Ten years ago, 33-year-old Milla Anderson was a pro snowboarder at the top of her game. Along with a crowd of other young athletes, she came to Le Rocher, a ski resort in the French Alps, to train while pitting herself against the best of the best. Amidst the tense, sometimes vicious, competition, friendships were formed, rivalries heightened, and enemies created. The season ended with Saskia Sparks—the most beautiful and conniving snowboarder among them—missing, presumed dead.

A decade later, Milla receives an invitation from a former Le Rocher friend to reunite at the resort. Although reluctant to return to the site and revisit the trauma she experienced there, she can't help but be intrigued. She hasn't seen or spoken to anyone from that fateful season on the mountain in the intervening years. Is it finally time to put the past behind her? Time to renew friendships, even rekindle a past flame? Despite her misgivings, Milla goes, only realizing too late that nothing about this mysterious reunion is quite what it seems. The resort is deserted, save for her and four others; their cell phones have disappeared; an innocent-seeming icebreaker game turns sinister; and everything is going bump in the night. With the threat of an oncoming snowstorm looming over the uneasy group, it's becoming quickly apparent that none of them is safe. Someone wants the truth about what happened ten years ago—and they'll stop at nothing to get it.

Shiver, a debut novel by Allie Reynolds, is my favorite kind of thriller. I mean, an atmospheric locked-room type mystery set in a remote location that features dangerous old secrets coming to the fore as nasty weather threatens to trap all the victims together in one place? Yes, please! Those kinds of stories always get my imagination whirling and my heart pumping. Although there are many things Shiver is not, it is a page turner. The story is a crazy, addicting thrill ride that kept me racing through the pages. Even though I figured out who was behind the reunion setup about halfway through the book, I still wanted to know what was going to happen next. While Shiver's plot kept me engaged, its characters are not a likable lot. They're admirable for their athleticism and determination, but not for their fickleness, petty jealousies, cruelty, and cold-hearted competitiveness. A good deal of the story, in fact, revolves around who slept with whom ten years ago, which I absolutely could have done without. Although we do see some growth in a couple of the characters, overall they're just a very messed up group. That, plus the fact that the story's a mite predictable, made Shiver less enjoyable for me. Still, for pure entertainment value, it's not a bad read as far as thrillers go. It definitely kept me engrossed.  

(Readalikes: Reminds me of One By One by Ruth Ware; In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware; The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse; The Guest List by Lucy Foley; And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, etc.)