The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon

Reviewed by GGGinny

What I drank: I went out to dinner and got some lovely cocktails and whoo boy did I forget how expensive that shit can be.

Goodreads Overview:

West Hall, Vermont, has always been a town of strange disappearances and old legends. The most mysterious is that of Sara Harrison Shea, who, in 1908, was found dead in the field behind her house just months after the tragic death of her daughter.

Now, in present day, nineteen-year-old Ruthie lives in Sara’s farmhouse with her mother, Alice, and her younger sister. Alice has always insisted that they live off the grid, a decision that has weighty consequences when Ruthie wakes up one morning to find that Alice has vanished. In her search for clues, she is startled to find a copy of Sara Harrison Shea’s diary hidden beneath the floorboards of her mother’s bedroom. As Ruthie gets sucked into the historical mystery, she discovers that she’s not the only person looking for someone that they’ve lost. But she may be the only one who can stop history from repeating itself

Drunk Overview: this story takes place in two time periods. The early 1900s and modern day. In the modern day we know there were grisly murders in the 1900s and a string of disappearances in this small town. We follow Sarah Shea Harrsion (the women in the 1900s who was murdered) & her fam in the 1900s, and the family on the farm in modern day.

Drunk Thoughts: this author does eerie so well

• I didnt cover this in the overview but there are accounts of sleeper, or basically people come back to life
• And its hard to tell fact from ficition in this book
• Which is what makes it so eerie.
• Its hard to tell if something is old-timey superstition, teenagers fucking with people, or legit horrors.
• This book builds of layers of creepy too. There are multiple perspectives for both eras in the book, many of which made the other narrators feel unreliable.
• And some of the imagery in this book just stands out. Theres a description of a closet thats been boarded up and the scratching from behind it that made me give a second look at my very ordinary, not haunted closet.
• One of the main characters is a shigh schooler named Ruthie and goodness do I love well written teenagers.
• She’s petulant and scared and angry and all of those overpowering emotions while also being competent and a good sister and well balanced
• There was some symbolism with a doll that I think could have been done better
• Of course the creepy doll comes with a child attached and again I think more could have been done there. My big problem with some books is that children are a convenient plot device until they arent.
• Fawn, said child, helps move the plot forward in a lot of ways but there were times where she felt more like a brick being carried around than a 6 year old.
• But this book is written to heighten the tension so well.
• At first there are legends and then the solid mystery of the book pops up and you keep learning more and more about whats happening which meant I told a total stranger this book was going to give me nightmares
• It didn’t
• But I was actually worried that Id have unsettling dreams because of this bookw (I shouldnt have worried, my brain came up with stuff that was WAY more fucked up).

What it Pairs With: mulled wine.

Rating: 4.5/5. While I think some things could have been more fleshed out this book was an encapsulating read.