A review by ericarobyn
The Drift by C.J. Tudor

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense fast-paced

5.0

The Drift by C.J. Tudor is an intense, claustrophobia-inducing tale set in a post-apocalyptic world that will chill you deeply.

Content Warnings:
Body horror, car accident, death, grief, suicide, gun violence, & more.

Hannah has awoken to find herself in a real-world nightmare; the bus that she was on has crashed and many of the students are dead, or dying. They can’t get out and they’re running out of heat inside the bus.

Like Hannah, Meg also awakens to a similar nightmare. She has found herself in a cable car that isn’t moving. Her and the group she finds herself in have no recollection of getting there and not only is the temperature dropping, one of them is also already dead.

Carter is a young man that has already met tragedy that left him missing parts of his face. But life isn’t done throwing him curveballs just yet.

In each storyline, it’s not just the things lurking outside the walls of their current prisons that are a danger. There are things sharing their small spaces that are equally deadly.

Organized by moving in and out of these three perspectives, readers will find that this book is absolutely impossible to put down! Each storyline is so captivating, you’ll need to know what happens next. The more you read, the more invested you will be in each of the characters. I personally loved them all equally as they were all perfect survivors. Each of them had been through horrible things, but that didn’t make them give up when faced with even more horror. Instead, it made them stronger.

I really enjoyed that when the story begins, readers get one singular page that really sets the tone for the book. This is by far C.J.’s darkest novel yet and of course, I absolutely loved it. And right along with that darkness, there is also plenty of gut-punch realism and emotion that steers us quickly into heartbreak-horror territory.

Per usual, the author just blew me away with her writing style! I love that in one sentence, I can be terrified, while in the next, I’m laughing! But then not long after, I could be fighting back tears. You truly never know what you’re going to get with C.J.’s work, but it’s always a blast to find out!

My Favorite Passages from The Drift

Then the man turned, and Carter understood why he had been staggering around so blindly. He was blind. One eyeball had spilled from its socket and was stuck, frozen, to his cheek. The other was gone completely, along with half of his face. Eaten away, leaving nothing but gristle and bone.

When you loved someone, you tried to hold on to them because letting go meant admitting you would never hold them again. Few of us were prepared for that. So, we clung on, even when Death’s bony grasp would have been kinder.

“Sometimes life gives us lemons. Sometimes diarrhea.”

When the world started to end, not with a whimper or a bang but with a slow, whistling sigh, Meg didn’t care. She had watched the news from a numb cocoon of grief and medication. As the infections spread and society crumbled, at first slowly and then like a cliff edge giving way and falling to the sea, she had barely raised an eyebrow. Her world had already been destroyed. Everyone else was just catching up.

Not all knowledge was good. And even the stuff that was good didn’t always fall into the right hands. Give the wrong idiot a shitload of knowledge and that was when the world imploded.

An apocalypse doesn’t happen because of evil men, zombies or even a virus. It happens because of ordinary people. Because somewhere along the way we lost society, lost cohesion. We forgot to try to see the other side. Instead, we all bunkered down harder in our trenches, refusing to be moved, lobbing missiles at those who dared to challenge our myopic view. No good guys or bad guys. Just a bunch of scared motherfuckers trying to find their way home.

My Final Thoughts on The Drift

These storylines entwine so perfectly into one. I had an absolute blast with each perspective and had various moments of shock when I started putting puzzle pieces together.

Not only was this book truly scary, it had wonderful mystery and thriller elements mixed right in! If you enjoy novels that don’t hold back from laying the terror on, but also keep you totally captivated while making you emotional, then this is a perfect book for you!

While recording Dead Headspace, Pat asked me what my favorite book of C.J.’s is. And while The Chalk Man will forever hold a special place for me, I have to say that The Drift is my favorite! I loved hearing that this was a bit of an experiment and creative project for C.J. I gotta say, I hope to see more in this vein from the author!

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