Trying to figure out her life Annie returns home from college to live with her cousin and work at the local diner. When her co-worker disappears and is later found murdered the mystery begins!
And Annie becomes involved in the investigation.
Author Samantha Jayne Allen keeps the reader guessing throughout and for a debut novel it was a satisfying read.
Narrator Sandy Rustin did a fabulous job!

Thank you to NetGalley and RB Media (Recorded Books) for an arc of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

I wanted to like this book. The description was interesting but it did not hold my attention. I struggled to finish the book.

Book Review: Pay Dirt Road by Samantha Jayne Allen

Pay Dirt Road is a mystery novel about a young woman who returns to her hometown after college only to find herself wrapped up in a local murder investigation.
Annie has returned to her small Texas hometown after college with no idea what to do next. She’s working as a waitress at the local diner and contemplating helping her grandfather out with his P.I. business when a beautiful young co-worker (Victoria) is found murdered. Annie’s first case will be trying to figure out what really happened to Victoria while she faces trauma from her own past.
This was a fantastic new novel with a smart and determined main character. Debut author Samantha Jayne Allen clearly understands the landscapes and culture of Texas as all the characters and interactions felt authentic and set the tone for the mystery. Readers will enjoy the entire extended family that surrounds Annie and the complicated dynamics between them. You really feel for Annie as she looks back on her own past and the worst night of her life as she begins to see parallels to what happened to Victoria, herself and the dangers of being a young beautiful woman.
I highly recommend this slow burn and thoughtful mystery. I hope to see future novels from Samantha Jayne Allen especially if Annie McIntyre is a recurring character.

Audiobook notes: I had both the e-book and audiobook versions of this book courtesy of NetGalley. The audiobook version is narrated by Sandy Rustin. I found with the Texas accent used by the narrator that this book worked better at 1.25x speed.

I was seeing Pay Dirt Road all over Bookstagram and I needed to read it. A big thank you to Recorded Books and Netgalley for my advanced audio copy to listen to. Over 2 days I was immersed in this small town murder mystery and I loved it.

Set in Texas (which is somewhere that I have always wanted to go), a young woman goes missing and is later found murdered. Annie McIntyre teams up with her grandfather who is the town's PI to find the killer. Annie worked in the local diner with the victim and wants to find justice.

This is a slow burn but one that kept me interested all the way through. I loved the characters and the secrets they were all hiding. The ending was surprising and really well done. Crime fiction and murder mystery fans will enjoy this one.

I loved the setting of this book, obviously because it was set in Texas where I am from and live now. There were so many phrases, songs, and vernacular that only Texans would understand and I found myself laughing out loud at times because of certain things that were so spot on to somebody who has lived in this area of the world their entire life.

I loved the family aspect to the book, since Annie went through the book investigating with her grandfather. This is definitely a slower paced mystery, but since I listened to the audiobook, that made it 100 times better.

If you grew up in a small southern town and love mystery, this one is for you!

Trigger warnings - murder, rape, sexual assault, drug use, drugging someone against their will.

Thanks to NetGalley, samantha Jayne Allen, & Minotaur books for the audiobook arc

Samantha Jayne Allen's Pay Dirt Road introduces an amateur sleuth who can combine knowledge of the local family/community dynamics with an intuition built on past trauma. The small-town Texas setting provides a perfect backdrop to a crime that falls a little too close to home. Although the investigation progresses slowly, the cast of characters and their involvements with each other creates an entertaining web of believable complications. The narration is perfect and complements the text really well. Great book!

It’s Tuesday, and that means all the new books and audiobooks! Of course, it also means a taller and deeper stack of TBRs, but, hey, there are worse problems, right?

Here’s one they didn’t go into my TBR. It went right into my read-now/listen now hands/ears, because we all know there are two things I can’t resist: a good series and a female detective, and Samantha Jayne Allen’s @samallenwrites Pay Dirt Road has both!

If you also love those things, you’re going to need a copy of this one! Thanks to both @minotaur_books and @recordedbooks for my copies of Book 1 of what I’m sure is going to be another in Minotaur’s lineup of badass females characters!

