{Review} The Winter People by Rebekah L. Purdy

Posted by Melanie
Release Date: September 2nd, 2014
Finished Date: August 15th, 2014

Publishers: Entangled Teen
Genre: YA Paranormal, Romance
Source: For Review
Format: eARC

Pages: 320

Buy: Amazon UK / Amazon US / The Book Depo

Salome Montgomery fears winter—the cold, the snow, the ice, but most of all, the frozen pond she fell through as a child. Haunted by the voices and images of the strange beings that pulled her to safety, she hasn't forgotten their warning to "stay away." For eleven years, she has avoided the winter woods, the pond, and the darkness that lurks nearby. But when failing health takes her grandparents to Arizona, she is left in charge of maintaining their estate. This includes the "special gifts" that must be left at the back of the property.
 


Salome discovers she’s a key player in a world she’s tried for years to avoid. At the center of this world is the strange and beautiful Nevin, who she finds trespassing on her family’s property. Cursed with dark secrets and knowledge of the creatures in the woods, his interactions with Salome take her life in a new direction. A direction where she'll have to decide between her longtime crush Colton, who could cure her fear of winter. Or Nevin who, along with an appointed bodyguard, Gareth, protects her from the darkness that swirls in the snowy backdrop. An evil that, given the chance, will kill her.

The Review: I thought The Winter People was a really good read filled with mystery & intrigue.
Salome is left to see to the woods surrounding her grandmother’s house whilst she’s away for the winter – filling animal feeders, leaving trinkets in tress and the likes. This is a massive deal for Salome because she fears everything about winter; the snow; the cold; the ice and most importantly, the pond in which she nearly drowned in as a child that caused her phobia of winter. She never forgot being saved, hearing voices and she never forgot the image of a monster than warned her never to come back, never to venture into the woods again. So, for eleven years she stayed away….. until now.
As Salome allows winter back into her life, 3 boys come along with it; Nevin, who always seems to be around her Grandmothers property but gently coaxes her into being comfortable there; Colton, the boy from school that she has a major crush on and again someone who would help her with her fear, never judging; then there’s Gareth who always seems to be there when she needs someone to protect her – but why does she need protecting? Everyone seems to be keeping secrets from her but then again….it’s not every day you find your family is cursed and that most of the women die in their eighteenth year, which for Salome…is vast approaching.
So, I really enjoyed this book. I liked the characters a lot and connected with them well. I could really connect with Salome because I have experience with phobia and anxiety and I liked how she handled herself, it is very easy to be crippled by fear the way she was and it was portrayed well, even when she is trying to coax herself to do the things she feared, it all resonated with me. There was no shortage of love interests here and they each had something good to offer her although she looked on them more as friends for the most part, the relationships weren’t rushed as most often are and that’s a good thing in YA for me.
Most of the storyline is devoted to Salome, her relationships and also overcoming her fear…. But the rest was the reason that makes this book different. She is stalked by voices, by ominous messages and visions of things that can’t possibly be there and with her phobia, it makes her think she’s going crazy but one of the boys will let her know she’s not. That’s not all though because as I mentioned, there is a curse and that is very mysterious because no one is allowed to talk about it but it has caused many of the women in Salome’s lineage to die on the same day at 18 yrs old and that is the threat that follows her throughout the book. She must unravel the curse and work out whom she needs to unravel it for and why forcing a life or death conclusion that could mean the downfall of all she has come to care about. There is a lot more to the story than this, of course there is a supernatural element as well but I don’t want to spoil that for you so I will just leave you by saying – give this a go, it’s an incredibly sweet read of a girl who after leading a sheltered life due to a crippling phobia is just starting to experience life again and the taste of first love is making it that much sweeter, who is then thrust into an unknown situation where her life is at stake and there are more people on her side than she realises so maybe, just maybe, she can beat this thing. 

Thank you to  Entangled Teen for giving me the opportunity to review this book in exchange for an honest review.