Book Review: The Shuddering by Ania Ahlborn

Ryan Adler and his twin sister, Jane, spent their happiest childhood days at their parents' mountain Colorado cabin -- until divorce tore their family apart. Now, with the house about to be sold, the Adler twins gather with their closest friends for one last snowboarding-filled holiday. While commitment-phobic Ryan gazes longingly at Lauren, wondering if his playboy days are over, Jane's hopes of reconciling with her old boyfriend evaporate when he brings along his new fiancée. As drama builds among the friends, something lurks in the forest, watching the cabin, growing ever bolder as the snow falls -- and hunger rises. After a blizzard leaves the group stranded, the true test of their love and loyalty begins as the hideous creatures outside close in, one bloody attack at a time. Now Ryan, Jane, and their friends must fight -- tooth and nail, bullet and blade -- for their lives. Or else surrender to unspeakable deaths in the darkened woods.

My Review: 
Ryan decides it will be fun to visit the family's vacation home one last time before new owners take it over. Inviting his sister Jane, her ex and his best friend Sawyer, Sawyer's girlfriend April and Jane's best friend Lauren, means that there will be more tension than fun. With the snow closing in, they are unaware that ancient creatures who come with the snow are closing in on all the humans in the area and taking them down for food. Now they are watching Ryan's house and waiting for their opportunity to strike. 

I had high hopes going into this book as I can never resist books where the victims are somewhere isolated and there are monsters stalking them. The added interest of being stranded by the snow and being miles from help certainly caught my interest and this book made its way onto my TBR. My one fear was that the blurb talked about these angst filled relationships, which is not a favourite thing of mine when it comes to horror books. It turns out that I was right to be wary of this.

I very much enjoyed the start of the book which focuses on the creatures in the forest and how they are starting to stalk the people living there. I liked the idea that these creatures are part of a local legend where stories are told about how something nasty comes into the woods when the snow arrives. Kind of makes me wonder why anyone would want to live in that area when winter comes! We follow what happens to local people and winter sport lovers as they come into contact with the creatures. I liked reading this part a lot and there was plenty tension as we are introduced to the creatures. These monsters were nasty and creepy but the author also adds in a touch of humanity to them by making it clear that these things are starving and that they are a big social group who look after each other. I thought they were really interesting to read about and I liked this added layer to them.

We then move to Ryan's reunion plans at the house. The relationships do dominate this plot which I wasn't keen on. Ryan likes to think of himself as the playboy and every good relationship he had, he somehow managed to mess up. Now he looks at Lauren and sees a chance of a future with her but he has plans to move to Switzerland. Lauren knows his reputation but is attracted to him anyway, though his moving away is an issue. There is that flirtatious interest going on between them through the book. We get a lot about Jane's love life. She and Spencer were a couple, they broke up and Jane married Alex. Now she has divorced him for cheating on her. She is mad at Ryan for inviting Spencer but then wonders about them getting back together. However that plan is ruined because Spencer's possessive girlfriend has decided to invite herself along.

Frankly April is a whiny bitch who is determined to hate everything about the holiday. Spencer did not invite her so he could enjoy a last reunion with his old friends and tries everything to put off April but she insists on coming. From the moment she gets there, she is a pain. She won't make an effort to make friends with anyone and seems to revel in being the outsider so she can whine about it. She refuses to take part in the winter sports that the others are keen to do and sulks indoors while they are having fun on the slopes. She is constantly jealous and throwing tantrums so if anything was designed to make Spencer run back to Jane then her behaviour is it. The one redeeming quality she sort of has is that she is right to be paranoid about there still being feelings being Spencer and Jane but it doesn't make her any nicer to read about. I really couldn't stand her. 

I also got mad with Jane for being such a doormat when it came to April. This woman turns up uninvited to your home, complains constantly, treats you like crud and makes you want to cry. So do you call her out for her behaviour and tell her to shape up or get out? No you just smile meekly and let her treat you like that and still try vainly to make her feel welcome! Grrr I was so mad at her! Grow a backbone why don't you! Nobody would get to speak to me like that on my property and if someone tried to do it I'd show them the door! We were getting tons of this angst through the early and middle parts of the book and it was just too much padding. For me this needed to be scaled back a fair bit with more focus on the creatures attacking other people. We got good bits of that but it was surrounded by all this relationship stuff that didn't interest me at all, and it also made the book feel a bit slow and dull in places.

Then we move on to when the creatures start to attack. They are at first just lurking in the trees watching and waiting, and then they get the chance to grab one of the group and take it. The others now become aware of the creatures and retreat back indoors to plan their next move. It doesn't take long for them to decide that the house is not going to be safe and that they need to hike out of there and to the road, in the hope of getting some help from other people. It is one of those situations where there is no good choice to be made. If you stay you must secure the whole house and survive on limited rations and wait for the snow to go away so you can drive to safety. If you leave, you will have to hike through the woods that the creatures know so well and hope that you find help before they kill you. 

The final third of this book certainly has a lot of tense monster related action and I liked it. There were certainly good things about this book and the way the author writes the horror segments was certainly good. I feel that if 100 pages had been trimmed off to get rid of the padding and a bit more of the monsters in the middle added, this would have become a really great read. As it is, it was still an enjoyable horror book and I would try more by the author in the future.

Read August 2019
3 stars.