Thanks for the opportunity to review!
Link to 4/19/2022 Instagram post:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CciuQZNL0D6/

Thank you to #rbmedia @recordedbooks @netgalley for the ALC and @minotaur_books @macmillanusa for the ARC in return for my honest review.
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My thoughts…
Rural noir. The book started well enough, but after the first quarter my interest started to wane. But, I decided not to give and requested the audiobook. I have long commutes a couple of days a week, and this book kept me entertained. I’m glad I stuck with it because I enjoyed the complex, multi-layered, small-town dynamics. The crime and the pursuit of truth was interesting and the pacing was good. The speech pattern and language takes you right to a southern, hardscrabble life. Even though Annie is a young adult, it still felt like she was coming-of-age, albeit in a hard way.

A beautifully written thriller, the author has a fantastic way captivating the reader with excellent character building, emotion and gorgeous descriptions that really immerse you into Garnett County.

The book had a nice pacing - a slow burn, but the descriptions and relationships kept me interested, so I thought it worked very well with the writing style letting you settle into the environment and characters. 


The narrator worked really well with the atmospheric nature of the story, I thoroughly enjoyed this and will be looking out for future books from Samantha Jayne Allen.

Um. It's a small town missing person turned murder mystery. In Texas.

The audio had all the Texas drawl accents (likely only two). It did not help me engage initially, though either it got a tiny bit less intense, or I got used to it as I listened. It probably was perfect for the story, and Sandy Rustin nailed what I would expect this place to sound like.

I came from a small town (not in TX) and there were just way too many things that reminded me of what I could not wait to get away from to make up for the murder in this book. Too many bad decisions and stereotypical scenarios and characters for me. This felt like an homage in part to all I have tried to leave behind. Maybe I am a snob.

The story itself was ok. A missing girl who was last seen drunk at a party and ends up dead. Our protagonist, Annie worked with her and begins to search for who was responsible for her disappearance and discovers what might be her true calling in the process.

I don't rate poorly, instead I assume the story was not for me. This was not for me. If you enjoy small town Texas murder mysteries, then this should be right up your alley.

Thank you to @netgalley for the audio advanced copy. This title is available today.

Pay Dirt Road is billed as “Friday Nights Lights meets Mare Of Easttown - a small-town mystery about an unlikely P.I. searching for a missing waitress.”

This debut novel offers a good base for the series - detailed descriptions of the Garnett, Texas, and deep character dive into the families of this small town. Annie, our protagonist and amateur P.I., learns many life lessons while solving Victoria’s (the waitress) murder. But the mystery surrounding the murder felt a little predictable and straightforward for an avid thriller/mystery reader. I did enjoy Annie and her venture into the family business, so I look forward to discovering where Book 2 takes her and McIntyre & Associates.

I would recommend this book to anyone who:
✨Loves character-driven mysteries
✨Prefers a slow burn mystery
✨New to the mystery genre

𝘚𝘶𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘧𝘶𝘭, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘨𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨!

What a ride. A perfect small-town mystery, a great setting, dark, complex, thrilling, filled with family drama and emotional.
A fantastic debut from this author.

Thank you Minotaur Books and NetGalley for this gifted copy.

https://www.instagram.com/booksandcoffeemx/

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to listen to this audio book in return for an honest review.
Synopsis
Friday Night Lights meets Mare of Easttown in this small-town mystery about an unlikely private investigator searching for a missing waitress. Pay Dirt Road is the mesmerizing debut from the 2019 Tony Hillerman Prize recipient Samantha Jayne Allen.

Annie McIntyre has a love/hate relationship with Garnett, Texas.

Recently graduated from college and home waitressing, lacking not in ambition but certainly in direction, Annie is lured into the family business—a private investigation firm—by her supposed-to-be-retired grandfather, Leroy, despite the rest of the clan’s misgivings.

When a waitress at the café goes missing, Annie and Leroy begin an investigation that leads them down rural routes and haunted byways, to noxious-smelling oil fields and to the glowing neon of local honky-tonks. As Annie works to uncover the truth she finds herself identifying with the victim in increasing, unsettling ways, and realizes she must confront her own past—failed romances, a disturbing experience she’d rather forget, and the trick mirror of nostalgia itself—if she wants to survive this homecoming.

I found this book quite difficult to get really into the story line, however don’t let that deter you, it had absolutely nothing to do with bad writing it was because the description of a place I’ve never been in my life was so damned good I kept pausing to google things. The storyline itself is excellent if a little obvious to me, it didn’t keep me guessing, put it that way. However all in all as a debut it’s brilliant. Great writing, solid characters, believable storyline and great narration.

