81. A Cold Season – Alison Littlewood

Cass has lost her husband, has weird feelings about her father, and has to raise her son on her own – where better to do that than where the weird feelings originated? A small village, where it’s not cool with the other moms that Cass is obviously being looked at by the apparently attractive (but he didn’t sound attractive and that’s not just my own idiosyncrasies talking) new principal Mr. Remick.

Cass and her son Ben live in a renovated mill turned to apartments, but there’s only one done, and there are rats running around the unfinished building just to make it awful. However, for some reason they don’t swarm the one apartment with food in it (there’s a little coverage of this but rats are smart enough to find the food and gnaw through the door, so scary).

Anyway, Cass gets cut off from her work by endless snowing that takes out the phones (I remember the phones needing to work to have internet, that terrible noise, the endless download times, patience was a virtue) and she’s trying to make a friend or two but it just keeps getting a bit strange or she doesn’t know which person is actually trustworthy.

This gets a little folk horror, which I love, with standing stones and symbols of the pagan past, and the cultish behavior of the villagers. Cass also gets suitably unmoored while her son gets really bratty and starts to be a real joiner. My first reading experience with Littlewood was not great, but this is her first novel and it was a lot better than I expected. Good old snowy dread.

Peregrine wishes I hadn’t brought that up about the rats. Me too, actually. Of Unknown Origin haunts me to this day.