable size, who speaks very little and whose relationship with his young son Greyson can be summed up as “icy” (no pun intended). During her conversion with Alexis, Christa learns that Greyson confided in her that his mom died in a car accident recently, and that he’s certain his father was responsible. 

Then there’s Simone, the veteran. Her harsh demeanor and take-charge attitude in the face of crisis, while useful at times, begins toeing the line between cool pragmatism and sadistic indifference. While she’s quick to come up with solutions to keep the group alive, she’s also the only one with combat experience, which raises suspicions given the clean, methodical nature of the kills.  

There’s also Blake, the sarcastic, retired 911 operator who seems a little too interested in the macabre. Her willingness to share dark and depressing stories from her career, her morbid fascination with death, and her almost nonchalant attitude towards the murders makes her incredibly unsettling, while her lack of interest in assisting the others as they band together to try and find the killer reads as a little too on the nose. 

And, of course, we also have Steve the trucker. While his wife Miri was among the first murdered, his subsequent expressions of grief strike some, including Simone, as performative and insincere. He’s also got a short temper and, although he spends most of the book drinking, seems to shift between incredibly intoxicated and stone-cold sober on a dime. 

At first glance, any of these characters may seem suspicious. However, Coates never gives us much chance to consider any of them as actual, viable suspects. There’s rarely much to go on besides speculation; if anything, both the text and the characters’ actions do more to exonerate them than anything. 

Blake, for example, repeatedly bemoans her back issues. She’s described as a short and blocky woman around retirement age—definitely not in her prime, which makes it hard to imagine she could successfully commit the murders without detection.

Both Steve and Denny lost their loved ones, and while the book tries to misdirect us about their intentions, it’s never very effective. What we see from Steve never struck me, the reader, as suspicious; it’s always other characters giving their two cents, trying to color his actions as more sinister than they really are. To me, his loud, boisterous grieving never felt like a coverup so much as a lonely old man desperate for someone to listen to him now that his wife was gone. It was more sad than anything, and Coates didn’t do much to change this perception in her narrative. Instead, she relies on other characters’ telling us that he’s acting suspicious, rather than showing us how his actions might be seen as unusual.

Denny’s the same. His wife’s death and his emotional stoicism are framed to make us see him as this dangerous monster hiding some unseen rage—and yet, this is the same man who only raised his voice once, when he demanded they cut his son’s dead body down from a tree.  We see Denny cradle his son, treating his body with the reverence and respect of a bereaved parent, and yet because he doesn’t grieve in a stereotypical way, we’re supposed to think he’s capable of filicide. 

Like, okay, I guess? These reasons just feel so flimsy. Sure, if I were in this situation, I might look sideways as some of these people, but none of it ever felt like enough to really suspect anyone. 

It doesn’t help matters when Coates doubles down on two of these red herrings—Simone and Denny—in absolutely unbearable ways. 

There’s a scene where Simone, seemingly unprompted, beats Steve to death with a rock. She allows herself to be restrained by the remaining survivors and locked in a shed without protest or explanation. Believing Simone to be the real killer, Christa demands to know what happened to her boyfriend. Here’s what the text says:

One corner of [Simone’s] mouth quirks up. Slow, lazy chuckles escape her. We could almost be having a friendly late-night talk if not for the violence still on display across her clothes and skin. “What makes you think I’m going to give you closure, little lamb?”

Chilling line, right? Well it’s all for nothing because, a few chapters later, Christa finds Simone dead in the shed, her head cut clean off. Another win for the butcher. 

Reading that scene at the time genuinely made me wonder if Simone was the killer, even though we had just under one hundred pages left. It felt like this was setting up for some grander, more shocking twist—why did she do it? Did she have help? What’s going to happen?—only to see that potential die with Simone. And frankly, it made no sense. Why did Simone kill Steve? Why didn’t she fight back? And why would she deny Christa any closure, and in such a cruel way, if she wasn’t guilty?

Welp, Coates writes it off as a misunderstanding. See, Simone overheard Alexis telling Christa about her journal, and swiped it when she had the chance. She decoded the journal and, based on its contents, believed Steve was the killer, choosing to end his life before he could kill again.

Simone never tells anyone this, nor does she defend herself against the allegations. All to her detriment, because she gets killed and we’re back to square one. (Oh, and we never get an answer to the closure comment, by the way.)

And you know? I wouldn’t have completely hated this misdirect if Coates had handled it better. 

Chapter 59 begins with the line, “Simone is the butcher.” It isn’t until Chapter 64 where we learn that no, she wasn’t; she’s been killed like all the others. That’s twenty pages Coates spent trying to convince us that no, really, Simone was the killer the whole time, just to say psych and reveal it was a red herring all along. 

Only it was too late for a red herring! We had all this build up, and it was for nothing!

