Cover Image: Whiteout

Whiteout

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Member Reviews

This was an interesting read indeed! I was reading it in hospital after giving birth to my first child, so I have some strange memories of that time (and that's why I never managed to publish a review until now!). I love a book set in a remote, desolate or isolated landscape and this quickly became one of those. It did tip a little too far into the graphic action side of things for my personal taste, but it felt like a fast moving movie, so it was enjoyable to read.

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I will not be giving feedback on this book as I couldn’t really get into it but I think others may enjoy it.

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I've certainly stayed in a number of hotels that were tired and neglected. The sorts of place where imagination runs riot. I've also supervised groups of students in such places. So to read a novel that included both key elements was irresistible!

I have to say that Dylan's observations of teenagers is well-drawn and his experiences drawn from teaching this age group are very apparent underpinned with a strong sense of empathy. Dylan manages to evoke the characters' external strength of character which too often mask internal insecurities. Characters are developed well and one quickly develops a relationship with them; recognising the vulnerability behind the bravado. And there's a twist that sets us up perfectly for a sequel (please Gabriel).

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I received a copy from Netgalley.

The Red Eye books remind me very much of cheesy bad horror movies (which I tend to enjoy more than I want to admit) The plot of this one sounded interesting enough - ski trip to a remote village but before long something goes hideously wrong when there’s a terrible snow storm, the adults all disappear leaving a bunch of teenagers alone and strange creatures start appearing ripping people to pieces.

Too many characters to really get attached to anyone, and they were all rather flat and uninteresting. Typical of a high school group – the jocks, the mean girl, the studious one, the sporty girl, the nice girl, the geek, the outsider – the list goes on. A few ski instructors remain behind but don’t last long, and the one left who’s haughty and cold with a know-it-all attitude.

The storm gets slowly worse and one by one the teens fall victim to the monsters. There’s not much explanation of what the monsters are or why they are there until a few chapters right at the end. And even then it falls in the region of eye rolling and stupid.

That being said, the narrative is irritatingly compelling, despite how annoying I found everyone involved, the story telling was pretty compulsive, and there’s a need to know what the hell is going on. A need for answers to what the creatures are and how they came to be there. What the town’s people know?

Downside was the answers were wholly unsatisfying. The whole thing left more questions than answers. Despite the negatives, the writing showed promise and I would read something by the author again.

Thanks to Netgalley and Stripes Publishing for approving my request to view the title.

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This is the second Red Eye book to featuring snow storms that cause isolation and with it having other similarities I couldn't help but compare them, especially as 'Fir' is one my favourite Red Eye books. I was pretty excited for this concept, as Teen "30 Days of Night" which oddly is one of the vampire films not mentioned in this.

This book has third person narration that closely follows a few different people in the group. Charlie is the main character and gets a sort of romance. There are lot of characters at the start with this meant to be school trip, with thirty pupils so probably has two or three teachers with the group, so it's slightly confusing with all the girl names thrown around. We have other characters such as Tara who is the spoiled ex-rich girl; she is a terrible person, that's her deal and she only there to undermine everyone else. She meant to be the character you dislike the most, but guess who I dislike the most?That's right, Nico. My notes involve telling Nico to go die in the snow. Nico is your toxic geek stereotype with side of sexism. This sexism comes in his first introduction so that I was able to confirm that this quote made it to the finial book by using the Amazon Preview: "Ellie’s blue eyes were locked on to Stefan, a glint of admiration hovering there that gave Nico a twinge of envy. She was pretty, although he wondered if she’d be even more attractive without so much make up."

Yeah, Ellie is described as breaching her hair and wearing fake tan, and skiing with hooped earrings so is probably in that awkward phrase of make-up but it's makes me dislike Nico immediately because girls are judged for their make-up use even when it's fantastic. There's other comments by Nico through out the book make me dislike him for his toxic geek culture. I think these comments are meant to make him relatable but he just makes me think of those guys who quiz girls when they say they like Star Wars and deny that girl geeks exist. You can have shitty characters or flawed characters, but it doesn't add to the character or more importantly challenged. So with that sexist comment, I started counting how often the characters cry, 3:1 when comes to girls to boys. One of those times Tara cried for no reason and then never again. Maybe that was to show she was attention seeking. It's really minor thing, they are diverse side of girl characters so can just ignore Nico if you want.

