Winter horror has a lot going for it—crushing isolation, the ever-present threat of frostbite, and the bleak existential dread that only a barren, snow-covered landscape can provide. It’s a subgenre that has given us classics like The Thing and The Terror, proving that the cold is just as capable of delivering terror as the deepest, darkest woods.

Dennis Mahoney’s Our Winter Monster sets out to join that tradition, tossing a broken couple, a snowstorm, and a mysterious, potentially supernatural beast into the icy abyss of Pinebuck, New York. On paper, it sounds like the kind of atmospheric horror that should be a surefire hit. Instead, the novel is an exhausting slog that lacks the originality, tension, or depth to justify its existence.

The novel revolves around Holly and Brian, a couple on the brink of collapse after a traumatic event that left their relationship in emotional shambles. Their solution? A cozy winter getaway in a remote ski town—a setting that could have been rife with tension but instead feels like a half-hearted attempt to wring depth from the same relationship woes horror fans have seen a million times before.

Brian is riddled with anxiety and paranoia, a man who sees threats in every shadow. Holly, meanwhile, is hardened and emotionally distant, throwing herself into work while drifting further from Brian. Their dynamic is supposed to provide the novel’s emotional backbone, but instead, it reads like a stretched-out, melodramatic therapy session.

Then there’s Kendra, the town’s sheriff, still reeling from the disappearance of another couple in the same area weeks prior. She’s a potentially interesting character, but rather than being the force of authority and agency the novel desperately needs, she’s stuck in an endless cycle of self-doubt and tragic backstory that goes nowhere.

And let’s not forget Tanner, the town’s obligatory creepy loner who plows the roads and serves as an exposition dump on legs. He has a past. He has secrets that are initially revealed in Chapter 30. And yet, somehow, he is the most forgettable thing in a book filled with forgettable things.

To be fair, Our Winter Monster starts strong. The couple’s tense drive into the storm, the eerie suggestion of something massive lurking just beyond visibility, the crushing weight of winter itself—it’s all effective. For about thirty pages. Then the novel settles into a painfully predictable rhythm:

1. Brian and Holly bicker.
2. Something big and scary moves in the distance.
3. A secondary character monologues about trauma.
4. The monster does…something (never particularly exciting).
5. Repeat.

It doesn’t help that the novel can’t decide what kind of horror it wants to be. At times, it flirts with supernatural terror, hinting at a creature born of the elements itself. At others, it leans into psychological horror, implying the monster is more metaphor than menace. And then, in an act of genre indecision that deflates all tension, it delivers a vague, half-hearted explanation that manages to be both underwhelming and nonsensical.

It’s clear that Mahoney is trying to say something about grief, trauma, and the monstrous weight of unresolved pain. The problem is that he says it in the most heavy-handed way possible. The creature, for all its supposed menace, is basically an emotional support cryptid, showing up whenever the characters are at their lowest. At one point, a character literally states, “We’re the monster. It’s you, and then it’s me.” Subtle, right? Horror works best when its themes lurk beneath the surface, when the audience is allowed to peel back layers of meaning on their own. Here, everything is spelled out.

Mahoney’s prose is serviceable but rarely engaging. The book’s best passages come when he focuses on the environment—the crushing weight of snow, the eerie silence of a blizzard, the isolation of Pinebuck. These moments shine, but they’re drowned in an avalanche of clunky dialogue and repetitive character introspection. The pacing is equally uneven. The novel moves in bursts—tense sequences of survival and dread punctuated by long, meandering stretches of melancholic navel-gazing.

Our Winter Monster isn’t the worst horror novel you’ll read this year, but it might be the most forgettable. It leans too heavily on tired tropes, fails to deliver on its intriguing setup, and mistakes surface-level angst for genuine emotional depth. If you’re desperate for a winter horror fix, there are far better options out there.

Hell’s Hundred
Published January 27, 2025