DNF.
It's becoming more add more obvious that that dog is going to die and I'm not here for it. I don't care about how many people get killed, but not the dog!

I really liked this! The little side stories were a bit confusing how they just interrupted the main story we were following, but this was SINISTER. ( )

With it’s brutal horror and terrifyingly gruesome death scenes, I am a little embarrassed to admit that I couldn’t stop the pages from turning in The Shuddering by Ania Ahlborn. This book was an adrenaline fueled ride from page one right through to it’s memorable ending as we join in with a group of friends on a snow boarding holiday in the mountains of Colorado. Twins, Ryan and Jane, along with their friends Lauren, Sawyer and April are staying at the posh ski cabin that belongs to their parents. It’s a farewell visit as the ski cabin is for sale and Ryan is in the process of moving to Europe. Jane is recently divorced and has a past history with Sawyer, she believes that he is the love of her life.

Romantic tension is the least of this group’s problems. There is something out in the woods, something that is watching them, coming ever closer and it’s hungry. When a blizzard strikes and they are snowed
in the strain of trying to get along is too much for April and she storms out. Then when a couple of the group go out to find her and bring her back to the warmth of the cabin, they finally come face to face with the strange monster-like creatures that are stalking them.

I often have problems reading thrillers as they are so unbelievable, but this book was so over-the-top that this didn’t really factor into things. Yes, the situation is impossible to believe, but with horror I seem better able to accept the impossible. The characters were fairly mundane and I found myself rooting mostly for the dog, but overall, I enjoyed the experience. The Shuddering was intense, creepy and terrifying with the author supplying us with plenty of monster-slasher action. ( )

Non-stop gore and scares. Excellent characters. Moves at a good pace to the bloody end. ( )

This is the third Ania Ahlborn book I’ve read, and it worked for me better than the previous two (‘Seed’ and ‘The Bird Eater’) which both felt like they lacked something. ‘The Shuddering’ is on the face of it a really simple horror tale about a group of friends trapped in a remote, snowbound location, being stalked by weird, bloodthirsty creatures. The story is told in a fairly formulaic way, with the central characters oblivious to the threat for the first half of the book, whilst an assortment of incidental characters are introduced around the main plot and then brutally slaughtered. What lifts this above the normal cheesy (but enjoyable) horror fare is Ahlborn’s deft depiction of characters and inter personal relationships. She writes skilfully about childhood nostalgia, friendship, romance and a host of other things, and gives us characters we care enough about to really up the tension. Whereas the other two books of hers that I’ve read were very obviously about the relationship between the main characters’ adult and childhood selves, ‘The Shuddering’ explored the same themes in a subtler and more effective way. I really enjoyed it. ( )