Another thing to mention about Nico is that lot of his geek references feel slightly dated, I mean he plays World of Warcraft which isn't much of thing anymore. Also it's subscription based game, with it being £10 a month. It does have a free mode and these kids are on a ski trip so maybe they parents would pay that a month for game but it's seems more likely they would be messing about on Gary's Mod or Skyrim. I don't think MMORPG are much of thing anymore or I don't think any fantasy games really have online player mode. Films are mentioned as well but films can be randomly discovered that game with pay wall wouldn't. Though, no date is actually state. They have phones but are never described so I guess this could easily take place when I was a teen and not going on the sky trip where someone smuggled weed into several other countries. I don't think they went to Austria.

I love vampires, and was really excited to hear that a Red Eye book would be tackling them. They're done okay, somewhat old school with side of sort of original myth. The final conflict was decent and with Red Eyes being established as having no win situations sometimes the states were pretty high till the end.

Overall, I give this 4/5 stars for h. A lot of filler characters, but there's one character with strong motivation so that's fun. I guess I don't like the ending, it's not terrible but it meant to be a redemption for these characters that didn't feel earned for at least one of them well at least for me. . I get what their arc was meant to be, maybe it would have been better to focus on less characters for this story. I guess they all like 16 or something anyway. It's decent horror story, in probably in the middle for me of the other Red Eye books which I have reviewed all of them.

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Enjoyable enough read though I found it obvious and knew almost immediately what direction it was heading in. That's not to say I wouldn't read the follow-up if one was written. The characters were different and well defined within the narrative, but the whole story reminded me of a particular movie storyline, which I won't name in case it gives the game away!

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This was a very interesting book with a lot of horror and thrilling aspects. It was a little slow in place but the descriptive writing was done brilliantly.

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The Austrian Alps are the setting for this wonderful little story. Charlie is a teenager and is on a ski trip with his school friends to Kaldgellan, he snowboards while they ski, he has an unhappy home life and is glad to be away doing what he loves. After he wipes out because of an avalanche he is rescued by Hanna a ski guide with a bad attitude and secrets.

While Charlie has been getting covered in snow his class mates have been in the town wondering why everyone is leaving, the towns folk know something bad's a comin' and want to be well away from there for a bit, with no way of leaving they all trek back to the hotel and settle in to wait out the coming storm.

Things go to shit pretty quickly when noises are heard and teachers are missing, blood is found and then they're all suddenly attacked, people ripped apart and thrown around, chaos ensues. When the blood settles they realize that from 30, they're down to 9, pretty good going for about 5 minutes!

The survivors have to band together to work out what the actual fuck just happened and how they're going to survive until the storm passes, Hanna and her mysterious past have some answers, can they make it through and come out the other side unscathed!?

I know that's a pretty vague review but I think it's best to go into this not knowing too much and letting the story take you away. I will say that it's violent, bloody and gore filled but it's not as graphic as the usual adult horror that I read, this isn't adult horror though, it's YA, which is probably why. This is a good start for easing YA readers into horror as a genre as there's just enough gruesomeness to not distract from the story but give you an insight into what sort of stuff happens.

The setting and characters are well written, the story paced nicely and the ending is spot on. Couldn't ask for more really, was a quick and enjoyable read.

*Huge thanks to Gabriel Dylan, Little Tiger Group, Stripes Publishing and NetGalley for this copy which I chose to read and all opinions are my own*

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I loved this book. I grew up on Point Horror and devoured Shivers. This is the perfect read for the modern day teen.

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For anyone who knows me knows that I loves me a good horror book, and a good Young Adult (YA) horror book!

So Whiteout for me ticked all of the boxes. We meet Charlie. An outside in school, but he's gone on the skiing trip with his classmates to get away from the awfulness of his home life. He's very adept at snowboarding so it's the perfect escapism for him. 

Until a snowstorm blows in...then his teachers disappear...then one by one his classmates are getting picked off by some creatures that only come out at night. But they will stop at nothing to (quite literally) devour the whole class.

Dylan is very clever in being able to be build up the tension and given the remote setting and the fact that a bunch of teenagers are in the elements on their own anything could and does happen. 

For any other adult horror fan (who likes YA) this is very reminiscent of 30 Days of Night, which I absolutely adored and like the film and book it's quite gory! Big thumbs up from me. Creepy, gory and brilliantly fun.

A 5 star read for me! 

I would like to thank Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for a review.

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Growing up in the 90's I was completely obsessed with the Point Horror series and so I am absolutely loving that YA horror has returned with Red Eye.

Whiteout follows a group of teens on a skiing trip in Austria who end up getting stranded due to unusually high snowfall. They are completely cut off from everyone and cannot move until the weather improves. But something dangerous is waiting for them out there.... YIKES!


