Our Winter Monster

De: Dennis Mahoney

Narrado por: Morgan Hallett

Chilling holiday horror about an unhappy couple running from their problems and straight into the maw of a terrifying beast, perfect for fans of Paul Tremblay and Sara Gran

For the last year, Holly and Brian have been out of sync. Neither can forget what happened that one winter evening; neither can forgive what’s happened since. Tonight, Holly and Brian race toward Pinebuck, New York, trying to outrun a blizzard on their way to the ski village getaway they hope will save their relationship. But soon they lose control of the car—and then of themselves.

Now Sheriff Kendra Book is getting calls about a couple in trouble—along with reports of a brutal and mysterious creature rampaging through town, leaving a trail of crushed cars, wrecked buildings, and mangled bodies in the snow.

To Kendra, who lost another couple to the snow just seven weeks ago, the danger feels personal. But not as personal as it feels to Holly and Brian, who are starting to see the past, the present, and themselves in a monstrous new light …

©2025 Dennis Mahoney (P)2025 Recorded Books

Every action has a reaction

Spoilers!

I really enjoyed this book. It kept me hooked from cover to cover, not because of cheap twists, but because the emotional tension never let up. The characters felt layered in the places that mattered; their flaws weren’t decorative, they were structural. Every decision carried weight, and you could feel the quiet inevitability building beneath it all.

I was initially disappointed that the monster never receives a concrete, literal explanation. Part of me wanted the comfort of mythology, science, something tidy to pin it to. But the longer I sat with it, the more I appreciated that restraint. The monster works more powerfully as a metaphor than it ever could as a creature with rules and origins. It embodies the unresolved conflict between two people, the kind that festers, mutates, and eventually detonates. When tension like that goes unaddressed, it doesn’t stay contained. It becomes explosive. And anyone who wanders too close ends up in the blast zone.

In that sense, the lack of explanation isn’t a gap. It’s the point. The horror isn’t the monster itself, but what people create when pride, resentment, and silence are left to compound. The book trusts the reader enough to sit with that discomfort instead of solving it for us, and I respect that choice.