#BlogTour ‘Snowball’ by Gregory Bastianelli

About the book…

A group of motorists become stranded on a lonely stretch of highway during a Christmas Eve blizzard and fight for survival against an unnatural force in the storm. The gathered survivors realize a tenuous connection among them means it may not be a coincidence that they all ended up on this highway.

An attempt to seek help leads a few of the travelers to a house in the woods where a twisted toymaker with a mystical snow globe is hell bent on playing deadly games with a group of people just trying to get home for the holidays.

My thanks go to Anne Cater of Random Things BlogTours for the blogtour invite and Flame Tree Press for my review copy of ‘Snowball’ by Gregory Bastianelli,out now in paperback edition.

A perfectly chilling slice of winter time set horor, ‘Snowball’ wears its B Movie influences proudly on its sleeves. Resembling a cross between port manteau films like ‘Asylum’ and Christopher Pike holiday themed horrors, a seemingly innocent accident -an abandoned snow plough-results in a bunch of strangers swapping tales whilst they wait for an encroaching snow storm to pass.

The danger within, and without, the group is really well expressed, the sense of crushing claustrophobia and a lurking supernatural presence is so well established that you can see the frozen expressions of fear on the stranded traveler’s faces.

The shared stories reveal an unknown connection between them all, and as someone who has to often book friends and acquaintances in, months in advance just to meet for coffee, I had absolutely no trouble believing that an overworldly force would need to be involved to gather all these people in one place!

Old sins cast long shadows and as you get to know each other the characters, this sense of creeping isolation and need to bond with other humans could-and does-prove to be the undoing of several of those we are introduced to.I am trying to be super careful to avoid spoilers here, I was in no hurry to guess the connection behind this nightmare journey and just enjoyed the ride.

The narrative is told in the third person so you have a sense of remotely watching the events of Christmas Eve unfold, and almost kinship with the thing which has conspired to trap Toby, Tucker,Mason and Joy, Graham and Clark,Lewis,Verner and Francine, Dean, Kirk and Sonya,Shelby, Luke and Macey. One by one they realise that Verner and Francine’s RV is big enough and well equipped enough to hold them all safely until they can reach the outside world.

At least they shouls be safe there, until the oncoming snowstorm passess. The operative word here is ‘should’.

The tension mounts to murderous levels as fear creates a situation which none of them can control. Whether any of them will survive to see Christmas morning is up to whatever lurks in the coming storm….

I found this perfect novel to curl up with on a freezing cold night, wrapped in a blanket with a candle lit. It was just the right amount of scary without being ludicrously over the top, gory without being gratuitous. Each short, sharp chapter, hits like an icicle down the back of your neck, allowing snapshots of each character before moving you on to the next, increasing the sense of danger that you feel, knowing not all of those trapped will get out alive…

A naked man, running in the snow, a snowman unlike any you have seen a child build, a bell ringing, the sound of a bugle, a familiar figure dressed in red and black, dis-orientation due to the cold, ice and snow all combine to create a sense of palpable tension that builds to a crescendo of secrets spilled, lies revealed and lives curtailed.

I genuinely really enjoyed ‘Snowball’, it was an immersive, enjoyable story that gave me goosebumps and I look forward to reading what Gregory writes next!

About the author…

Gregory Bastianelli , a New Hampshire native, graduated from the University of New Hampshire where he studied writing under instructors Mark Smith, Thomas Williams and Theodore Weesner.
He worked for nearly two decades at a small daily newspaper where the highlights of his career were interviewing shock rocker Alice Cooper and B-movie icon Bruce Campbell.

He is the author of the novels, ”Jokers Club”. ”Loonies” and recently  released “Snowball.”

His pulp horror novella “Lair of the Mole People” appears in the anthology “‘Mystery Men (and Women)Volume 2’

He lives in New Hampshire.

Links-https://www.gregorybastianelli.com/

Twitter @gregorybastiane @flametreepress @annecater