And then Coates does it again!

Remember Denny? Well, after Christa finds Simone’s corpse, she rushes back to the cabin to warn the others, only to find the place covered in blood and Hutch bleeding out in the corner. Before she can do anything, Denny appears, an axe in hand and a maniacal gleam in his eye, forcing Christa to flee into the mountains. Led only by her phone’s light, she stumbles through the dark, snowy terrain towards what turns out to be Blackstone Lodge. Turns out they were just a few hours’ hike from it the whole time.

Side note, she also passes Blake’s decapitated body on the path, but it feels like such a footnote that it’s hardly worth mentioning. Which sucks! I actually started to like Blake towards the end, so her blink-and-you’ll-miss-it “death” really hurt to read. 

Upon entering Blackstone Lodge, Christa finds herself in a game of cat-and-mouse, hiding from Denny and his axe like something straight out of The Shining while she desperately tries to power a backup generator and phone for help. Just as she does so and makes a break for the exit, Denny’s head comes bouncing down the stairs. Cue the “It was Kiernan all along!” reveal. 

I’m sure this was supposed to be a huge twist, but it fell flat because I didn’t buy Denny as the villain. Not only did we never have anything to go on besides speculation and hearsay, but we also don’t get any real moment where it dawns on Christa that it’s been Denny the whole time. She was quick to believe Simone was the killer, after all; she only “realizes” it’s Denny via process of elimination (everyone else is dead or dying). 

And, exactly like with Simone, it all turns out to be a misunderstanding. 

Yup. Denny sees Christa—who, I’ll remind you, is down one hand due to frostbite—hunched over a bleeding Hutch and assumes she was (somehow!) the killer. He then tracks her for hours through the snowy, mountainous woods—in the dark—with an axe in his hand, never saying a word, which leads her to believe that he is the killer. 

And you know how long this goes on for? Thirty-three freaking pages. 

Chapter 67 shows Denny running after Christa. It’s not until Chapter 75, after Kiernan stealth-kills Denny and rolls his head down the stairs like a bowling ball, that we learn the truth. 

Why did we spend so much time on two separate red herrings that ultimately felt like intentional bait by the author, rather than believable suspects? Why did Denny not call out to Christa, in grief or rage or something? Why did Simone have to be so cryptic and cruel? It felt like Coates was trying deliberately to mislead us, which takes the fun out of it.

A good red herring doesn’t have to be force-fed to the readers. Denny, Simone, and even Steve and Blake already served as decent suspects initially. We didn’t need Simone’s nonsense line about closure to Christa, or Denny chasing her through the mountains for hours without a single moment of confrontation. Hell, there’s even a point where Christa, during a power outage, bites someone’s hand that has wrapped itself around her mouth. She later notices that Blake, from that point on, refuses to take off her gloves, though we never get confirmation if Blake was the one choking Christa, or why, making this a completely moot point. 

It’s one thing to have elements within your story that can bamboozle or mislead your readers; it’s another to deliberately plant information or write scenes in a way that feels almost nonsensical in an attempt to force readers off your trail. 

Coates’ attempts to redirect our attention so consistently, even devoting dozens upon dozens of pages to each misdirect, only make the twist feel that much more obvious, with little positive impact on the book overall. 

The Ending (of the Book. Did You Think I Was Done?)

So Kiernan and Christa tussle, Christa manages to stab Kiernan, and, as it turns out, her call for help made it through, as we see and hear helicopters descending upon Blackstone Lodge. While Christa reflects on her relationship with Kiernan, her trauma from August 8, and the fate of the survivors back at the cabin, she thinks:

I don’t know if Kiernan will survive.

If he does, he’ll face the courts. He’ll answer for what he’s done.

There were nine other people on this trip with us. Each of them has families, friends. People who deserve answers. Who need some kind of justice. Kiernan can be the one to pay that fee for the remainder of his life. 

For my own sake…I don’t want to ever see his face again. Though I suspect I’ll never forget it, in the same way that I never forgot his brother’s face from the night on the bridge. 

But that’s not what’s important right now, as the blinding light grows nearer.

Right now, I only care about two names.

Hutch. Alexis.

They might not still be alive. They might already be past the point of saving.

But we can at least try. 

I turned the page, expecting something more. An epilogue, perhaps, or even just one more chapter to tie things up. But there was nothing. That’s the end.

And let me tell you: I. Was. Pissed.

That was it? All that build up, all the fear and tension, for that? We never know whether Hutch and Alexis—the last two left alive in the cabin—succumbed to their injuries, or whether they were saved just in time. We don’t know what happens to Kiernan, or what Christa does now that her life has once again been devastated by what happened on August 8. There’s just that one line.

 But we can at least try.

