Dark Roads - Chevy Stevens

Thriller/Mystery

Rating: 7.5/10

“No one ever wakes up thinking, I’m going to die on a dark road tonight, but that’s the thing, we don’t always know what awaits us.”

This is just a snippet from the chilling prologue, narrated by an as yet unidentified young woman, one of many who have lost their lives along a dark, desolate stretch of highway where a killer, or killers, have gone undetected for decades. If you are Canadian, you might see a relationship to the stories of the Highway of Tears, where scores of Indigenous women and girls have gone missing. Some found murdered, all awaiting justice, the prospect of which seems distant and faint.

Back after a lengthy hiatus, this masterful storyteller dispenses her usual complex character driven thriller.  Imbuing the premise with such depth and nuance that the reader will be hard pressed to take their eye off the page.

Hailey is grieving the loss of her father and highly suspicious of her aunt’s controlling cop husband.  When things come to a head as he attempts to control her, she heads into her beloved woods in the hopes of spurring on justice.  Beth, torturing herself over her sister’s murder, has come to the town where it all happened, and quickly ends up with a target on her back.

The missing, the dead, the culpable and those left behind all explode onto the page in this taut and menacing thriller.

P.S.  There is a dog in this book that you will fall in love with, he has so much personality!!

Book Pairing(s): Still Missing by Chevy Stevens, These Women by Ivy Pochada, Little Deaths by Emma Flint