Nathan Okada, my unreliable narrator, is a struggling writer who gets the chance to collaborate with his literary idol, young-adult novelist T.P. Crane. Having revived his iconic teen horror series, Shadow Lane, the author secretly enlists Nathan to help him complete the final installment. As a die-hard fan of Crane’s work, Nathan gladly accepts the job, seeing it as a welcome distraction from a devastating breakup with his boyfriend…and being the sole survivor of a mass murder one year ago.

When Nathan travels to Crane’s remote lakeside lodge, he finds that the author is short-tempered and burned by a publishing industry that ignored him for the past decade. And while Nathan gets to work on the novel and learns more about the man behind the paperbacks he collected as a teen, he finds that their getaway isn’t so secluded. Several social media influencers have rented a nearby house on the lake, and Nathan sees it as an opportunity for inspiration, getting acquainted with the group and finding fodder to fill his chapters.

Soon, a massive blizzard rolls in, isolating everyone from the outside world and triggering Nathan to relive and reconcile with events from his past. The storm also has a way of bringing out people’s dark sides, and Nathan learns that everyone on the lake has secrets to hide, one of which leads to the discovery of a dead body, brutally stabbed in the snow – and that’s just the first one. But the biggest secret of all may come from T.P. Crane himself, because the more Nathan digs into the author’s mysterious past (a dead wife and a dead mistress?), the closer he gets to a truth scarier than fiction.