When I posted a recent haul of books, I asked where I should start with them and the one that received the most amount of hype was The Drift by C.J. Tudor. Since finishing it, I’ve noticed a lot of people are big fans of C.J. Tudor, so I’ll have to pick up some of her others. The Drift though was a really interesting book and when you consider I picked it up from a charity shop for only £1.99, it seems a bargain!
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The Drift tells three different stories in what is seemingly tandem. They all take place in a similar snowy location and all seem to involve this one “Retreat” that they’re all trying to get to. One story follows a coach of students that has rolled over and crashed and left them trapped; another is of a group of adults who all wake up trapped up in a cable car halfway up the ride and then the final story is of a group of adults at said “Retreat” who find out things are starting to go wrong.
What we have then are three really interesting different stories that CJ Tudor manages to cleverly link together in a way that I won’t spoil so you can enjoy the read yourself. But what about the actual stories and the characters involved?
The Drift plot – 4.5/5
One of the quotes I noted on the back cover of The Drift was that CJ Tudor had been likened to Stephen King and so I was interested to know why. Quite soon into The Drift, you realise why. Alongside these three stories I’ve mentioned, it’s also noted that a deadly virus has swept the world and killed off a lot of people and left others in a virus state which humanity has deemed Whistlers – due to the virus affecting their lungs and causing them to whistle heavily when they breathe.
The stories themselves are all really interesting and I found myself genuinely interested in each of them as Tudor slowly feeds the reader more secrets and twists that keep you reading. As I mentioned above, as well as the stories being great, you find out later on that there’s actually a not-so-subtle link between the characters from the different stories too which adds a fantastic twist to the ending.
The Drift characters – 4.25/5
Something else I admired in The Drift was the characters that C.J. Tudor managed to write. When you’re trying to write three different stories, it’s hard enough to write three compelling stories, something I noted in my review of Weyward, let alone write interesting characters into these stories too.
The more and more I think about it, the more I realise how defined each of the people in The Drift was and how I quite easily knew who each chapter was covering simply based on the actions the characters took, the way they spoke and the choices they made.
Our three main characters from each of the stories all have interesting enough back stories to make you want to learn more about them too, making for a really interesting human story.
I wasn’t blown away by any character in particular and this is why I’ve not given this section a higher rating. However, having been over a week since I finished this book, I have had time to think about how impressed by them I was.
The Drift final rating – 4.25/5
The Drift was my first C.J. Tudor book after a lot of hype and I must say I was very impressed. To write three stories in tandem, have them all interesting, have them all be interlinked and include some amazing characters all at the same time is a real talent. As well as this, Tudor really piqued my interest when I realised there were some light fantasy elements to the story too. The Drift is a brilliant thriller with some horror/post-apocalyptic elements that has made me really want to read more from Tudor!
