Review: Dark Roads by Chevy Stevens (audio)

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press / Macmillan Audio

Published: August 3, 2021

Source: Print: ARC Paperback via Publisher / Audio: ALC via Netgalley

 

Summary:

The acclaimed and beloved author of Still Missing is back with her most breathtaking thriller yet.

The Cold Creek Highway stretches close to five hundred miles through British Columbia’s rugged wilderness to the west coast. Isolated and vast, it has become a prime hunting ground for predators. For decades, young women traveling the road have gone missing. Motorists and hitchhikers, those passing through or living in one of the small towns scattered along the region, have fallen prey time and again. And no killer or abductor who has stalked the highway has ever been brought to justice.

Hailey McBride calls Cold Creek home. Her father taught her to respect nature, how to live and survive off the land, and to never travel the highway alone. Now he’s gone, leaving her a teenage orphan in the care of her aunt whose police officer husband uses his badge as a means to bully and control Hailey. Overwhelmed by grief and forbidden to work, socialize, or date, Hailey vanishes into the mountainous terrain, hoping everyone will believe she’s left town. Rumors spread that she was taken by the highway killer—who’s claimed another victim over the summer.

One year later, Beth Chevalier arrives in Cold Creek, where her sister Amber lived—and where she was murdered. Estranged from her parents and seeking closure, Beth takes a waitressing job at the local diner, just as Amber did, desperate to understand what happened to her and why. But Beth’s search for answers puts a target on her back—and threatens to reveal the truth behind Hailey’s disappearance…

 

My thoughts:

Chevy Stevens is one of my must-read authors…whenever she has a book coming out, I add it to the list of books I know I am going to be reading at some point. I just love her books and this one was no exception. They are equal blends of emotional and chilling, suspenseful and at times disturbing reads, and keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

This story immediately grabbed me and never once let go. It plays on just about every emotion and I was completely engaged start to finish. As disturbing and gritty as this one gets, I was all in and I loved that I for sure knew where who it was the entire time only to be completely blindsided when it was finally revealed!

Inspired by the true story of The Highway of Tears Murders in Canada where girls have gone missing for years, this book is so haunting and riveting.  The characters have such depth and really come alive on the pages. It was quite easy to fall in love with and root for many of them, though definitely not all of them – I’m talking about you, Vaughn! They were all realistic and flawed, making them relatable in many ways.

This book is twisty and dark, and the setting is incredibly atmospheric, giving off major eerie, and at times spooky, vibes, which lends to the overall tension of the story. If you like deliciously creepy, suspenseful reads, this is definitely one to pick up!

 

Audio thoughts: 

I love listening to Chevy Stevens’ books – they engage you right from the start and keep you hooked all the way through. The narrators in this book, Angela Dawe, Brittany Pressley, and Isabella Star LaBlanc were great. They all worked together to bring this book to life, voicing their parts effectively, all infusing just the right amount of emotion and tension into their voices as needed.

And let me tell you – listening to Chevy Stevens’ books on audio is in fact like when you are reading those books with very short chapters…in this case it becomes an instance of  “I’ll just listen for a few more minutes” because you just cannot pull yourself away. I find myself flying through her books in the course of a day because I simply cannot walk away – I just become so absorbed in them and just need to keep listening!