I loved this and I am looking forward to making my way through the Red Eye releases already out and hopefully the many more to come in the future.

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The premise for this book is chilling. A school ski trip, where a snowstorm cuts them off from the outside world is scary enough. Added to that, all of the locals pack up and leave the town just before the snowstorm and are being pretty shady about the whole thing...they know something, but they aren't saying what.

And then the kids on the school trip wake up to find that all their teachers seem to have disappeared. It is just them left with their ski guides and they are wildly unprepared for the horrors that are about to unfold.

The blurb doesn't really tell you this, but I should warn you that this book is a bit ... 'vampire-y', in case that's not your type of thing. However, if you're now imagining some twilight-esque vampires that seem human and have morals, then think again. These monsters are hideous and all they want is to satisfy their desire for human flesh.

Much like your typical horror movie, the students are picked off one by one. The author isn't afraid to get pretty gruesome with the descriptions of their deaths either. It is, as you might expect, pretty gory. My preference is for creepy books, rather than all out horror, but I enjoyed the pace of the book. The group lurch from one horrific attack to another and you don't get much time to catch your breath.

You get your full quota of stereotypical teen characters; the spoilt rich girl, the geeky boy, the sports jocks etc. And some of them are really downright obnoxious! There were quite a few in the cast that I was quite happy for the vampires to pick off and some of them were just a bit too cliché to really feel credible.

It's a relief to me that YA fiction still does horror pretty well. I remember reading the 'Goosebumps' books when I was younger (much too young to be reading them in fact) and freaking myself out, and I think this is a great book for a young teen audience looking for some gruesome thrills. I have to say that of any horror fiction, I find vampires the least scary, but this is an action packed horror that isn't too challenging.

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I love a good vampire story and have done for the last decade. This vampire story is quite unique though and I relished the change from romantic sappy vampires to properly creepy ones, something you don't see a lot in young adult fiction.
I also think the setting off a school ski trip was unique but really did become quite chilling. A fab read.

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A school trip to a ski resort, what could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot it seems when you throw a snow storm and vampires into the equation. Bringing the best of vampires, and I mean the old school, bloodthirsty vampires to YA in a way I haven’t read before. We follow our protagonist, Charlie, recently transferred and an outsider on account of the inevitable rumours that spread and frequent police visits. None of that changes until one morning the students wake up and find the teachers gone without a trace, things only get worse from there. With a storm leaving them stranded and cut off from the outside world, their only option is to try and survive long enough for the storm to pass and get help.

I’ve been waiting so long for Vampires I make their return and Whiteout didn’t disappoint. The atmosphere, tension and outright fear this book brings out in you is everything I ever wanted. I could not put it down, it’s one of those “the next thing you know you’ve turned the last page and it’s 3AM” books. I love Charlie, his character development throughout is one of my favourite things. He’s often on the receiving end of snap judgements by his peers and is a bit of an outsider. There’s so much more to him than meets the eye tbough, I hope others see it too. There isn’t a single disappointing element for me, in fact, I’m dying for a sequel. I need to know what happens next after that ending. It’s the perfect addition to the Red Eye series, definitely read it! Maybe not on a Ski trip though…

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A class skiing trip ends in disaster when Charlie and his classmates are marooned on the mountain by a snowstorm. Oddly, all the locals and most of their guides and teachers have disappeared, and the teens are left to fight for their lives against an ancient evil.

Having read previous books in the RedEye YA horror series, I was looking forward to reading this one. I wasn't disappointed as it was an entertaining read. Charlie was a character the reader could really empathise with, although I thought the conflict between Hanna and Tara was rather manufactured as there didn't seem to be any reason for it to go on so long. Overall this would be an enjoyable read for anyone who loves the YA horror genre.

Thanks to NetGalley and publishers, Little Tiger Group / Stripes Publishing, for the opportunity to review an ARC.

