I’m delighted to welcome you today to my stop on the blog tour for thrilling debut Feral Snow by Mark Lowes. Thank you to Anne Cater and the author for giving me the opportunity to read and review this wonderful book.
About the book:
Alone and stranded in the Arctic wasteland, would you risk your life to save a stranger or try to get home?
Paul is a father-to-be; traumatised by his past, he’s terrified of becoming a father after his own beat him until he was unilaterally deaf. While working as a freelance cameraman in the Arctic, he’s caught in a blizzard, separated from his crew, and falls into a chasm. Alone, and waiting for death to come, personal demons plague his mind.
When a young native girl falls into the chasm with him, Paul must learn how to accept responsibility and what it takes to give your life for a child.
FERAL SNOW, while a tense and action-packed story, is an intimate journey between two polar opposites and how love can be forged in the unlikeliest of circumstances.
It has been compared to The Revenant, 127 Hours, and The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
About the author:
Mark Lowes is a former teacher, current early childhood educator, and future dad. He lives in Cardiff, Wales, UK, and is sometimes found lamenting over how awful his football team is. While he’s not working with deaf children and their families, he’s writing dark and twisty fiction.
Mark is the winner of Litopia’s Pop-Up Submissions and of a pitch contest at the Cardiff Book Festival.
My Review:
Feral Snow by Mark Lowes is a thrilling and powerful debut that really does pack a punch. It tells the story of Paul, a father-to-be with a traumatic past who is working as a freelance cameraman in the Arctic. When he’s caught in a blizzard he becomes separated from his crew and falls into a chasm. Alone and waiting to die, Paul is haunted by the ghosts of his past. But then a young native girl falls into the chasm alongside him and changes everything.
It’s hard to believe that Feral Snow is the author’s debut novel as the writing is so accomplished, drawing you into the story from the very first page. The cold and unforgiving Arctic becomes a character in its own right as Paul and Nanny do everything they can in order to survive. Paul must fight the demons of his past to find the strength to match the unrelenting feistiness of his young companion, who is a character I fell in love with from the moment she was introduced. The stark terrain is brought vividly to life, so much so that I could almost feel the bitter cold and biting hunger as the pair fight to survive under the harshest of circumstances.
But this is not only a tense and thrilling tale of survival, it’s also about two people who are from very different worlds and how their shared experiences bring them together so that they become like family to each other. Paul is running away from his responsibilities because of a childhood trauma that left him unilaterally deaf, but Nanny helps him come to terms with his past and makes him begin to see life from a different perspective.
I loved the relationship between twelve year old Nanny and Paul. This is a book that goes to some quite dark places, telling a powerful and thought provoking story that moved me to tears at times. But Paul’s friendship with Nanny is the driving force behind this story and Mark Lowes has written it so beautifully I couldn’t help but fall in love with them both.
Feral Snow is an exciting and fast paced thriller, with twists and turns that had me on the edge of my seat. The stark and unforgiving landscape feels incredibly real, with the story taking you on an unexpectedly powerful journey that really does pack a punch. I wasn’t sure quite what to expect when I started this book but I was completely blown away by it.
Mark Lowes has written a debut to be proud of and is a book that I would highly recommend.
Feral Snow by Mark Lowes is available to purchase now: Amazon UK
Check out what these other fabulous bloggers have to say about this book:
Cal Turner Reviews 
Huge thanks for the blog tour support Cal xx
LikeLiked by 1 person