Dark Roads

Dark Roads by Chevy Stevens is a very highly recommended psychological thriller.

The Cold Creek Highway is an isolated stretch of road through British Columbia that is known as a place where young women go missing. It is said the women were all victims of a serial killer, although no one has ever been charged in any of the cases. Cold Creek is a small town along the highway. Hailey McBride, 17, has grown up there with her father who taught her how to survive and live off the land. Her father was recently killed in a car accident and now Hailey is living with her Aunt Lana and her husband, Police Sargent Vaughn. Vaughn is known as "The Iceman" and roundly disliked by the local teens. Vaughn is more than just dislikeable, he is an show more authoritarian, controlling man who is watching Hailey constantly. Once she finds out what he is keeping hidden in the back shed, his office, she knows that she needs to leave, hide in a secluded location, and use her survival skills until she turns eighteen and can escape him. She hopes she will be assumed to be another victim of the highway killer

The novel is divided up into three parts. The first is focused on Hailey, while the second is the experiences of Beth Chevalier a year later. Beth arrives in Cold Creek to attend the annual memorial service for the highway victims after her sister Amber was recently found dead by the highway. She is grieving, unable to continue on with her previous life, estranged from her parents, and living in Cold Creek trying to understand what happened to her sister. She takes a job at the diner where Amber worked and meets the locals.

Stevens brings her incredible talent and ability to write an unputdownable thriller to Dark Roads. The tension and sense of menace is palpable. First you have a highway where women have been disappearing for years. Next you have Vaughn who is a creepy, dictatorial despot who will make your skin crawl. Throughout the novel there is an undercurrent of impending doom that keeps intensifying, spreading, and growing. Once you start reading it is hard to set it down. The pacing is perfect. When the tension becomes too much, Stevens provides a respite before ratcheting up the suspense again.

The characters are all finely drawn and feel and react like real people- except Vaughn who just seems evil all the time. The narrative is both character driven and a psychological thriller. Part way through the story the plot slightly strays off into more of a character driven coming-of-age story, but quickly returns to the tense survival story. The ending is twisty, adrenaline-filled, and perfect. I have loved every novel Chevy Stevens has written and this is no exception. Oh, and there is a dog named Wolf.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of St. Martin's Publishing Group
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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4144665428 show less

As a huge Chevy Stevens fan, I can safely say that Dark Roads is one of her best novels to date. Its basis in the real-life murder mysteries within a section of highway in British Columbia gives the story an added layer of legitimacy. Dark, disturbing, and more visceral than her previous novels, Ms. Stevens keeps you guessing until the very end. The characters’ pain is all too real, as is their frustration regarding those who are abusing their power. In part an ode to those who lost their lives on that deadly highway and in part a timely #metoo story, I believe Dark Roads solidifies Ms. Stevens’ ability to write stellar thrillers.

Holy cow! I am so glad I picked up this dark thriller. It will fill you full of terror and anger as you follow two young women--strangers tied to a murder victim--who track down the predator who is terrorizing a lone highway in Canada.

Heather McBride is a free spirit who has lost her beloved father. Now forced to live with her aunt and her creepy, bully cop uncle, her life is filled with dread as she avoids a controlling sleazebag who is bent on destroying her and her best friend.

Beth Chevalier is in the town her sister was murdered trying to find out the truth. What she finds is a string of lies, coverups, and danger that puts a target on her back.

I love the fact that there are two women heroines in this book. Heather is tough and very show more self-sufficient as she plans her disappearance to flush out the person she thinks is behind the killings at Cold Creek. After finding another victim (who is a love interest) dead along the highway, she ups her game to get justice. Beth is a law student who is out of her league in Cold Creek as she arrives broke and homeless. Determined to find out why they haven't found her sister's killer in over a year, she starts investigating the murder herself only to put herself in danger and find she has a suspect, but she can't prove it. The connection between Heather and Beth is hostile at first, but they look out for each other. Beth keeps Heather's secret and Heather protects Beth more than once from her recklessness. I like Heather's grit and savviness as she lives off the land with her beloved pet dog, Wolf. However, as Beth points out to her, Heather is holding her best friend, Jonny, back by his loyalty to keeping her secret and keeping her safe. Beth is a drunk and an addict and stupidly getting drunk alone at night with a predator hanging around is just plain idiotic. She has baggage with high expectations from her religious parents and is lost without her only sibling who died a gruesome death. Both Heather and Beth grow from their experiences and come together in an extremely thrilling climax full of twists and turns where justice is finally served.

Pick up this book! It's a compelling and captivating read about allegiance, determination, and vengeance for victims who cannot tell their own stories.

