Along an isolated highway where women have going missing or have been found dead for decades, sits the small town of Cold Creek. After the sudden death of her father, Hailey moves in with her aunt and uncle - a local police sergeant known as the Iceman for his cold demeanor and icy stare. When his oppressive rules and a shocking discovery force her to flee into the woods and pretend she’s missing. Then her girlfriend Amber is murdered along the highway, and Amber’s sister shows up, grief-stricken and looking for answers. The lives of these young women collide in a way that will shake this small town to its core.

This one was hard to rate. I think it is more like 3.5 stars, which is a shame because it had some really great potential.

The set-up is good. An isolated-ish Canadian town where young woman routinely wind up missing or dead along the highway, and a group of young people who get caught up in that story in various ways. And the mystery in this book is good, in that there are some twists and turns as the group investigates things and begins to uncover the secrets that the town is trying to keep buried. I’ll admit I didn’t see that ending coming and I thought it was pretty clever the way things tied together.

But the major annoying part of the book is that the story seemed to revolve around a group of teenagers who made terrible, terrible decisions in a town of adults who were just too dumb to care. Like, Beth lives out of her car and at a campsite and no one around her, in this town “that care of their own” says anything? She ends up in the hospital twice, and everyone’s just like, “Cool.” All of this stuff happens to Hailey in the first half of the book, but Hailey aunt, the one adult who shows potential is too blinded by love to care? OK.

Also, while I liked the nuances in Beth and Jonny’s characters, Hailey was pretty much just a brat. Or, at least, we didn’t get to see her be redeemed in the end.

So yeah, there was stuff I liked, and stuff I didn’t. I was really intrigued by the storyline and setting, but some of the characters and their actions left a bad taste in my mouth. I would say read with caution on this one.

3.5 stars rounded up. Good thriller, a bit of a slow burn but kept me interested with a few twists and turns. A little bit bit dark and gritty about the woman who go missing near the Cold Creek Highway. Hailey a local dissapears after her father's death when she's left in the care of her aunt. A year later Beth comes into town trying to get answers to her sister's death. The two cross paths in this dark twisty thriller where one may help to give answers to the other.

This was my first Chevy Stevens book! Definitely won’t be my last! I liked this one but i feel like there weren’t many surprised in it. I would have preferred more of a twist to it. I also wasn’t hugely fond of the perspective shift starting in part two. I didn’t hate it tho! Just didn’t flow right away. My issue mainly is the predictably but i enjoyed the characters. And i loved wolf! Probably my favorite character. I loved the dark and dankness of the book. There is some graphic scenes which I’m into! Overall i really enjoyed it but i just would have liked a little more.

I love a book when I am wrong about who I think is the killer. This was a well written, fast paced, page turner that I didn’t want to put down.

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the chance to read Dark Roads by Chevy Stevens. Ever since reading Still missing, Chevy has been on my TBR list and the fact that the plot has more than a hint of realism - especially here in Canada I was eager to read Dark roads. However, the slow build at the beginning of the book and the plot dragged in the middle of book, made it less than thrilling. Luckily the solid ending made it an okay read on your summer holiday. 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. This is the story of three girls: Hailey, Amber and Beth. Review edited to fix grammatical errors.

This book was dark. There were many things that made my skin crawl. The story had good pacing and was a page turner. The characters were teenagers and young adults and there was some young adult romance stuff that didn't really fit with the tone of the novel. A good read!

5 stars

I basically read this from beginning to end without much pause because I just HAD to know what was going to happen. This was my first book by this author, and I have no idea if it is typical of her style, but I couldn't put it down. While you had some idea who the perpetrator was, there were still a few surprises, and the tension was high throughout the book. The book is told from Beth and Hailey's point of view, but there is never any confusion about whose story you're following, probably because of the way it's structured. Part one is told from Hailey's point of view, which covers the first third of the book. Beth's perspective takes over in part two and covers the second third of the book. I appreciated this because it really drew me into both of their stories and I had the chance to get to know them and their motivations before we hit the last third of the book when the chapters alternated between the two. While this tale was inspired by the Highway of Tears in Northern British Columbia, where women, many of them indigenous, have been murdered or gone missing since the 70s, this was a fictional tale where the author wanted to bring some attention to the Highway of Tears, and give at least one of the victims some closure.

