Review: Ski Weekend

by Rektok Ross

Rating: ⭐2/5⭐

Six teens, one dog, a ski trip gone wrong . . .

Sam is dreading senior ski weekend and having to watch after her brother and his best friend, Gavin, to make sure they don’t do anything stupid. Again. Gavin may be gorgeous, but he and Sam have never gotten along. Now they’re crammed into an SUV with three other classmates and Gavin’s dog, heading on a road trip that can’t go by fast enough.

Then their SUV crashes into a snowbank, and Sam and her friends find themselves stranded in the mountains with cell phone coverage long gone and temperatures dropping. When the group gets sick of waiting for rescue, they venture outside to find help—only to have a wilderness accident leave Sam’s brother with a smashed leg and, soon, a raging fever. While the hours turn to days, Sam’s brother gets sicker and sicker, and their food and supplies dwindle until there isn’t enough for everyone. As the winter elements begin to claim members of the group one by one, Sam vows to keep her brother alive.

No matter what.

Filled with twists, secrets, and life-changing moments, Ski Weekend is a snow-packed survival thriller featuring a diverse cast of teens that will appeal to fans of One of Us is Lying and I Am Still Alive.

I think for a survival thriller, tone-wise this book missed the mark. The mood was all wrong.

Young Adult stories can be dark and serious, while staying true to the genre and being suitable for teenagers, but instead, here we got a group of six high school seniors discussing movies, school, crushes and religion like they were sitting around, chilling in a cozy coffee shop instead of stranded in a mountain (!), in the middle of nowhere (!), in the dead of winter(!), during a snow storm(!!!).

For a vast majority of the book they seemed unconcerned with the dire situation they were in. There was a disconnect between what was going on and their overall responses. It killed all feeling of danger and the one essential factor every good thriller should have: the constant sense of dread.

I believe, cast-wise, better choices could have been made, too. The book description explicitly talks about the set of characters being diverse, but of our six protagonists, four (Sam, Stuart, Gavin and Britney) were, as far as I could tell, Caucasian; one (Lily) was pretty stereotypically Asian and the last one (Hunter) was an African American modern day cowboy. Honestly, if ethnicities hadn’t been specified I’d have assumed they were all upper-middle class white kids. They all came across as very entitled and shallow most of the book. Sam in particular, the narrator, was very self-centered and judgmental. I thought her quite unlikable.

An aspect I found odd was how the fact that Sam was vegetarian kept being brought up in the story. She kept harping on about how “meat is murder” and “meat is disgusting” and it all felt very preachy. I have no way to know this, but maybe the author herself is vegetarian? That was the vibe I got. I couldn’t care less about people’s dietary choices. You do you. Eat whatever the heck you want. But don’t come demonize the consumption of meat.

The topic of racism was broached too. When you’re trapped in a mountain with your friends, why would skin color be relevant? Why start discussing the whitewashing of history and how the movie industry can be quite racist (however much of a real issue this is)? How is that relevant to the plot? It felt very unrelated and out of place.

At the same time, there were quite a few misogynistic comments and behaviors that went completely unaddressed. Britney, the stereotypically popular, pretty girl, who was also a cheerleader ~~because apparently she had to be as cliche as possible~~ was constantly being dismissed and judged by the other two female characters as vapid, stupid and promiscuous. Sam was constantly belittling her in her internal monologues and rambling about Britney’s supposed anorexia. Then there were comments from the boys like “The slut is always a chick […] guys can’t be the slut in horror movies” and how girls are weaker and less equipped in survival situations (just based on their gender). Hunter and Gavin were even verbally idolized by the Stuart for being sexually active shortly after Sam internally called into question Britney’s virginity just because of her own prejudices: “She said she was still a virgin […] but you never know”. There was a lot of internalized misogyny that just didn’t sit well with me.

The other thing I felt was an issue was the inconsistency in the character’s behaviors and actions, and this ties back to the whole “book tone” thing. They were fighting and then laughing until they couldn’t breathe. They were motivated and in high spirits and the very next paragraph defeatism and gloom had taken over. It became impossible for me to gauge what was going on and I didn’t know how the characters were truly feeling. And thus, I couldn’t empathize with them.

I was detached all throughout this book because the tonal cues were constantly contradicting themselves. It made the reading experience messy, and as a reader I felt like I couldn’t quite find my footing. Tone should set the mood and give the reader the necessary clues to make them feel what the author intended them to feel. I would not be able to tell you what that was.