✨Audiobook Review✨

Thank you to @netgalley and @recordedbooks for the ALC of Pay Dirt Road. Also, many thanks to my aunt/second mom for these gorgeous flowers to celebrate Easter this past weekend! 🌹

Happy publication day! 📘🎂

This is Samantha Jayne Allen’s debut novel, which means I’m also using it for my April entry in #litfor2022 by @mrs._lauras_lit 😊.

Annie McIntyre has just recently graduated from college and returns to her hometown because she’s not sure what she wants to do now. She falls into a position assisting her grandfather’s private investigator firm. This, while working full-time at the local diner.

Suddenly, a fellow waitress goes missing…then, her body is found. Annie follows her natural calling…

This was a great debut and the audio was fantastic. I’d definitely read more by Allen in the future.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

QOTD: What’s your favorite audiobook so far this year?
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Something sinister is happening in Garnett, Texas. Annie has come home from college and takes a job waitressing at the local diner. She works with Victoria, a single mom who tends to party and be late for work. Invited to a bonfire, Annie and her roommate agree to go. Victoria is there but extremely intoxicated. Victoria doesn't show up for her shift several days in a row and Annie is forced to cover for her. What the heck! Annie goes to Victoria's trailer, but it seems no one has been there in days. Soon her body is discovered, and an arrest is made. Annie is sure they have the wrong guy. She joins her grandfather, a private investigator, to find out what happened. They discover an oil company has been intimidating residents to force them to turn over their land. Victoria's land was included in their plot but the more she digs, the more Annie's life is in danger. Sandy Rustin does an excellent job narrating.
Thank you to NetGalley and Recorded Books for this advanced review copy. In return, I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review. All opinions and thoughts are my own.

While I really wanted to love this one, I unfortunately wasn't completely taken in by the story. In general, I think slow burn mysteries aren't for me. However, if they ARE your jam, you'll enjoy this book if you like character-driven novels, missing persons storylines and small town stories. The narration by Sandy Rustin was excellent and added to the atmosphere of the story.

Thanks to Minotaur for the ARC and RB Media - Recorded books for the ALC.

Honestly, this book could have been SO much better. The story itself was interesting, but the characters were kind of flat and boring (in my opinion) and the book dragged on in parts - and it was not necessary. I found it to be overly descriptive, which detracted from the interesting guts of the book. I overall just found the book and characters difficult to connect with and the storyline difficult to get lost in. I have seen a lot of positive reviews for this book and it was a quick read, but I finished the book overall disappointed.

Thank you netgalley for my advanced reader copy!

Pay Dirt Road is an atmospheric small town mystery set in Garnett, Texas. Annie has just graduated from college and returned to her hometown to work as a waitress. When one of her coworkers goes missing, Annie works with her grandfather, a former sheriff, to look into her disappearance. I found the the storyline took awhile to get into, but could really feel the grit and personality of the town and its people. The narrator Sandy Rustin had great accents and really added to the ambiance of the story and the personality of the characters.

This mystery/thriller is wonderful! I may be biased because I live in Texas not far from where the story takes place. I loved all the local references to Shiner Beer, tubing on the river, oil workers and many more. The story is interesting and feels like home. I love the trips to local places and the conversations during the scenes. This has the feel of small town Texas. Everyone knows everyone and they all have their back stories. The narrator Sandy Rustin really made this candy to my ears. She is a Broadway star and it shines through in her seamless ability to switch back and forth from many different characters and accents. The southern drawl and southern debutant voices were spot on. I very much want this to be a series of books. I love the characters and after this book they feel so familiar that I want the story to continue. Great work Samantha Jayne Allen. I look forward to more from you in the future.

Small town Texas girl from a long line of law men and women. One of her coworkers go missing and the hunt for the truth is on.

Thank you NetGalley, RB Media, and Recorded Books for the opportunity to experience this audiobook. And I do mean experience. It was wonderful.

A small town mystery where a waitress goes missing. Our main character steps into place to help solve the mystery of her co-worker and friend.

I do love the Texas location and ambiance of this book. This is more of a character study of Annie, newly graduated from college and not sure what her plan is going forward.

I felt like the book was slow moving in the plot as it meandered through the story. I'm always more enticed by plot driven books vs. character study books, so I think it was a me thing.

Thank you to NetGalley and RB Media Recorded Books for the advance audiobook in return for my review.