🧊 3 Winter Thillers to Chill Your Bones
Hello, and welcome to Pleasure Reading. I'm your host, Amelia Ruby. And this is a podcast about the pleasure of reading, where I share curated reading lists, author rankings, chats with my bookish friends, and more. If you too take pleasure in reading, I hope that you will subscribe and share the show with a friend. Cheers to your next best book.
Amelia Hruby:Hello and welcome to Pleasure Reading, a podcast about the many pleasurable aspects of reading, including all of our favorite books. I'm Amelia Freebee and on this show, I curate specialized book lists around themes that I love reading about. And I also have special guests on to tell us about some of their favorite books, and we will have our first guests coming up this winter and spring, my friend. So I'm very excited to have some folks on the show to contribute some of their own curated reading lists that is coming soon. But for today, I have hopped on the mic to tell you about 3 winter thrillers for this chilly season that we are all in.
Amelia Hruby:Now I don't know if it's actually chilly where you are. If you're in the southern hemisphere, it's not. It's summer. But I live in the northern hemisphere, in the Midwest, particularly, where winter gets a little cold, and we all stay inside, and sometimes it snows, and I love leaning into that with a good chilly thriller. So today, I'm gonna tell you about 3 winter thrillers that I have read recently and really enjoyed.
Amelia Hruby:And if you want to read 1 or more of them, I hope you will head to the show notes to grab the links to purchase them from my bookshop page. And if you do so, I will receive a small affiliate payment as a little thank you for recommending this book to you. Of course, if that's not in your budget, I also love a local library and imagine you can find all of these at yours. So let's go ahead and dive into 3 winter thrillers to chill your bones. Up first, I'm gonna tell you about the one of these I've read most recently, and that is rock, paper, scissors by Alice Feeney.
Amelia Hruby:Now Alice Feeney is a celebrated thriller writer, but this was my first Alice Feeney book. I remember seeing Daisy Darker all over the place in 2023, but, for some reason, I never picked it up. I probably will. I just haven't yet. And rock paper scissors was the one really calling to me at the library at the end of last year.
Amelia Hruby:So I think because the cover has this beautiful snowy forest scene and this tiny chapel right in the corner, and then the text is, like, all in blood red coloring, so it's like a very evocative blood on snow cover, and I was like, tell me more. So let me tell you what this book is about without giving anything away. So I'm gonna read the synopsis for this because I really don't wanna spoil this book, and I'm afraid that if I try to summarize it in my own words, I will spoil something for you. So I'm gonna read the synopsis. Here is what the book jacket tells us about rock, paper, scissors.
Amelia Hruby:Things have been wrong with mister and missus Wright for a long time. Every anniversary, the couple exchange traditional gifts, paper, cotton, pottery, tin, and each year Adam's wife writes him a letter that she never lets him read until now. Self confessed workaholic and screenwriter Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can't recognize friends or family or even his own wife and Amelia is sick of feeling unseen. When Adam and Amelia went a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs.
Amelia Hruby:They both know this weekend will make or break their relationship, but they didn't randomly win this trip. One of them is lying and someone doesn't want them to live happily ever after. Doesn't that sound quite ominous? So when I initially read the description, I was like, okay. I love this.
Amelia Hruby:I like thrillers that have to do with a sort of, like, vacation trip or setting, and I like domestic thrillers. And often domestic thrillers are set, like, in your home, so you don't always get that traveling sort of vibe to them, so I thought this might really combine 2 things I enjoyed a lot. And as I was reading, I was like, okay, okay, okay. I'm so into this relationship. I'm loving that these anniversary letters are interspersed between the chapters, so we get this sort of way of, like, learning the history of the couple through the letters as the events are happening in real time.
Amelia Hruby:It also has multiple points of view, so we see Adam and Amelia's points of view going back and forth between them, and then the letters are interspersed. And I also loved the setting, that they're at this chapel in the remote Scottish Highlands during a blizzard, and you get this real sense of cold isolation. And it feels unsafe because they are so isolated, and it is so cold. And they have, like, issues with the power and the place that they're staying, and so I thought that really, like, raised the stakes on the book in a way that I think can be sometimes lacking in a domestic thriller. If it gets a little too domestic, I don't always feel the stakes rise, or the stakes only come from, like, a sort of gender violence that I'm just not always interested in reading about.
Amelia Hruby:I think living in a world steeped in patriarchal violence, I'm not always interested in reading a book steeped in that, but that's definitely not what was at stake in this book. So there's certainly gender dynamics that are happening. It is a sort of domestic thriller, but the stakes come from, like, the location and the setting and the storm and the relationship dynamics that we learn along the way. So all of that said, the twist of this book also really got me. I did not see it coming.
Amelia Hruby:I totally fell for, like, a red herring that they gave us along the way, and I was very pleasantly surprised and pleased by the end. So that is Rock, Paper, Scissors by Alice Feeney, my first recommendation for a winter thriller that will chill your bones if you so choose. Up next, I am going to recommend The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz. So I read this book on a very, very, very cold weekend in February when I was visiting Minneapolis with my partner, JJ, which, like, only Midwesterners would, like, go farther north in February, but so we did. And in this book, our main character, Alex, has been a writer her whole life, but never managed to become a published author.
Amelia Hruby:And she's kind of given up on this dream when she receives this opportunity to attend an exclusive writing retreat at the estate of her favorite writer. And she is super excited about this, but it's complicated by the fact that her former best friend and now rival is also attending the retreat. So Alex isn't sure, like, if she really wants to go or, like, she knows she wants to go, but it's gonna be complicated to see her, you know, now frenemy, I guess, again. And when Alex gets there, the author, her favorite author, drops this, like, huge sort of they call it a bombshell in the synopsis. I don't know if it feels that intense.
