A Killing Cold

• Author: Kate Alice Marshall
• Genre: Mystery
• Publication Date: February 4, 2025
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for providing me with an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

A woman invited to her wealthy fiance’s family retreat realizes they are hiding a terrible secret—and that she’s been there before, by the bestselling author of What Lies in the Woods.

A whirlwind romance.

When Theodora Scott met Connor—wealthy, charming, and a member of the powerful Dalton family—she fell in love in an instant. Six months later, he’s brought her to Idlewood, his family’s isolated winter retreat, to win over his skeptical relatives.

Stay away from Connor Dalton.

Theo has tried to ignore the threatening messages on her phone, but she can’t ignore the footprints in the snow outside the cabin window or the strange sense of familiarity she has about this place. Then, in a disused cabin, Theo finds something impossible: a photo of herself as a child. A photo taken at Idlewood.

I’ve been here before.

Theo has almost no recollection of her earliest years, but now she begins to piece together the fragments of her memories. Someone here has a shocking secret that they will do anything to keep hidden, and Theo is in terrible danger. Because the Daltons do not lose, and discovering what happened at Idlewood may cost Theo everything.

I’m all for a good mystery featuring an isolated setting amidst the snow blanketing the town full of people with secrets, some of them dangerous. You can easily guess why I decided that this was the right book to introduce me to Marshall’s writing. 

I was approved for the audiobook version, narrated by Karissa Vacker, and she was perfect for this role. Theo’s entire personality is centered on the fact that her personal history is basically a blank, with her entire identity for her to make her own. But despite Theo’s dark ‘Mary Sue’ persona, I still found Vacker’s rendition to be likable. Wait, more intriguing than likable, because it’s really hard to get to know Theo when she doesn’t know herself. It made me want to know what the random flashes of memories actually mean when not filtered through the innocent lens of a child’s perspective.

This is told through the eyes of Theo, mostly, with some other characters thrown in, but she’s the one who stands out the most. Most likely because I was just waiting for her to be revealed as the missing piece connecting her lost history and the danger she steps into the present time. 

As someone with an advanced degree in mental health counseling and significant working time with people who had extremely severe mental health disorders, I’m always intrigued by a book that depicts a rounded individual who seems to have some kind of inability to access their memories. Is this why amnesia storylines are so popular on television? TV isn’t something I watch often, but I can see the allure of watching someone kind of rebuild their personality if/when they can integrate their blocked memories. Maybe it’s because I haven’t worked with this issue, so I can’t really pull apart how the character and their disorder is portrayed. Aside from being unable to remember her earliest years, when she was old enough to see things occurring around her, she seems pretty functional for the most part. Which is good, because Connor’s family is a tough crowd.

Connor, Theo’s fiancé, comes from the prestigious Dalton family, which seems to mainly be composed of jerks, with like two members who aren’t total trash, one of those being Connor himself. While the majority of the Daltons weren’t people I’d want to be around, there were some cool moments as Connor introduces Theo to his family in one big go at a winter resort that the family owns. 

Idlewood itself is a really interesting aspect of the story, seeing as how it is the location for two major mysteries—one in the past which relates to Theo herself and sets her on a path to discover what happened to her there as a child. It isn’t sexual abuse, I promise, but that was a huge fear for me, so I figure that it might put someone else at ease. But, as she discovers small clues, she realizes that she’s starting to remember pieces of her past, despite multiple threats instructing her to stay away from Connor, a bunch of people who are shady and have some pretty serious secrets that they’ll do anything to protect, and an underdog romance between a young woman with no roots and the odds stacked against her and Connor, a young man from a wealthy and extremely conservative family who wasn’t afraid to buck their traditions and choose the person he wanted to marry based on who they are, as opposed to their social class. 

We constantly are reminded of the extreme differences between Connor’s upbringing and Theo’s often, as she is finally introduced to the family and learns that they’re more interested in ‘protecting the family’ than they are about celebrating a family member’s happiness. It might have read differently in printed or ebook versions, but hearing someone repeat that phrase, protecting the family, gave me strong Helen Lovejoy from the Simpsons vibes.

We don’t really get to know much about Connor through showing, although we are told some of the basics to give a general outline, but he reads as particularly flat in the context of putting him into scenes where he is overshadowed by the side characters at every turn. Connor offers little to the story itself, yet he’s the link between Theo and Idlewood, so that’s really his main purpose, rather than creating a well-rounded character who furthers the plot in a meaningful way. When side characters overshadow a man she’s planning to marry, that’s not a great sign, but these side characters are the baddies (possibly baddies but maybe not?) I loved to read about. 

The pace of this book is fast, starting early on, and intensifying in the last quarter of the book. There’s a strong buildup to the plot twists, and since we see the worst of the majority of the Dalton family, it’s hard to guess who is behind it. Connor, besides being about as plain of a character as a baked potato, is one who can be trusted, and is possibly the only person she an put her trust in, aside from his sister, Alexis, whom she is growing more friendly with after having met her in a lower-pressure setting.

My introduction to Marshall’s writing was a great choice with this book. I loved the dual timeline mysteries, and seeing things from several different perspectives, but still struggling to see who was responsible for the mysteries Theo is exploring as she recovers her memory one piece at a time. Despite the breakneck pace of the story, it still allowed Theo time to make discoveries and integrate new information, for the most part. The way Marshall wrote tension so sharp it nearly crackled through my speakers blew my mind, keeping me glued to this book from start to finish, and leaving me thinking about it long after the end. This book would be a good fit if you love an isolated setting, winter mysteries, books about family secrets, and dual timeline mysteries.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, and I may earn a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase through my links.