I think Coates’ goal with that line was to tie back into the reason everyone was here to begin with. Steve and Miri, Denny and Greyson, Christa, Alexis, Hutch, Blake, Simone, Brian, even Kiernan—they were all on this mountain because of what happened on August 8 two years ago. Because they, in some way, shape, or form, contributed to Liam’s death.

(Well, minus Brian and Greyson, who Kiernan admits were collateral damage. And Alexis, technically. But we’ll come back to that)

Kiernan was angry that his brother died because no one else cared. No one else tried to save him. Except, that’s not entirely true, is it? Steve and Miri tried to stop, but his emergency brakes failed. Hutch tried to climb down the bank to help Liam, but the incline was too steep and too unstable in the mud, and he gave up. Simone wasn’t even there that night—she was part of a rescue team that pulled the car out of the river the morning after it had crashed. 

Really, the only ones among the group that fit the “they didn’t try” narrative would have been Christa, who sped up her car to block Liam’s from overtaking her; Blake, who hung up on Liam’s 911 call assuming it was a prank; and Denny, whose shop didn’t ensure Steve’s emergency brakes were functional before approving it for use. 

And while sure, I can see how Blake and Denny could have tried harder—had Blake taken the call seriously, or had Denny been more thorough, perhaps things might have been different—Christa was seriously injured in the accident. She had a shard of metal sticking out of her arm that prevented her from helping. That doesn’t excuse her behavior on the road, but her being a jerk doesn’t have anything to do with trying. 

So, in a group of ten people, we have: two who had nothing to do with the accident, four who tried to help but couldn’t, and, if you really want to lump Christa in with the others, three who could have done more in the situation but chose not to. Then there’s Alexis, who’s only here because Kiernan needed to shut her up to keep the lid on his activities. So, breaking it down, only 30% of the group was guilty of not “trying” to help Liam. The other 70% were either totally uninvolved or couldn’t do anything more to aid in the situation.

…so WHY did Coates end the book with that line??

If Liam’s death had been the result of every single attendee’s indifference to the situation, or them not trying to assist—something like the Bystander Effect—that would be entirely different. But it wasn’t! While his death was still a tragic accident and, yeah, could have been avoided, it had nothing to do with whether or not those involved “tried.” 

I also find it a bit weird to compare Christa worrying about Alexis and Hutch to the situation with Liam at all. Liam’s car was in a river, and it was raining. God only knows how bad the current would have been; anyone who attempted to get near his car could have been swept away and died themselves. Sure, Alexis and Hutch are injured, but a rescue team getting them out of the cabin to potentially save them is a much, much different situation than risking your life at the edge of a riverbank without help. 

If Coates was going for some kind of parallel, which I do believe she was, it fails spectacularly. Not even Christa, whose head we spend the entire story in, worries about how hard she “tried” on August 8. She berates herself for being careless and cruel, so much so that she closes herself off from society for over a year. 

A better parallel might have been how both Christa and Kiernan became so caught up in the past and how it affected them that they refused to move on. Christa ultimately became codependent on her boyfriend, while Kiernan was willing to risk his life to get revenge for his family. 

Maybe, instead of focusing on the idea of “trying,” Coates could have included another chapter or two centered on healing and coping with the past, instead of becoming swallowed by it. Maybe both Hutch and Alexis died, leaving Christa the sole survivor, yet another scar from the incident on August 8 that she has to overcome. In the end, we could have seen her working on herself, learning to let go of what she can’t control and not allowing the horrors of her past to define her. 

But nope! We never know what happens to Hutch, Alexis, or even Kiernan, and for all we know, Christa once again retreats from the world and never opens back up again after being traumatized twice in two years for something that wasn’t entirely her fault. All tied up with a lackluster bow linking back to an idea that was never really there to begin with.

L.K.’s Final Verdict

As a reminder, I don’t believe in “good” or “bad” for most books. What dazzles and impresses me can be a snoozefest for others, and what pisses me off might be the cherry on top for someone else’s favorite book. My opinion isn’t the end-all-be-all. What I can offer is the insight of a devoted reader and writer who wants to see the best in every book they pick up.

Dead of Winter is not my favorite. However, I still had a blast with it. Even though I could see the twist coming a mile away, and the ending may not have resonated with me as I would have liked, this book is still a stellar read. The horror and pacing speak to Coates’ talents as a writer, while her deft handling of such a large cast speaks to her ability to make us care about each and every person introduced on a page, even when their actions might annoy us whenever they show up (looking at you, Steve).

I give Dead of Winter 4 stars out of 5. It is a fantastic example of her writing ability, even if the end feels a little anticlimactic. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find it impossible to put this book down. I highly recommend giving Dead of Winter, as well as any of Coates’ other novels, a look the next time you’re browsing the shelves of your local bookstore.

Until next time~