This was definitely a thriller, but for me, it was about women who were victims deciding to fight back. In this small way, the author was giving a voice to these victims. If you like thrillers with interesting characters, you should definitely give this a try.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Chevy Stevens does it again! She has become an auto buy author for me. This one kept me on the edge of my toes. Thought I had it all figured out and nope I was wrong. It was an emotional ride. I think Chevy Stevens is an underrated author that doesn’t get enough attention. Do yourself a favor and pick this up. You won’t be disappointed!

Thank you to the Publisher and Netgalley for the advanced e-reader copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

My first Chevy Stevens book, it won't be my last. I am primarily a women's fiction reader, not a mystery/thriller reader. Loved this book,. Kept me guessing until the end. Creepy dark roads, woods, and missing/murdered young women. The stuff of nightmares!

Based off the blurb I was expecting something completely different. This story reads like a young adult novel. Don’t get me wrong I love young adult novels, but I was expecting this book to be different. I also figured out the plot fairly on and that was a bust.

I have been struggling to find an attention-grabbing book lately. This one kept me engaged and captivated with a well-written and well-moving story.
This is the type of story where everyone could be the villain and the hero. The kind of story where making predictions about where the plot is heading is futile because it will all change with the turn of a page.
I enjoyed reading the alternating story points of view from each of the girls. But I love that they don’t re-tell the entire story, just key moments before continuing the story.
This made for a great weekend read. It’s perfect for a weekend when the weather won’t let you go out to play because it is a great curl up on the couch book.

For years, the nearly five hundred mile stretch of Cold Creek Highway has been infamous as a place where young women go missing. Drivers, hitch hikers, and more. But their abductor has never been found. Hailey McBride lives in Cold Creek. Her father recently died in a car accident, leaving her to live with her aunt and her controlling police officer husband, Vaughn. Vaughn watches Hailey's every move, bullying and terrorizing her, keeping her from seeing her best friend, Jonny and her new love interest, Amber. Using what her dad taught her about the local land, Hailey plans her escape to the mountains. With Jonny's help, the idea is that everyone will think she was another victim of the highway killer. A year after Hailey disappears, Beth Chevalier arrives in town, desperate for closure after her sister Amber's murder. Beth's life is in shambles after Amber's death, and she starts to look into what happened. But Beth's search puts her in danger--and starts to reveal the truth about what happened to Hailey.

"I had to get out of this house, and this town."

This is a dark and often stressful book. It's told from two perspectives, Hailey and Beth. I was quite attached to Hailey, who is suffering at the hands of Vaughn, the stereotypical power-hungry small-town cop. He embodies the part of the sinister bad guy. Because he seems to control the entire town (no one will even give Hailey a job, since Vaughn doesn't want her to have one), her only choice is to go live in a shack in the mountains and basically let everyone think she's dead. The book shifts from menacing to survival-in-the-woods story and then we flip to Beth's perspective, where she's a struggling wannabe law student who arrives in Cold Creek to figure out who killed her sister (who was Hailey's love interest).

If it seems like a lot and a bit confusing, it is. I liked this book, but it did seem like it had multiple personalities. I found it tense at times (add to the fact that Hailey had a dog in the wilderness--I cannot handle books where something might happen to an animal) and other times a bit slow. Vaughn is our clear bad guy--Hailey even discovers some of his many terrible traits and crimes. But if that's true, then why are we reading? Just to catch him? At times, the book catches us off kilter, guessing and wondering. At other times, it falls a bit flat when the whole premise doesn't really seem to work. Who is our protagonist and what is the end goal?

Overall, this is an often dark and quite atmospheric book. It's creepy and twisty and sometimes heartbreaking. Is it worth reading? Yes. But I'm not sure if it ever lives up to its true potential.

This book was so good, you guys.

The plot reminded me a lot of the Highway of Tears disappearances. Women going missing or found dead, the police never finding the killer or really looking into it as much as they should have. I was so invested in this story. I couldn’t put it down. I just knew I had it all figured out - but I never saw that ending coming. With all the build up and suspense, the reveal was so worth it! And I loved that the ending wasn’t rushed like with many mysteries.

The last one I read by Stevens took me by surprise as well! I’ll definitely be reading more of her backlist. I love when I find an author who can write an unpredictable twist.

Dark Roads is a twisted story. The book is loaded with intriguing characters. I didn’t know how the story would unfold until the very end. I will definitely be reading more books written by Chevy Stevens. I highly recommend.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the review copies of this mystery thriller.