Thank you to Ms. Stevens for giving me the opportunity to read this book with no expectation of a positive review. show less

Author Chevy Stevens says that as a general rule, she tries not to be influenced by actual events, preferring to craft stories from her own imagination. But Dark Roads is an exception and proved to be the most difficult book for her to write thus far. The story was inspired by a series of crimes Stevens found so "disturbing" that the events lingered in her mind for years. Situated in Northern British Columbia, the Highway of Tears is where "women have been murdered or gone missing since the 1970s." While growing up in the area, the road served as a reminder to Stevens of the danger inherent in traveling alone in a remote location and a deterrent to hitchhiking. Most of the crimes remain unsolved. For Stevens, "the image of a desolate show more road haunted by the lost souls of women, searching for answers to their deaths, stuck with me."

As a show of respect to the victims, their families, and the law enforcement personnel still working to bring their kidnappers and murderers to justice, Stevens concocted the fictional town of Cold Creek. Near the Cold Creek Highway is a campground adjacent to a lake, surrounded by a dense and mountainous forest. Her characters and the events depicted in Dark Roads are all products of her imagination, as well. However, as with the Highway of Tears, Stevens made more than half of the young women who have disappeared along the five-hundred-mile, expansive Cold Creek Highway First Nations women in recognition of the fact that "Indigenous women experience a disproportionately higher rate of violence and homicide than the average woman in Canada." Along the highway outside the small town of Cold Creek a billboard displays the names and photos of the victims, as well as a stern warning to women not to hitchhike. Some people think Cold Creek is haunted. It is undeniably "the last real stop for gas and provisions before taking your chances on the dark road ahead. It is also the last place several women had been seen."

The story opens in June 2018 with Hailey McBride mourning her beloved father who was killed in a single vehicle crash. She now must live with her aunt Lana, her cousin, six-year-old Cash, and Lana's boorish husband, Erick Vaughn, a local police sergeant. Hailey's father taught her all about nature: hunting, fishing, food preparation, and survival in keeping with First Nations ways. He served as a wilderness guide for many years, and was well-known and respected in the community. In a compelling first-person narrative, Hailey laments, "He'd outsmarted cougars, bull moose, and grizzlies, and once nearly froze to death in a snowstorm, but survived it all, only to die on a hairpin curve."

Vaughn watches Hailey's every move and insists that she must spend the summer babysitting Cash when what she really wants to do is get a part-time job working at the local diner. He warns her that she cannot participate in any parties or make any trips to the lake unless she is accompanied by Lana or Vaughn, and if she disobeys him, he will confiscate her mountain bike which is her only means of transportation. Vaughn is convinced that Hailey's best friend, Jonny, is responsible for a string of recent thefts of dirt bike parts. Jonny is a talented biker who performs repairs and has the chance to compete professionally.

Hailey quickly realizes that Vaughn is a man with dark secrets, engaged in activities that he would not want Lana or anyone to know about. But when she investigates and discovers what he has been doing -- without her knowledge or consent -- she is revolted, outraged, and frightened because Vaughn wields power in Cold Creek. Worse, he skillfully thwarts her efforts to bring his conduct to light. Despondent, she cannot bring herself to continue living in the same house with him, especially after he sullies the "best thing in my life, the truest thing" and threatens Jonny's future. She convinces Jonny to help her hide deep in the forest. "I had to stay off the grid. Where no one would ever find me. I would live in the woods until I was of age. . . . The mountain would protect me. Dad had been preparing me since I was little."

And, in fact, Hailey feels the darkness that has shrouded her begin to lift as she makes a home for herself in the forest. A stray dog she names Wolf becomes her companion, and she secretly communicates with Jonny. "I hadn't realized how trapped I'd felt in town, the noises, the people, everyone's obsession with social media." Alone in the woods, Hailey develops a sense of belonging, although she misses Jonny and Amber, the alluring waitress at the diner she was just getting to know when she found it necessary to leave. Stevens credibly portrays the means Hailey employs to survive and how she escapes danger more than once.

But tragedy strikes and Hailey again sustains an unimaginable loss. She is convinced that Vaughn abducted and murdered at least one prior Cold Creek Highway victim, and when Amber becomes the latest young woman to lose her life, Hailey is devastated and determined to see that Vaughn is punished for his crimes. But how, given that Hailey herself is believed to be one of the victims?