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This was your typical school skiing trip, with your typical kids. The queen bitch, the good-looking guy, the tough girl, the weird kid and the wannabes so it wasn’t long before I had them all firmly fixed in my mind as people from my school days. The addition to the group was a girl not much older than them called Hanna who was a ski guide at the remote Austrian resort.
Charlie is the weird kid, he dresses shabby with poor equipment and keeps himself quite isolated from the group but he soon finds himself having a run in with Hanna when he is being reckless on the slopes. When they all go to bed they waken to find that a blizzard has arrived and all the adults and residents of the village have disappeared. Then things get really creepy.
There is no way off the mountain and no way of communicating with anyone either. The hand of fate throws a mixed group together not by their choice but simply being in a spot at the same time. This is a things that go more than a bump in the night story, it is creepy and heart pounding for the group with situations that bring out the best and worst in these kids.
YA’s will love this book, the characters will be recognisable to them and I would think they would have their own ideas of what is going on and what to do. A story they could see themselves in as heroes. I can also see this as a Netflix film. The characters aren’t together by choice, the group wouldn’t work back home, so besides what is happening there is tension between them. There is of course lots of blood and gore and situations that make you want to squint at the pages because you know things are going to go wrong. The bets are open as to who will still be standing at the end, if anyone. I really liked the end, very shudder worthy.
I wish to thank NetGalley and the publisher for an e-copy of this book which I have reviewed honestly

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I really love the Red Eye series and ‘Whiteout’ is a gloriously gory new addition by debut author Gabriel Dylan. I’ll certainly be looking out for his next book.

Though the action kicks off very early on, the author successfully creates a sense of creeping dread by not revealing too much about what exactly his protagonists are up against. We follow a group of school pupils on a skiing trip in Austria. Outsiders, artists, gamers, rugby boys and mean girls find themselves snowed in and abandoned at their resort. But don’t expect any Breakfast Club bonding for this group. The locals might have disappeared before the storm struck, but our group are most definitely not alone on the mountain.

Great characters, snappy pace and an author with a strong desire to scare you out of your wits. A brilliant book for teenage readers looking for a quick, engaging and gruesomely enjoyable read.

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Whiteout, part of the young adult, horror series entitled Red Eye by Gabriel Dylan, is heavily inspired by the author's first ski trip to the beautiful Austrian Alps region and a place called Hochkar. It was whilst on that holiday when Dylan would embellish his story with thoughts of a possible demon-being roaming free in the remote, snowy area where it would take time if help was called for, for them to arrive. The author does a sterling job of making his characters relatable and believable; they are nothing more than a bunch of misfits, and I found myself very much admiring protagonist Hanna for her strength and feisty nature. The visceral descriptions of gore were right up my street and helped to ramp up the creep-factor, and the unease becomes palpable in the last few chapters. Recommended to those who enjoy books centred on the paranormal.

Many thanks to Stripes Publishing for an ARC.

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Whiteout is about a ski trip and the main character is Charlie who needs to escape an unhappy home. I thought that this story was well written with good characters. I liked the writing style and the setting. However I probably would not have requested this book if I had known it was about vampires.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

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For Charlie, a school ski trip is an escape from his unhappy life at home. That is until a storm blows in and their resort town is cut off from the rest of the world. Trapped on a mountain all Charlie and his fellow students can do is wait for the storm to pass, along with strange ski guide, Hanna. As night falls and the secrets of the town come to fruition the storm is the least of their worries.

YA Horror is a genre that I don't read enough of so when I had the chance to read Whiteout I was so excited. The premise of it sounded so intriguing and in a way I couldn't wait to be scared by this unique story and let me tell you this...I was both scared and amazed!

Whiteout had everything you could want in a YA horror. It had action, it had suspense, it had jump scares and it had evil vampire like creatures that you could tell were grotesque. It really was a thrilling read and one that I just couldn't put down, despite how scared I got at moments. When a book does that to me I know it's a good one.

The setting in Whiteout was so atmospheric, creepy and just perfect for the plot! As I read it during a cold spell this made the reading experience just that bit more eerie. The descriptions were spot on that it was like you were there with the students trying to figure out a way to end the horror. You could also tell a lot of research had been done into ski resorts as even the littlest of details were perfect.

The plot itself was so unique and unlike anything I'd read in a YA horror before. This was down to the setting but also the characters/monsters. The monsters were so fascinating to read about. Were they vampires? or were they something else entirely? It isn't really stated throughout the story and I loved that little bit of mystery. It really added to the atmosphere of this menacing book.

Charlie was a character who grew from strength to strength throughout the course of the book. Starting off as an outsider he learnt to channel his troubled past and do what was right in the interests of his fellow students and Hanna. Come the end of the book he was a changed person and his character development was just outstanding. Hanna, just like Charlie had a troubled past and as the story progresses you learn more about her motivations for being in the resort. She was determined, strong willed and willing to do whatever she could to find out the truth. Hanna was a true heroine.

Whiteout was an outstanding debut book and one that is certainly going up there on my list of favourite YA novels. Everything about it had my adrenaline pumping and my heart racing, so much in fact that I devoured it in a few days and am now dying for a sequel. Please, Gabriel, make this happen!

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