Simone St. James is another of my must read authors so I picked this book up instantly when my library hold came in. I also was really intrigued by the summary and the idea of a haunted stretch of highway. From the beginning pages, I was completely hooked by this book. The intensity and creepiness of that opening scene really got me (if the entire book stayed this dark and creepy this book would easily have been five stars). And just like that I was all in on the ride that the author was taking me on. The question of what was behind everything that was going on in this small town and why had me turning the pages as fast as I could. And the ending definitely took me by surprise. This is my 4th book by this author and I will be reading everything she writes at this point. I will say that I am surprised by some of the mixed reviews I've seen. For me, this book was a fun, suspenseful, and page-turning read with 90's vibes as an added bonus. I definitely recommend!

Readers who enjoy books that straddle the line between suspense and horror or those just looking for an atmospheric read to get lost in should pick this book up. I think I'm landing on four stars overall. Here's my ranking of the books I've read by her so far if you are interested (top is my favorite):

The Sun Down Motel (easily my favorite of hers so far)
The Broken Girls
Murder Road
The Book of Cold Cases

All of these again are at least four star reads which is why I consider her to be a must read author at this point. They are all just so good! I need to work on catching up on her backlist.

A wrong turn can cost you your life!

In 1995, April and Eddie are newlyweds on their way to their honeymoon. They are driving at night when they realize they are lost and they have taken a wrong turn. They are driving on a lonely road called Atticus Line. Just as they recognize their mistake, they see a woman walking on the side of the road.

April and Eddie decided to stop the car and help the woman. After the young woman agrees to get in the car with them, April notices blood from her midsection. They immediately take her to the hospital where she dies.

The police want to question the newlyweds as they have become the prime suspects in the death of the woman. They are asked not to leave town.

The couple soon learns that multiple deaths have been happening for many years on that road. Is there a serial killer in the town of Coldlake Falls?

Quite spooky and so very entertaining. Both main characters were quite engaging as well as Rose and the sisters who helped them.

Another addicting novel by Simone St. James.

Cliffhanger: No

4/5 Fangs

A complimentary copy was provided by Berkley via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Simone St James can’t do no wrong in my opinion. She is one of the few authors I constantly follow to see when is a new book coming out. The way she easily takes the reader to the without making it that much scary (even though is horror) is such a talent! The mystery, the scenery (Sundown motel was incredible in that matter) everything weaves in to make a great story every time.

An enjoyable read, although slightly forgettable. Definitely will read more by this author though! Overall worth it.

Review 3/5 🌙s

Overview: A newly married couple finds themselves in the middle of a small resort towns drama during their honey moon.

Review: i enjoyed this book but I did wish for more logical thinking I wanted them to make choices like a normal human not trying to drive the plot would do. I'm torn on this one it had great atmosphere.

I admit this year has been a rough one for me reading wise so it took me longer to get through this book then it normally would. However, that did not stop me from enjoying this book. I love Simone St. James as an author and have enjoyed every book of hers I have read so far. This one is no different. I like the supernatural elements, but also enjoyed getting to know the characters and seeing their interactions.

Thank you Berkley Pub, #partner, for the advanced e-copy of Murder Road in exchange for my honest review.

I have been a fan of Simone St. James for quite some time now. She is definitely one of my favorite writers of atmospheric supernatural thrillers and I just love them! I didn’t mean to wait so long to read this one, but it really worked well reading it during spooky season, so I can’t be mad about that!

This book grabbed me right away and it never let up. It’s creepy but not so much that you don’t want to keep reading. And I loved the 1990s setting, complete with no technology. Being stuck on a road with a hitchhiker who is bleeding and not being able to call ahead for help was all sorts of terrifying. But also, the characters just seemed so mysterious that you can’t help but want to find out more about them. That’s what I love about these books – they are so incredibly readable and engaging.

This book is full of twists and turns I did not see coming. It oozes suspense and has just the right amount of creepiness to make it perfect to pick up right now if you haven’t already read it.

This is a quick fast read. A couple finds themselves lost on a Michigan road. They pick up a girl hitchhiking only to discover she is hurt. When they get to the hospital, they become suspects and are asked not to leave town. They set out to solve the crime. Normally I enjoy a good ghost story and I have liked this author's other books. This book however did not live up to her previous books. It felt rushed and incomplete. When I finished I was disappointed.

I usually love Simone St. James thrillers but this one was just not it for me. I struggled to pick it up and never really looked forward to it.