Amber was on her way to a music festival in the Yukon when she stopped for gas in Cold Creek and ended up staying. She spoke of Hailey to her sister, Beth, asking for prayers that Hailey is found safe. She tells Beth that she hates it in Cold Creek and might move on during their last conversation. Amber had no interest in returning to the family home where the girls' parents insisted that they attend church and refused to accept Amber's life choices. Beth has just begun an internship with a law firm and is planning to start law school in the fall when Amber's murder completely derails her life plan. She loses her job and her apartment, and makes her way to Cold Creek in search of answers. She winds up working as a waitress at the same diner where Amber was employed by the owner, Mason. She is taking pills and drinking too much, and has not told her parents the truth about her circumstances. Employing a third-person narrative, Stevens compassionately conveys Beth's struggle to find answers about what really happened to the sister who "had been her voice. Maybe that was why she had felt so weightless since she'd died. Unanchored. Lost." She ends up sleeping in her car at the campground by the lake and getting involved with Jonny, but she isn't prepared for what she eventually experiences in Cold Creek.

Dark Roads is full of surprising plot twists and revelations. The fast-paced story is engrossing and Stevens has crafted sympathetic characters, especially Beth who, unlike Hailey, is not equipped to function in the forest. Despite her previous career ambitions, she is not particularly adept at investigating Amber's death, either. She finds herself in extreme danger once Stevens reveals the identity of Amber's killer.

As the story screeches toward the revelation of the truth, Stevens accelerates its pace. She injects pulse-pounding confrontations and shocking developments as Hailey and Beth realize that they must work together in order to stay alive. Stevens' writing is lush and atmospheric, with the dark, dank forest serving as an inanimate but critical character in the story. Each of her characters is fully imagined and she eloquently illustrates the ways in which their relationships have caused them pain and loss leading to their present predicaments.

Equally engaging is their journey to discovering their own resilience and determination, refusing to surrender to the impact their sorrowful experiences have had upon them. Both Hailey and Beth must face their feelings in order to move forward with their lives. Hailey prefers to evade her emotions, attempting to avoid detailing everything that she has endured in order to see justice served, observing that "talking meant feelings." She would rather simply move on. Beth recognizes that she must tell the full truth in order to find peace and create a meaningful life for herself.

Dark Roads is a tautly constructed, believable, and cleverly named tale. Both Hailey and Beth travel very dark roads -- literally in and around the little town of Cold Creek, as well as figuratively as they navigate the emotional toll of their respective experiences. Stevens supplies a satisfying conclusion to her hauntingly entertaining thriller.

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book. show less

I was very behind on reviews this year and I promise I will not say that next year but that is not important. I decided that since I was not going to make it by the deadline for this review that I would buy the audiobook and I am so glad I did. A story that tugs at the depths of your soul. I think I only paused this book long enough to eat and use the restroom it is that good. Characters that become so alive you cry with them, get angry for them, and want them to prevail. Twist and turns you never see coming, inhaling the book so fast, but wanting it to last much longer than it ever does because you can’t put it down. A Prologue and Epilogue that sent chills through my body I loved this very much and will be picking up more books by show more this author very soon. show less

Wow! This thriller is so fast paced and suspenseful, I had to remind myself to breathe! The story, so masterfully written and twisted, had me reading non-stop into the wee hours of the night.
The well thought out plot veins in many directions - the history of the town, the missing girls, the town residents, corruption - then comes back around for a stunning reveal! When I reached the end of the book, it took several minutes for me to process what I had read.
I don't want to spoil the story with a book summary review. But I will say there are parts so horrifying that the author noted "story may trigger disturbing memories in victims of crime" and provided a counseling referral.
This heart pounding, adrenaline inducing dark thriller is the show more perfect read for psychological crime fans.
*Thank you St. Martin's Press, NetGalley, and Chevy Stevens for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my honest review. show less

*I received this from NetGalley as an ARC.

I haven't read a Chevy Steven's book before. I had zero expectations going in to the story for anything. I might have to pick up a couple others from the author.

This book is set in a remote small town along a highway notorious for disappearances of women. A good portion of them tribal. While the book is fictional, that tribal women are victimized at an alarming rate is not. I like it when fiction can bring a slight awareness or knowledge to a fact. Back to the fiction, the story follows 2 women. Young Hailey who has just lost her father and now is contemplating running away from her aunt's. Then Beth who came to town for the memorials for those victims of the Cold Creek Highway killer. show more Including her own sister. Beth starts following in her sister's footsteps and tries to find her killer. Putting herself in danger.
The story weaves in a heightened sense of suspense and desperation. Hailey puts herself from fire to frying pan and you're stuck watching it (reading it) all unfold while yelling either verbally or mentally at the pages.
The author enjoys playing with you as you're left wondering if character(s) are okay, or will another be stumbling upon them or later you'll be informed by the police characters that they are not okay. Or will they be a ghost narrator?
Set aside some time for this one, you might find yourself like me up at 2 am trying to peer around the corner of the story telling yourself that you'll just finish another chapter and go to sleep. You promise.
Okay one more then sleep. Pinky promise. show less