Beautifully lyrical writing, but oh so very dark, dreary and bleak, both the setting and most of the people populating it. This is a slow burn, but it holds its tension and eerie atmosphere throughout. ( )

One day spring just did not come - the cold and the snow kept coming. Before long the next winter was upon everyone and the weather never changed. But it was the second spring that never came that finally got everyone on edge - it started to seem like the weather is here to stay - at least in the Appalachian part of Ohio.

Setting the novel outside of the big cities pays off for Stine - the region is already poor and one of the hot beds of the opioid crisis today. And this future is not too far removed - it can happen next spring or 10 years from now - but it seems to be coming.

The main character and the narrator of the story is Wylodine (Wil for short) - a young woman, a few years out of school who was left by her mother and step-father to watch over and work on the family farm. Their crop is weed - and that had made them half-outcasts, half-celebrities in the region. And Wil has a green thumb - things just grow for her. Which makes her an anomaly and valuable in the frozen world.

And she has a goal - her mother sends her a card and she decides to go rescue her from the step-father. How much she needs rescuing is unclear - some of the backstory reads like Lobo being abusive but some of it shows him as carrying and careful man - and there is the element of the unreliable narrator. But the decision is taken, Wil attaches her little house to her truck and off she goes. She seems to be picking up strays along the road (and then some of them leave) and the expected quick trip is anything but. A compound ran by frat-boys, a group of tree-savers who seem to be running of trees to save, the Church which escaped the small town just to get stuck somewhere else -- the trip seems to be getting slower and slower as time progresses.

And somewhere in the backstories of everyone, we can see the Appalachia of today. People there did not get desperate because spring never came - they were already desperate before that and this was the last nail. The 15 years' old who has a toddler and got kicked from home because she got pregnant, the people that believe that they are meant to die, the man who despite having nothing and having been robbed still finds a can of condensed milk for a baby - horrors and hope paint a picture of a humanity in a crisis - with some bright spots here and there. The world collapses around them and anarchy rules. And somewhere in there, there are still some live seeds... and a grower who can make something from them.

We never see the world out of Appalachia. We hear about California and we know that things still grow there but as time passed, Ohio and the rest of the region gets worse and worse so one would assume that the cold is slowly taking over the world.

The novel is cruel and horrible and what people do to other people is awful enough. The parts that are really chilling and make you think are the ones that happen today - the ones that already happened before the weather went crazy. Reading this novel at the same time when most of the States was frozen, including states that rarely see ice, made it even scarier. One day spring may decide not to come... and when that happens it will be one more problem in a very long list of problems - when the apocalypses comes, it won't come alone.

The novel finishes with hope and with an opening for a sequel. But it also feels like a complete novel - we never get to California but we get to a place that can be home and can be the end. And where hope is still alive. ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed "Road Out of Winter." This book is a fast paced page turner, easy to read. I loved the character of Wylodine, aka Wil, she was thoughtful, compelling, and tough. She carried the seeds of hope with her throughout the entire book, searching for her mother but also finding a new family on the way. I didn't want this story to end, hopefully Alison Stine will make a sequel.

I received this book from Goodreads for an honest review. ( )

I found this book to be unputdownable. It’s very dark, gritty, and sad—perhaps even a little too realistic, which makes it even scarier. People have been adapting to the obviously accelerating climate changes around them, but as it becomes evident that spring isn’t going to come, panic sets in and the whole fabric of society begins to crumble as supply chains fail.

Alison Stine’s writing is excellent. She manages to give the reader a very real sense of dread from the beginning of the story, and the tone of the book is relentlessly matter-of-fact. The book is well-paced and wonderfully descriptive, even in its cold starkness and foreshadowing:

“I didn’t know the song they performed at what would be the last graduation ceremony, the final graduating class; the last time the platform groaned under the risers; the last time the wind tried but could not unsettle the principal’s hair, buzzed short on his flat head.”

Wil is a fantastic character: always a loner, with a sad personal history and not much joy in her life, she’s got a lovely heart and cares for her best friend, her mom, and then literal strangers she meets as the chaos sets in. She’s able to create her own family, and that part of the story is heartbreaking and beautiful.

I highly recommend this page-turner dystopian to any fan of the genre. It’s brutal and intense, but it has moments of hope and joy. A truly good read. ( )

For all its harrowing circumstances - an apocalypse, drugs, lawlessness, looting, destruction, murder, rape, suicide, and more, Road Out of Winter by Alison Stine does not elicit an emotional reaction from me. The ending, when it comes, is not a cliffhanger but does appear to be simply a stopping point. I wonder if a sequel is planned to continue the journey. At this time, I don't know that I will follow further along the road out of winter.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2020/09/road-out-of-winter.html

Reviewed for NetGalley and publisher's blog tour. ( )