Book number six goes to a wintry thriller with a message of never going hiking in the snow. This is Dead of Winter by Darcy Coates.

What is it about? When her boyfriend suggests a hiking trip in the Rocky Mountains, Christa is less than thrilled. More specifically, she is anxious about confronting the demons that forced her to give up hiking altogether. Despite this, Christa agrees and the couple joins a small group that travels up to the mountains. But when a storm unexpectedly hits, Christa’s boyfriend goes missing and she, along with the rest of the group, takes shelter in an abandoned camp. Things couldn’t get worse, right? Wrong. When the tour guide also goes missing and is found brutally murdered, the group is left with a terrifying question, who is the murderer?

Why did I love it? Dead of Winter‘s greatest strength is the fast paced, tension filled atmosphere that is felt almost from page one. For someone who has lived in an area where snow storms are fairly common, I can’t imagine anything more terrifying than being stranded in one. And that terror is only made worse by members of the hiking group being picked off one by one. While I was able to pretty much guess who the killer was, there was still plenty of twists and turns that kept me very invested. This book would have scored higher on my list if the ending had been a bit more clean in its storytelling but still, this book is too much of a wild ride not to make it onto my best books of the year.