3 stars
Not at all what I expected. I do feel there is a audience for this book. It is not for me. Thanks for the ARC of this book.

Because it took quite a while from downloading to reading, I had no recall of what this book was about -- something that often works for keeping an open mind with new-to-me authors. I think I was expecting a novel about Texas but nothing more so it was a surprise to learn this was sort of a mystery -- the kind that was secondary to the rest of the plot until about 40%. Being near retirement age, I found the constant heavy drinking to pass-out-drunk rather annoying by all the twenty-somethings and stupidity dangerous (and it was very much so, especially for the girls). Do they really do this and think it's fun? I guess so because the plot seems built around this activity. Thankfully, the main character finally starts listening to her intuition. Don't want to spoil the ending but this is the kind of book where the reader knows long before the end that there really are monsters behind the everyday people masks and we are screaming warnings as we read. 3.5-4 stars

Pay Dirt Road was a great mystery/thriller. Allen can write. Her prose is clean and crisp, layered with vivid detail of the Texas landscape. I typically don't read many novels told in 1st pov but I really dug this one. The plot was great, the story unfolded at a great pace. I'll def being following Allen's writing career.

I liked Pay Dirt Road. Was it a little predictable? Yes. Was it base thriller/mystery writing? Yes. Was it worth my time? 100%, and it will be worth your time as well. A warning for those suffering from PTSD related to sexual assault, however, as the book deals with this at various points. I realize some may feel that bleeds into spoiler territory, but I am withholding much more than I divulge, I promise.

The plot is fairly straight forward and easy to follow. I found that rather refreshing compared to some thriller plots that have so many twists you need a flow chart to follow them. There is a murder (or two) and there are suspects. All revolve around a protagonist who deals with her own wounds throughout the book. I will say that the second murder isn’t as well-handled as the primary murder. It gets kind of forgotten in the melee.

Setting is really well done. I’m from a small community in Kansas and married a Texas woman. This is just really on the nose as far as how this is all done. The author does a really good job of capturing small town flavor, the good and the bad of it (a lot is admittedly bad).

Characters were OK bordering good. The protagonist is really good. The bad guy is off a little in my opinion, but they fulfill the intended goal. The mentor is good-ish. The victim, interestingly enough, is really well done.

Overall, 4 stars because, for a debut novel, this is really quite good and worth my time as a reader/reviewer. I look forward to what comes next from this author.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this title. This one was a bit slow and plodding for me. The story was compelling, but the writing wasn't the best, and it detracted from the overall experience of reading the book.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the author for allowing me to read this ARC.
I love whodunnits and murder mysteries, and this was a good story.
I wanted to know how it all ended, and there were certain character stories I liked, but I felt that there was nothing that just kept me hanging on.
I finished the entire book. My opinion is that it was just good. Nothing extraordinary, nothing that hooked me, and nothing “must read” about it.
The writers descriptions were the best part of the writing for me. I need more shock and awe or big twists. I feel I just needed more.

Strong characterization, great small town local color, smooth writing. The plot was a bit of a slow burn, which I can appreciate in a mystery, but here it allowed my mind to drift to other things. This is a talented writer, though, and the story was good enough that I look forward to the next entry in the series.

Fantastic description of a small oil town in Texas. You'll find yourself rooting for the main characters, as they work through their own demons as they work on the murder case.

I loved everything about this book! The small-town feel, the voice of the narrator, the characters, and especially how the author did such an amazing job of describing the setting and the environment that it felt like the town itself became a character in the story. The story is an interesting take on the mystery genre. A recent-college-graduate-turned-waitress is not who we usually see as an amateur sleuth, but the author makes it work. Her beautiful prose combined with fascinating characters and a big dose of the complicated nostalgia many of us feel about the place we grow up makes for an emotional and deeply satisfying read.

A paint-by-numbers mystery that I will surely forget about by next month. Our lead character is a cypher to follow around, a vanilla wafer turned into a human being, although I don't mean to slander vanilla wafers.