I was intrigued from page one since a ghost/spirit narrates the prologue. Set in rural British Columbia, Canada, the novel was written to draw attention to real unsolved disappearances/murders of First Nation women in the area.

The novel features two main characters, Hailey and Beth, young women who have experienced great loss in their lives. Given their ages, this felt a bit YA at times. I didn't anticipate the 'outdoorsy" lifestyles of the characters, although I should have, given the setting. It was great to have a dog as an important character in the story.

This was my first Chevy Stevens novel but it won’t be the last.

Sweet mother of pearl this book. I started reading it a few days ago but only read 2 chapters before setting it down and moving on to something else. I picked it up again yesterday and had to stop and make myself go to bed last night, with about 20% left. I was completely enthralled, my anxiety was through the roof, and I didn't realize how impactful this story would end up being. I'm ashamed to admit I almost shelved Dark Roads before I ever really gave it a chance, because of the anxiety it was causing me in the first section. I'm so glad I didn't and kept going. But now I have a stress headache. Whew.

There have only been 2 other books recently that have hit me like Dark Roads did, and those are Surrender Your Sons by Adam Sass and What Beauty There Is by Cory Anderson. When I tell you I didn't think I'd survive any of them, I didn't think I'd survive any of them.

I honestly don't even know what to write here. Dark Roads was twisty, disturbing, stressful, anxiety inducing, and held me in its dark clutches. I hated it and I loved it. There were times I found myself skimming, just to get to the next "meaty" part of the story. I was tempted more than once to skip to the end, because my God if this story didn't end the way I needed it to I was going to have words with someone, but I was able to hold myself back. And I'm very glad I did, as the journey Chevy Stevens took me on, along with Hailey, Beth, and the rest of residents of Cold Creek, is one I wouldn't have wanted to miss.

I should've skipped this. I liked the writing & it was a good story but it was too long and there was too many irrelevant details. This is a VERY slow burn mystery. It felt a little disjointed. I pushed through, I should've DNF but I was curious to see what would happen. It was okay, but the blurb makes it sound much more intense than it was.

My Review:⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/ 5 stars

What a haunting thriller! It is a slow burn, but in the most scintillating, purposeful way. You have to get into the mindset of this small town in the middle of nowhere British Columbia where there seems to be a highway killer. It feels desolate and a bit hopeless - you need to imagine it to really understand the plight of the women in Cold Creek. Stevens writes so beautifully that I was completely immersed from page 1. This is a duo POV between Hailey McBride, whose father recently passed and Beth, whose sister was murdered by the highway killer. Their worlds collide and interweave as they have people in common they care about. Hailey feels bullied by her uncle (married to her Aunt Lana), Officer Vaughn and he wants to control every aspect of her life - so Hailey fakes her own death/disappearance to live off the grid in the woods. Everyone thinks she is murdered by the highway killer. Beth, on the other hand, comes to Cold Creek to investigate what happened to her sister and what made her want to move to this place. However, this makes her a target herself. My favorite part of the story is Hailey’s relationship with Wolf - the stray dog she befriends. Every time anything happened I had my fingers crossed that nothing happened to him… nail-biting the whole way through. The ending completely floored me - I didn’t expect it, and I should have seen it coming.

If you love a good, thoroughly well written thriller - this is it! So good!

Thank you to @stmartinspress and @netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review! Out this week.

I think this may well be the best book I have read so far this year. It had everything I look for in a book. Well fleshed out characters, a terrific story, plenty going on ,tension, suspense ,terror and moments that made me reflect and that even brought tears to my eyes. I went through the full range of emotions with this book. I don't think the blurb for this book did it justice, it was so much more than I was expecting. I have read, and enjoyed books by Chevy Stevens before, but for me this was an outstanding book, and definitely her best one so far .If I could give it more than 5 stars I would. I loved it.

I was captivated by Dark Roads by Chevy Stevens, an author I was not familiar with. Set in British Columbia’s rugged wilderness, this well-written, atmospheric thriller is exciting, chilling, heart-pounding, and fascinating! The plot revolves around a ruthless killer of young women along the Cold Creek Highway, and the survival of 17-year-old Hailey, who is living with her aunt, creepy, controlling policeman uncle Vaughn, and their young son. The well-crafted characters are compelling and kept me riveted. I look forward to reading more by Stevens.
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing a digital ARC of Dark Roads in exchange for an honest review.