The Alpine Retreat, a review by Shelley

🏔️🏔️1/2
The Alpine Retreat
Sarah Goodwin

Publication Date: January 15th, 2026
Avon Books UK | Avon
336 Pages
Amazon | Goodreads | Bookshop.org

Genre: General Fiction | Mystery & Thrillers | Sports

I have heard of this author but have never read her before. Her books seem to have high ratings and plenty of good reviews, so I thought I’d give this one a try. It’s about a luxury wellness retreat in the Swiss Alps that turns into survival of the fittest. The retreat was designed as an exclusive one for celebrities and influencers. It starts to feel like a prison when the guests’ technology is taken away and an avalanche traps them. With a broken ski lift and wildlife dangers outside, the group starts to show their basic instincts in a not very nice way. Then one of the guests vanishes, and the remaining ones realize this isn’t much of a sanctuary and maybe one of them is a threat.

I really wanted to like this locked-room thriller, but I have an issue with the technology being taken away and these social media addicts going along with it. I am not addicted to my phone as some people are, but I would never give it to someone else to hold onto, ever. If I am going to be away, I want people to be able to get a hold of me in case of an emergency. I also want to be able to get in touch with people in case I need them.

I loved the basic premise and the isolated alpine winter setting. Goodwin does a magnificent job setting up the atmosphere. The plot itself is pretty basic, and your conventional thriller tropes prevail. The characters are all insufferable, self-absorbed, famous people, and I was hoping they’d all be put to rest as they offered little to no depth, so I wasn’t invested in what happened to them.

The book is fast-paced but very, very repetitive, and the whodunit and why were predictable. There is tension, and the author did a good job building it up, but the reveal and conclusion were both very formulaic. Overall, this was just an okay read with good pacing that delivers the atmosphere and tension well. It was a halfway decent way to spend a couple of weekend afternoons, but it was lacking any originality to make it truly memorable.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.