Review: A Killing Cold by Kate Alice Marshall

A Killing Cold

by Kate Alice Marshall

Release Date: February 4, 2025

2025 Flatiron Books

Ebook ARC: 291 Pages

ISBN: 978-1250343055

ASIN: B0D12QMD6L

Audiobook: B0D481YRV6

Genre: Fiction / Suspense

Source: Review copy from publisher

 

2.5 / 5 Stars

 

Summary
When Theodora Scott met Connor—wealthy, charming, and a member of the powerful Dalton family—she fell in love in an instant. Six months later, he’s brought her to Idlewood, his family’s isolated winter retreat, to win over his skeptical relatives.

Theo has tried to ignore the threatening messages on her phone, but she can’t ignore the footprints in the snow outside the cabin window or the strange sense of familiarity she has about this place. Then, in a disused cabin, Theo finds something impossible: a photo of herself as a child. A photo taken at Idlewood.

 

 

My Thoughts

A Killing Cold had some interesting ideas, but honestly, I felt as if the author was trying way too hard to create this suspense and atmosphere through the cold and the snow, but lost focus on the plot and character development to the point that I started to lose interest about half way through the story.  

 

Let me just say that none of the characters were loveable, which is not always an issue for me.  I don't have to necessarily like the characters, but they have to have good motivations for what they do. And to be fair, a couple of them did have interesting backgrounds. But the focus on the family toxicity rather than the reasons for that toxicity was one of the weaknesses for me. Secrets and everything are good if they make sense within the context of a character's motivations, but with a huge attempt at trying to be clever and introduce this major plot twist, a lot of these motivations and interesting character developments got lost in the background. And I just couldn't connect with the MC; again, I don't have to like her, which I didn't, but understanding her motivations and believing in her relationships is important, something that I just couldn't do.  Perhaps the author's attempt to create this unreliable narrator just made a character with whom I couldn't relate.

 

The plot has one of those irresistible settings that I love: isolated mansions, snow, cold, forest, twisted characters, messed-up family dynamics, and mysteries, lots of mysteries. So, what happened? Too many tropes, too many cliches, all jumbled together into a mish-mash of a story that just didn't work for me. Theo was such a boring character and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what Theo and Connor saw in each other. And while I love messed-up family dynamics because...well, why not, this just didn't work. And I think it was simply because the author tried too hard to make the reader think one thing and then switch to another thing. This made character development unreliable and nauseating to follow.  And when you  have a sorry that is similar to so many other stories out there, it has to be believable and it has to have some good character development along with a believable ending. This was not that book.

 

Verdict

A Killing Cold was full of coincidences that triggered bigger events.  So, when you go down the road of coincidences, it really needs to be plausible to be believable, and unfortunately, this didn't work for me. It's not to say that there are not moments that are good, as there definitely were, so I see a lot of potential in this author's work.  However, when you have a bland MC whose memory suddenly starts coming back after twenty years of nothing, a family that's quite toxic, and events that make your mind spin but more in an eye-rolling kind of way, you realize how overblown and repetitive some of the things that happened were. Would I read another book by this author? Yes, I would as there were definitely some things that were done well and I loved the atmospheric descriptions.