Snowblind by Christopher Golden

The small New England town of Coventry had weathered a thousand blizzards...but never one like this. Icy figures danced in the wind and gazed through children's windows with soul-chilling eyes. People wandered into the whiteout and were never seen again. Families were torn apart, and the town would never be the same.

Now, as a new storm approaches twelve years later, the folks of Coventry are haunted by the memories of that dreadful blizzard and those who were lost in the snow. Photographer Jake Schapiro mourns his little brother, Isaac, even as---tonight---another little boy is missing. Mechanic and part-time thief Doug Manning's life has been forever scarred by the mysterious death of his wife, Cherie, and now he’s starting over with another woman and more ambitious crimes. Police detective Joe Keenan has never been the same since that night, when he failed to save the life of a young boy . . . and the boy’s father vanished in the storm only feet away. And all the way on the other side of the country, Miri Ristani receives a phone call . . . from a man who died twelve years ago.

As old ghosts trickle back, this new storm will prove to be even more terrifying than the last.

Although the premise sounded fascinating, this book did not live up to its promise. It was classified as a horror story, but it had too dull a middle to make a great impact on the readers.

One of the biggest issues this book has is that t has too many characters. The author was trying to create a kind of small town feeling by introducing us to many people who lived through the blizzards in a particular town. This tactic works very well if you know how to go about executing it. Someone like Stephen King is a master at this. The problem in this novel is that none of the characters are developed enough to have personalities all their own, so they start to bleed into one another. As I read, I found myself wondering who a particular name referred to, which should not happen. The characters need to have unique voices that are not mistaken for other people.

The pace was also a problem. It started out well, with a nice balance of background information and action, but that started to unravel as we moved into the “twelve years later” section. The author had to pump us full of back-stories, showing us what each of the characters had been up to in that time. It slowed the action down too much to stay interesting. The book picked up again close to the end, but it wasn’t enough to make it the interesting read I thought it would be.