Play Book Tag discussion

Ways To Hide In Winter – Sarah St.Vincent
Digital audio narrated by Sarah Mollo-Christensen
4****

A young widow is trying to recover from her own trauma by working in a remote state park deep in Pennsylvania’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Kathleen is fine, she insists, and happy to be left alone. But when a stranger with a heavy accent comes into the store/lodge where she works flipping burgers she is intrigued. He says he’s a student from Uzbekistan, but he’s clearly unprepared for the winter conditions in the park. To Kathleen, Daniil seems shell-shocked, almost terrified, clearly hiding from someone or something.

This is a tightly written, marvelous psychological / political thriller. The characters are skittish, guarded, and yet reveal themselves by their actions. Kathleen and Daniil recognize in one another a certain similarity – both are running from the truth, both profess to need solitude even a way to hide away, and yet both want desperately to confide and reveal their pain and their hopes. They both crave and fear connection. It’s difficult to believe that either of them will ever achieve happiness; their pasts are just too traumatic.

This short novel includes some major issues: domestic abuse, drug addiction, military and political intrigue / espionage. The landscape is practically a character, and adds to the feeling of isolation, loneliness and imminent danger. The reader is kept in suspense to the very end.

Sarah Mollo-Christensen does a marvelous job of narrating the audiobook. I particularly liked the way she voiced Daniil and Martin.



My full review HERE