Amelia Hruby:But, basically, Rosa tells all of the attendees that they have to complete an entire novel from scratch during the residency. So the residency is a month long, and they all need to write a totally new book during that time. And whichever one writes the best book will get a 7 figure publishing deal. So, like, the stakes are pretty high. We want this publishing deal.
Amelia Hruby:You're gonna make money. Your book's gonna get out there. It's gonna, I think, probably be blurred by this famous writer. And so Alex is like, I am going to win this competition. But then some unexpected and unsettling things happen.
Amelia Hruby:The plot really takes off when there is this snowstorm and one of the writers vanishes, and nobody can leave the estate because of how much snow there is and how cold it is. You really get this sort of claustrophobic sense from the snowstorm here. I feel like in rock, paper, scissors, the snowstorm led to a sense of isolation, and here, it leads to a sense of, like, we can't leave this house, and it feels like the walls are, like, closing in on us. It's, like, very claustrophobic. So I like these different relationships to being snowed in in these books, and I also, of course, love a book about writers.
Amelia Hruby:That is my favorite conceit or trope, and I can't get enough of it. So the writing retreat was, like, made for me. This book also explores some, like, queer themes in ways that I sort of liked and sort of didn't. I had ambivalent feelings about the queer representation in this book, and it definitely got pretty bonkers. So one of the types of thrillers I like is when things go so off the rails that I start to find it just ridiculous.
Amelia Hruby:Basically to me, the worst thing a thriller can be is boring and predictable, so that means that my favorite thrillers either just totally nail the twist, so it was unpredictable in how perfectly it surprised me, or they are utterly ridiculous. So I can't predict what's gonna happen because everything has gone off the rails. And I would say that the writing retreat is the latter, while rock, paper, scissors is the former. So with rock, paper, scissors, you are gonna get that, like, formal structure of a thriller. There's gonna be twists.
Amelia Hruby:You're gonna be caught off guard. It's gonna all, like, wrap up so, like, perfectly by the end. With the writing retreat, things are gonna get messy. This was a wild ride, and at the same time, I highly recommend it. So that is the writing retreat by Julia Bartz, the second of my recommendations for winter thrillers to chill your bones.
Amelia Hruby:Now the 3rd thriller on this list is a little bit different, and it's the one that I felt the least certain about including. I have to be honest. It was not like a 5 star read for me, but I have kept thinking about it for weeks since I read it. And sometimes, to me, that's, like, the marker of a good book. Even if I don't think it was perfectly executed or perfectly written, like, if it sticks with me, if it gets under my skin, if it, quote, unquote, chills my bones, as I might say, I think that means that there was really something there that's worth paying attention to and worth recommending to others.
Amelia Hruby:So this book that I am referring to obliquely is Night Watching by Tracy Sierra. Let me read the synopsis of this book for you because the synopsis is why I read it and will also make sure we stay spoiler free. So here's the synopsis. Home alone with her young children during a blizzard, a mother tucks her son back into bed in the middle of the night. Old houses are always making some kind of noise, but this sound is disturbingly familiar.
Amelia Hruby:It's the tread of footsteps, unusually heavy and slow, coming up the stairs. She sees the figure of a man appear down the hallway shrouded in the shadows. Terrified, she quietly wakes her children and hustles them into the oldest part of the house, a tiny secret room concealed behind a wall. There they hide as a man searches for them, trying to tempt the children out with promises and scare the mother into surrender. In the suffocating darkness, the mother struggles to remain calm, to plan.
Amelia Hruby:Should she search for a weapon or attempt escape? But then she catches another glimpse of him, that face, that voice. And at once, she knows her situation is even more dire than she'd feared because she knows exactly who he is and what he wants. Ominous, isn't it? I read that synopsis, and I was like, I have to read this book.
Amelia Hruby:Like, I kept hearing it described as every mother's worst nightmare. Like, you're home alone with your kids, and you hear a stranger in the house. An intruder has broken in. What do you do? It's like the premise of, like, a, you know, survivalist tale or something.
Amelia Hruby:And that really drew me in. And I think that the best part of the book is the part that stays with this synopsis and grapples with that from the mother's first person point of view. There is more that happens in the book than that, and that is where it started to get a little more questionable for me. But I do think, like, the first half, I was, like, stunning no notes. I thought it was really, really well done.
Amelia Hruby:I can't say anything about my issues with the book without giving you spoilers and kind of ruining it. So if you've read this book, and you want to send me an email and tell me what you thought about it, and we can chat about it, that way, I would love that. You can go to the show notes and find the place to send me a message there, and we can chit chat about the second half of this book. But, overall, I do think it is a great thriller, and the blizzard really plays a big role in my favorite part of the book and kind of how and it really, like, creates these stakes where she can't just leave the house because when there's snow on the ground, you can see someone's footsteps in a way that you can't if there's no snow on the ground. So the storm really impacts her options, and I think that that is a really honest, real obstacle for her escape and her safety and her children's safety.
Amelia Hruby:And I just found that, like, really interesting and I think makes it a great winter thriller. So to recap, my 3 winter thrillers to chill your bones are rock, paper, scissors by Alice Feeney, the writing retreat by Julia Bartz, and night watching by Tracy Sierra. These are 3 books that I have read and enjoyed and had a lot of thoughts about since I read and enjoyed them, and I hope that you might consider reading and enjoying them as well. As I mentioned at the beginning, you can head to the show notes for links to learn more about these books and buy them from my bookshop page. If you do so, I will receive a small affiliate payment that I take as a thank you for the book rec and creating these episodes.
Amelia Hruby:And if you have your own winter thrillers that you love, again, feel free to head to the show notes and send me a message. I would love to hear about them and to add to my list of winter thrillers to read in the future. That's it for this episode. I look forward to being back with you soon, but until then, here's to your next best book.