Embrace Winter with ‘The Snow Child’: A Heartfelt Review

Challenge #1: Read a book set in winter.

In the south, at least in the area where I live, winter snow turns into a holiday. Schools are out. Most businesses are closed. Everyone is strongly encouraged to stay off the roads. The possibilities for the day are endless. Making snow angels and having snowball fights, curling up underneath a warm blanket and eating your body weight in snow cream, it’s magical.

It really makes three inches seem like a lot.

For the first reading challenge of 2026, I decided to read a book that truly felt like winter. Not just with a significant increase in snowfall, but that gave you a sense of real cold.

“It was beautiful, Mabel knew, but it was a beauty that ripped you open and scoured you clean so that you were left helpless and exposed, if you lived at all”.

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey captures that feeling and invokes so many more.

There is a popular Russian folktale, first put into print in 1869, about a childless couple who builds a daughter out of snow. She comes to life. The couple have the child they have always dreamed of, but one day she goes to play with friends. Her friends build a small fire, and they all take turns jumping over it. Then it’s the Snow Maiden’s turn. She leaps over the fire, but the heat causes her to evaporate. And she is gone.

This is the tale this book is based on. It follows a couple, Mabel and Jack, who are building their home in the Alaskan wilderness in the 1920’s.

I don’t want to say too much about this book besides that it is so beautifully written. There are moments in the book where you feel cold. You feel the chill of the Alaskan winter. You feel the ache in your limbs and in your heart. This book is definitely a tearjerker. But it isn’t only that. There are these great moments of humor scattered throughout.

“About your harebrained plan to ditch us? Oh, he told me all right. We finally get some interesting friends and you think we’re going to let you go without a fight.”

I laughed so hard at that line. The struggle of finding and keeping couple friends is so much harder than I ever anticipated.

The way this book explores love and grief is one of the most beautiful explorations of those themes that I think I’ve ever read. It made me feel deeply. Feel things about my own life and relationships and about my future. It makes me excited to tackle the New Year with a renewed focus and a desire to prioritize truly living instead of just surviving.

Have you read The Snow Child? Or is there another book that you think captures that winter feeling? Let me know.

And as always, click the link below to check out the book on Amazon, or head on over to your local indie bookstore or library.