Book Review | The Crash

The Crash

By Freida McFadden

Sourcebooks, Inc  |  2025  |  384 pages

THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

The nightmare she’s running from is nothing compared to where she’s headed.

Tegan is eight months pregnant, alone, and desperately wants to put her crumbling life in the rearview mirror. So she hits the road, planning to stay with her brother until she can figure out her next move. But she doesn’t realize she’s heading straight into a blizzard.

She never arrives at her destination.

Stranded in rural Maine with a dead car and broken ankle, Tegan worries she’s made a terrible mistake. Then a miracle occurs: she is rescued by a couple who offers her a room in their warm cabin until the snow clears.

But something isn’t right. Tegan believed she was waiting out the storm, but as time ticks by, she comes to realize she is in grave danger. This safe haven isn’t what she thought it was, and staying here may have been her most deadly mistake yet.

And now she must do whatever it takes to save herself—and her unborn child.

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Okay so this was actually my first Freida McFadden books. I love a thriller and I love a psychological thriller too so she definitely seems like an author I’d like and so, I bought a bunch of her books. I started off with The Crash since I love a thriller that is based in the winter.

If you’ve got me reading about a remote thriller in a storm or a blizzard? I am so here for it, I don’t care.

This book definitely gave me a great first impression of McFadden’s books. I really enjoyed this one. Of course, I gave it 4 stars so I had some criticisms which I will get to but overall, I really liked this. It kept me hooked through and through. 

Now, it was fairly repetitive so that was a bit of a con. I didn’t enjoy that each day read fairly similarly. I get it, you can’t really avoid that when it is a kidnapping kind of story. But, it was a bit boring in that aspect however, something I did really like was the dual POV between Tegan and Polly. I feel like having both POV’s helped a lot to break up the story a bit and make it seem less tedious.

The dual POV’s was really cool and it was really helpful into giving an insight into both characters thoughts and the situation as whole since Tegan’s view was wildly different to how Polly was viewing things lmao.

The dual POV’s was actually a shock initially. I was surprised at that since she is, for all intents and purposes, the bad guy in this book and so I was like oh? Okay? For the majority of the book, I’ll be honest, I frickin’ hated Polly. I hated how judgy she was towards Tegan and her stupid, narrow minded views were grating. I didn’t care for how she felt entitled to have a baby more that Tegan purly because she has fertility issues. It may be an unpopular opinion but fertile women don’t owe infertile women anything? Their struggles, whilst deeply unfortunate and sad, are not fertile women’s problem. So yeah, I did feel for Polly at times but tbh, I think the fact that she kept pointing out how much better a mother she would be actually came off more as superiority which did not succeed in garnering my sympathy for her lmao. She was also massively manipulative towards Tegan as well as Hank which obviously makes sense since she is not psychologically sound in the slightest. 

Now, if nothing else I was actually rooting for Hank (besides Tegan obvs) like that man came through at the end and I felt you could really sense his hesitation with getting Tegan help. He was wanting to do the right thing whilst also not setting his wife off which I can understand. She kept threatening him with either going to the police or killing herself. I can understand not wanting to lose your wife. Yes, she is crazy but they are husband and wife. But also, no one would want anything like that on their conscience either.

I did like Hank but OOF, those last few sentences of the book had me SHOOK. I knew the death was certainly not a damn accident but I didn’t expect that that was how things panned out.

Now, the twist of someone close betraying her… I found a bit wishy-washy. I didn’t feel like there had been enough build up to be able to throw that kind of a twist into the story? I don’t know… for me, it felt like a bit of a reach. Simon, I got because we knew he was a fucking douchebag to begin with but the surprise traitor… I felt was a bit lazy. I really didn’t care for it because it just didn’t make enough sense for me. I feel like more hints should have been dropped because it just felt rushed in the end, rather than a clever twist. It felt random. I did however, like that Polly got involved how she did. She was dangerous and bad the whole time but that was slightly redeeming of how she helped Tegan out. 

One thing in particular I really liked was the chapter length in this book? They were super short and doable. I didn’t feel like it took me long at all to read the book as the chapters were only a few pages each and it made it so easy to just keep binge-reading. So, I’m really hoping her other books are like that. They all seem to be the same kind of size and length so fingers crossed she has fairly short chapters in all of her books.

Overall, The Crash was a solid read for me and I really appreciated it being a snow storm based thriller as that is… completely my vibe. I think the next one of Freida McFadden I’ll be reading is either going to be The Inmate or Ward D - love me a hospital/institute based thriller.