Review: The Drift by C.J. Tudor (Spoiler-Free)

~ Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for an early copy in exchange for an honest review! ~

Survival was selfish. But then, survival often was.

Apologies for taking so long to read this, but I was traveling and getting accustomed to living in Spain! Don't let my read dates make you think this book was boring. Because it was quite the opposite.

The beginning is a lot to take in—three perspectives, three different locked-room mysteries, and no idea how they will connect. There are a LOT of characters, but I promise if you power through it will pay off.

It's clear that many of the themes of this book were inspired by the pandemic (though, interestingly enough, Tudor actually started writing it in 2019!). At first I was a little wary of reading about the trauma we all just went through in an explicitly dystopian/post-apocalyptic setting, but I found the larger message extremely poignant. It may just be because I recently rewatched The Maze Runner movies, but I also found soooo many parallels between The Scorch Trials and this novel (in a good way!). There is a zombie-like infected population and questions of the ethics of using the immune or infected as a means to find a cure. Fascinating, yet terrifying, stuff.

While the whole premise is scary in itself, I do want to give dystopian readers a fair warning/reminder that this is also a HORROR novel. Tudor does not hold back with the body gore.

There is a lot Tudor doesn't hold back on. Like plot twists and escalation. I was expecting this book to be a wild ride, but that Act 3 twist... let me tell you, I was not prepared for it.

Even though I found the beginning a little cumbersome, this book won me over by the end, and I'd recommend it to anyone who's prepared for a healthy dose of emotional whiplash. Can't wait to get to some of this author's other work, such as The Chalk Man.