Serious problems and societal issues are introduced to artificially lend the plot gravity. The trite, superficial handling of such issues is lazy plotting at best, actively harmful at worst.

The dialogue is stale and unrealistic. In almost every scene, a character is interrogated, and they immediately confess new information or deny everything. Either way, Annie says "OK," and walks away, evidently blessed with the poorest investigative detective skills since the child contestants on "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?"

Writing: 4/5 Plot: 3.5/5 Characters: 4/5
Annie McIntyre returns home to small town Garnett, Texas with her tail between her legs, waitressing at the local cafe and wondering how she ended up back here. She slides into the family business (private investigating) with her grandfather when another waitress goes missing and is eventually found dead.

For me this was more a novel than mystery. The mystery did have a number of satisfying twists and turns with a healthy hodge-podge of possible suspects, motives, and witnesses — land grabs for oil pipelines, a nasty mother-in-law, illegals who aren’t able to testify for fear of discovery, etc. However, more of the book focussed on small town life (lots of drinking and continued high schoolish behavior by people no longer in high school) and self-discovery as Annie finds out why she wants to stay in Garnet after all and what she wants to do with her life.

Decent, entertaining, read. I did not discover an interest in visiting or living in Garnet.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley.com in exchange for an honest review. Set in a small town in Texas, Annie has just graduated from a prestigious East Coast university and has no idea what she wants to do. In quick succession two people are found dead in close proximity. One is a young woman who Annie works with at the local café. Through her grandfather, who is a retired PO now working as a PI, she is drawn into
the investigation although she has been hired to mostly file paperwork.

The book drags if you aren’t a fan of reading pages and pages of landscape details. Obviously the person arrested isn’t guilty. Annie strikes out on her own over and over again to find the real killer. Annie’s own past drives her to focus on one person specifically. Although referred to frequently, the specifics of the horrific trauma she experienced is not revealed until late in the book.

The late chapters of the book are the most interesting and fast paced. The characters are well defined and unfortunately also a bit stereotyped. There are no real twists and turns. The writing is beautiful, but doesn’t compensate for the rather juvenile premise.

This is really a slow burn and took awhile for me to really get into. Part II really picked up pace! I love a good mystery and this book kept me intrigued.

Annie returns home from college, trying to figure out her life. She lives with her cousin and works at a local diner. When her co-worker turns up missing and later murdered things move along real quickly.

There are a lot of family secrets and overall I enjoyed this book!

Pay Dirt Road elicited several, sometimes conflicting, reactions. The first few chapters felt dark and a bit disjointed as the author set up the characters and story. Just as I was about to put the book down and move on, the plot kicked in and re-engaged my interest. Then, toward the end, the story got bogged down again, revisiting events from the narrator’s past and literary/philosophical ruminations. Were the memories relevant to the plot and the ruminations appropriate? Yes. But the grim tone, the lack of likable characters (even the ones you were supposed to like) and the disjointed narration just didn’t do it for me.

Pay Dirt Road is the debut novel from the 2019 Tony Hillerman Prize recipient Samantha Jayne Allen.
The novel is focused upon small town Garnett, Texas - a place Annie McIntyre hoped to leave forever when she started college. Unfortunately she is back following graduation, waitressing at the town cafe looking for direction for her future and hoping to find a "real job." Much of the start of the novel is focused upon developing main characters and the interesting complexity of this small town. It's not until one third of the way into the novel when the murder of her waitressing friend that the mystery is introduced and Annie finds herself attracted to investigation work.

The novel is pitched as a country noir and I don't disagree. It is a very slow burn. The premise is well written and the mystery is interesting. I highly recommend to those that enjoy a literary mystery and writing similar to the great Damnation Spring. There is beauty in the writing and an uncurrent of ecological disaster and danger throughout. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it highly and look forward to Samantha Jayne Allen's next!

