Shiver

The novel alternates between two timelines: a present-day reunion weekend on a remote French glacier and flashbacks to the winter, ten years earlier, when competitive snowboarders trained at the same resort and one of them vanished.

Milla, a 33-year-old former freestyle snowboarder, arrives at Le Rocher, a small French Alpine ski resort, for what she believes is a reunion organized by Curtis Sparks, a former British half-pipe champion whose sister Saskia Sparks disappeared ten years ago and has recently been declared legally dead. Four others arrive: Curtis himself; Brent Bakshi, a once-rising snowboard star; Dale Hahn, another former rider; and Dale's wife, Heather, a former bartender turned sports agent. They ride a cable car and bubble lift to the Panorama building, a remote lodge on the Diable glacier and the only structure for miles.

Confusion arises when the group compares invitations. Milla's came from "C," while the others received theirs from "M." No one admits to organizing the weekend. The building is deserted, though warm food sits on the stove. Upstairs, a sign instructs them to leave their phones in a basket, and an Icebreaker game has been set up with a wooden box for posting secrets. When Heather reads the cards aloud, they come from a hidden compartment with a false bottom, pre-loaded with disturbing messages: "I slept with Brent," "I slept with Saskia," "I know where Saskia is," and "I killed Saskia."

Flashback chapters reveal the history behind these tensions. Ten years earlier, 23-year-old Milla arrived at Le Rocher determined to improve her half-pipe ranking and fell into a fierce rivalry with Saskia, a ruthless competitor who sabotaged Milla's performance by secretly feeding her vodka at a party. Over the months, Milla began a casual relationship with Brent, developed an unspoken attraction to Curtis, and formed a volatile bond with Saskia, whose manipulations grew dangerous. Saskia kicked Milla's snowboard into a crevasse, caused another rider to crash by dropping debris into the half-pipe, and nearly suffocated Milla during an avalanche rescue drill. Curtis warned Milla to watch her back yet privately coached her riding. Meanwhile, Odette Gaulin, an X Games medalist and secretly Saskia's girlfriend, trained alongside them.

In the present, the situation deteriorates. Phones are stolen, Dale smashes security cameras, laptops vanish, and the bubble lift shuts down. They are stranded. That night, Curtis discovers a lock of white-blond hair under his pillow, the exact shade of Saskia's. He tells Milla he has smelled Saskia's perfume in the building and cites unexplained credit card transactions on Saskia's account, seeming more worried than relieved.

The next day, the group searches for a way down but finds the lift controls disabled and the radio removed. At a tow lift shack, a note reads "THE GAME CONTINUES," the phrase Milla and Saskia once used as a declaration of rivalry. Milla overhears Dale and Heather arguing about having stolen Saskia's credit card. In Curtis's dorm, she finds Saskia's lift pass on his clothes; Curtis insists it was planted, and Milla pockets it. On the glacier, Milla badly injures her knee. Heather disappears while the others are away, and Milla finds her locked in a changing room, claiming she saw someone in the corridor. Milla catches a glimpse of white-blond hair rounding a corner. Brent is found dazed at the bottom of the stairs. Dale goes outside to search and does not return. The power fails, "GUILTY" appears in lipstick on Heather's mirror, and the kitchen knives and an antique ice axe vanish.

Flashbacks reveal the catastrophic night before the British Championships. A brawl at Glow Bar left Curtis with a shoulder injury ending his competition. Afterward, Milla took Saskia home to tire her out before the contest, and their rivalry escalated into a sexual encounter. The next morning, Brent arrived and discovered them together. After he left, Milla crushed her own prescription sleeping tablets into Saskia's coffee. On competition day, Saskia never appeared at the half-pipe. During the women's final, Milla distracted Odette just before her run, and Odette suffered a catastrophic fall, sustaining a severe spinal injury.

During the second night, confessions accumulate. Heather admits she slept with Brent ten years ago as revenge after Saskia insinuated that Dale had slept with Saskia. She reveals she was blackmailed into attending the reunion. Heather discovers the building's control room, which contains surveillance monitors, a mattress, and a mini-fridge, confirming someone has been living there. Curtis confesses to Milla that he organized the reunion after his mother attempted suicide following Saskia's declaration of death. He sent invitations under false names but insists the sinister events are not his doing. Someone hijacked his plan.

Sunday morning, Curtis and Milla find Dale's body 20 meters down in a crevasse, a deep crack in the glacier ice. Polystyrene fragments nearby reveal an artificial snow bridge designed as a trap: Dale was murdered. Heather, overwhelmed with grief, grabs the ice axe and threatens Brent. He guides her outside. From the control room monitors, Milla and Curtis watch as a figure in white directs Heather onto another artificial snow bridge. Heather falls through to her death. The figure turns to reveal flowing white-blond hair.

Brent confesses next. The morning of the Brits, he confronted Saskia outside Milla's apartment. She taunted him; he pushed her, and she cracked her head on the cobblestones. He dragged her unconscious body to her apartment and told Heather to call an ambulance, but Heather refused. When Brent left briefly, he returned to find Heather pressing a cushion over Saskia's face. They stuffed Saskia's body into her snowboard bag and took it to the glacier, but the bag disappeared while they were in the building with Curtis. Curtis confesses his own role: He found the bag near a crevasse and shoved it in as revenge, not knowing his sister's body was inside.

The figure is not Saskia but Odette, who regained the ability to walk after years of rehabilitation, dyed her hair white-blond, and is wearing Saskia's perfume. She holds them at gunpoint with a biathlon rifle, revealing she orchestrated everything. Her brothers work at the resort and helped disable the lifts, install cameras, and plant evidence. Odette loved Saskia and spent years suspecting someone in the group killed her. Finding Saskia's lift pass at her own apartment proved Saskia never went up the mountain. When Curtis contacted the resort about a reunion, Odette's brother Romain alerted her, and she hijacked his plans. She also reveals she killed Julien Marre, staging his death as a car accident because of his harassing graffiti on Saskia's mailbox.

Odette marches the survivors toward the crevasse at gunpoint. Brent breaks away, running up the glacier to draw her fire. Milla hears three shots. Curtis rides his snowboard downhill for help, but Odette detonates an explosive triggering a massive avalanche. Milla attacks Odette from behind with the ice axe, gains the rifle, and tells Odette that Saskia never truly loved her. Shaken, Odette retreats to the cliff edge and leaps into the fog. Her body is not found. Milla uses her avalanche transceiver, a device that emits a locating signal to find people buried in snow, to locate Curtis beneath the slide. She digs him out and performs CPR until he breathes again.

In the epilogue, nine months later, Milla and Curtis live together in Switzerland. Milla checks the news daily, waiting for the glacier to release both Saskia's and Brent's bodies. Curtis told his mother that Saskia died in a training accident, sparing her the truth. Milla carries her own secret: the sleeping tablets she crushed into Saskia's coffee, and she wonders whether an autopsy might detect the drugs if Saskia's body is ever recovered. She watches her two young protégées sabotage each other's equipment, mirroring her and Saskia's rivalry. The novel closes with Milla's thought: "I've won."