Snowblind

The small New England town of Coventry had weathered a thousand blizzards...but never one like this. Icy figures danced in the wind and gazed through children's windows with soul-chilling eyes. People wandered into the whiteout and were never seen again. Families were torn apart, and the town would never be the same.

Now, as a new storm approaches twelve years later, the folks of Coventry are haunted by the memories of that dreadful blizzard and those who were lost in the snow. Photographer Jake Schapiro mourns his little brother, Isaac, even as---tonight---another little boy is missing. Mechanic and part-time thief Doug Manning's life has been forever scarred by the mysterious death of his wife, Cherie, and now he’s starting over with another woman and more ambitious crimes. Police detective Joe Keenan has never been the same since that night, when he failed to save the life of a young boy . . . and the boy’s father vanished in the storm only feet away. And all the way on the other side of the country, Miri Ristani receives a phone call . . . from a man who died twelve years ago.

As old ghosts trickle back, this new storm will prove to be even more terrifying than the last.

I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Strange occurrences surround the return of a blizzard where years before many residents went missing.  On first examination Snowblind dredges up thoughts of ghost stories told around a campfire.  It however really isn’t that, at least not completely.

For this kind of supernatural suspense book Snowblind is a lot more subdued and restrained then you find in most other mainstream books of the genre.  Sure there are scares and surprises but it tries to play with your mind more than hack and slash its way to horror.  It is more Stir of Echoes than it is Nightmare on Elm Street.  Because of this the pacing is a lot slower the some will be used to.  Not to say it is overly slow as this is the type of pacing you need to make a story like this work.  However this also causes the middle of the book to really drag.  Once you get all the characters introduced and the situation set up it does feel like it takes a long time to really get to the climax, without enough happening in between.

And talking about the characters, that is the other drawback to the book.  There are just too many of them to get any good character progression done.  One of the best parts of a book is to follow the characters as they progress through the challenges presented to them and how they are when they come out the other side.  When you get to many characters it becomes unwieldy and very difficult for the author to pull this off.  Instead you get a bit of the cookie cutter characters that seem to be locked into that mold throughout.  While this isn’t’ the worst case of this I have read, it is definitely present here.

This is still a decent ghost story if that is what you are looking for, but the book doesn’t live up to the exciting promise the beginning sets up.

Review by Travis Starnes

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