This is not a book I would usually choose to read. Having said that, I would sum up the experience as melancholic. Family secrets are the theme throughout the book. Annie, the main character, returns home after college to decide what to do with her life. In the mean time, she works as a waitress in her small town. One of her coworkers disappears and throws Annie and her retired sheriff grandfather, Leroy, into the mystery. While Annie grapples with what to do with her life, her grandfather has his own devils to deal with related to being out of the action and being old. So not only is this a sort of coming of age for Annie. It is a coming of old age for her grandfather. While this book is not one I would read again, I can recommend it to those interested in the tales of young adults dealing with career life decisions, how family and small town secrets can influence lives, and mysteries that have unexpected endings. The important thing is to know that the family and town dynamics play a larger role in the story than the mystery.

Unsure of what she wants to do with her life after graduation, Annie returns to her small Texas town, working in the local diner, living with her cousin and finding ways to get through the weekend. There's so much tangled history she has returned to - her high school traumatic secret, her family's generations in law enforcement and the boys she loved who have become men.
When her coworker goes missing and is later found murdered on her family's property, Annie joins her grandfather and his partner in their private investigation. Her days go from mundane to terrifying in no time at all. As Annie searches for a killer, she confronts her past, but will she find the killer, or become a victim herself?

Annie McIntyre has a just graduated from college and returned to her hometown of Garnett, TX where she intends to spend the summer studying to take the LSAT, and waiting table at the local diner. She quickly falls into the old regular routine of hanging out with her cousin and old high school friends, going to the lake, drinking beer and dancing at the local bar, while at the same time feeling restless, unsettled and directionless. When a waitress at the diner goes missing, and, because of her dubious reputation no one seems particularly concerned, Annie feels compelled to do something about it. Enlisting her almost retired grandfather Leroy, who runs a small private investigation business, Annie uncovers more than she bargained for.

Author Allen’s debut novel is filled with beautiful prose that lets the reader experience Annie’s search for not only her friend but also herself. I am grateful to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this uncorrected digital galley.

Pay Dirt Road by Samantha Jayne Allen follows twenty-something Annie McIntyre as she pitches in to solve the murder of a woman in the small Texas town of Garnett.

McIntyre, a recent college graduate, has returned home in an attempt to decide upon what future she wants to pursue. Working at a local diner, Annie becomes involved in several mysterious incidents, one of which causes deep-seated personal issues of her own to rise to the surface. These issues then force her to deal with a past she has so long preferred to push aside both on purpose and subconsciously.

At the diner working with Annie is Victoria, a single mother with a more exuberant lifestyle than Annie and more so than the local conservative Garnett residents care for. After Victoria is reported missing, with many not too concerned and believing she will just show up, Annie, with a familial criminal investigation pedigree and an internal knack for criminal investigations, joins with her grandfather and his private investigation business to start asking questions. Questions not only about Victoria but also another local mysterious killing, leading to the creation of unease among not only those responsible but from others as well.

From there, the novel, while not purely a police procedural or a cozy mystery, moves forward further developing characters and plot lines to a worthwhile conclusion.

Upon first reading a description of this novel, the novel was thought to be a gritty, country-noirish novel, however, it is not that and that is quite all right. Pay Dirt Road is a novel where the writer deftly introduces her characters and allows them to slowly develop and breathe. It is also with needed red herrings and a satisfying ending appearing to be more in line with good storytelling rather than shock and awe results and last page resolutions.

Pay Dirt Road does not contain graphic language or depictions of extreme violence or acts of sexuality.

Pay Dirt Road is recommended to those that enjoy blossoming character development with realistic plots that don’t rely upon extreme surprises to entice readers.

Pay Dirt Road is set to be published in April of 2022.

Netgalley provided an ARC for the promise of a fair review.

This review was originally published at MysteryandSuspence.com.

Unfortunately I could not finish Pay Dirt Road. I tried. I really did. But the pace of the writing was so sluggish and meandering it couldn't hold my attention. The writing style itself I think was supposed to make me feel immersed in Annie's world--of course she'd know everyone! She grew up there--but instead made me feel like I was missing the first few chapters of the book somewhere where I should know who these characters are.

Maybe the mystery would have gotten better and been worth it by the end, but I, for one, couldn't make it that far