April and Eddie are newlyweds with a lot of secrets. Secrets they’re keeping from the world and each other. While on their honeymoon, they take a wrong turn and end up on Atticus Line, aka murder road. They are soon wrapped up in a haunted murder investigation. Murder Road was okay- it took me a long time to finish because I found the beginning kind of boring and forgettable. This book definitely wasn’t as strong as Simone St. James’ others. Still, it picked up about 1/3 of the way through and was entertaining enough. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read and review.

I am such a fan of Simone St. James!!!

My favorite of hers is by far The Broken Girls! I was so excited to read another book by her!!

Murder Road is quite the bang of an opening! I was hooked right away. I felt like it definitely got slower after the first chapter and had a hard time keeping my attention. Unfortunately, it became a tad repetitive for me.

Overall, she is such a strong author and it was a decent read.

3.5/5 stars

Simone St. James knows how to tell a really good ghost story. She weaves the supernatural with murder mystery so very well. I was constantly on the edge of my seat and continually guessing from beginning to end. I did struggle with the pacing with the second half of the book but overall I did think this wrapped up everything nicely.

This author does it again! I was already a HUGE fan, but this book just solidified that I will ALWAYS recommend books by her! I enjoyed every twist and turn in this story about a couple on their honeymoon that veers off course. There were slower moments, but they allowed the bigger ones to shine brighter. I loved that all the little pieces we were given of the murder/mystery build & combine perfectly together to tie it all into one big puzzle. The characters were dynamic, flawed, and all have hidden pieces waiting to be discovered.

It’s 1995 and April and her husband Eddie are on their way to their honeymoon when they take a wrong turn and end up on an isolated road called Atticus Line. When they see a young woman walking the road by herself, they stop to offer her a ride and it’s not until the girl is already in their car that they realize she’s been attacked and is bleeding out. On the way to bring her to the hospital, they’re chased by another vehicle- is this the same person who attacked the girl? Once at the hospital, the police suspect that April and Eddie could be the attackers. In an attempt to clear their names, April and Eddie begin to uncover multiple murders along this road dating back to the 70’s and are determined to get to the bottom of who has been killing hitchhikers along Atticus Line for years.

This is the first book I’ve read by St. James, despite having many of her books on my shelves. This was a quick read that was definitely thrilling and had my pulse racing at times. The paranormal aspects of this book were a good twist and perfect for spooky season. It left me unsettled and it’s a book I won’t soon forget. Overall, I did finish this book with some lingering questions that I would like answered.

*4.5
Murder Road hooked me in from page one. It was spooky and atmospheric, I ended up reading it in a day.

The characters were intriguing and frustrating, but they felt real. I wasn’t sure if this would actually be paranormal, but having read some of the author’s previous works I should have known.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an advance copy in exchange for honest feedback

Review
If you missed the recent, rocketing surges of AI stocks such as Nvidia or Advanced Micro Devices, you might be a bit late for the party. But not so Mark Greaney. Greaney’s 13th Gray Man novel, “The Chaos Agent” (Berkley), dropped just as things were heating up on Wall Street in late February with a thriller that couldn’t be more prescient.

With the premise of a tech company and its mastermind billionaire building on artificial intelligence platforms to create lethal autonomous weapons — complete with rocket-launching cyber watchdogs, humanoids and other artifices of destruction — the denouement was always going to be a HAL 9000-esque brain threatening to gain sentience.

Like the dozen Gray Man novels before — Court Gentry is the Gray Man, a covert freelance operative once trained by the CIA whose modus operandi falls somewhere between shades of white and black — Greaney handles all of this masterfully, moving us around the underworld with a … love interest (check) … best friend (check) … master nemesis (check) and … national arch enemy (check), in a cinematic scope that feels all too real.

The author is known for getting the details just right — guns in hand are real-world guns, boots on the ground are real-world boots — so the wonder isn’t that the novel brings us to today’s near-precipice of man versus machine, but how quickly we’re actually getting there. So quickly, in fact, that in early March, Vatican News published this story: "Holy See urges ethical oversight of lethal autonomous weapons" on the same day that the Wall Street Journal published the story, "The Pentagon’s Plan for More Ambitious, Affordable Jet Fighters: AI Pilots."

Given that novels are a year or longer in production before publication, and written even earlier, now, that's prescient.

Roundup
Other new titles worth your time (and dollars) this month conveniently adhere to a theme (and you won’t need ChatGPT to help figure out what that is).

“Almost Surely Dead” (Mindy’s Book Studio) by Amina Akhtar is part stalker, part ghost story and all psychological thriller. Akhtar is the author of the best-selling novel “Kismet,” and here offers a story about an extraordinary life that turns into a true crime podcast.

“The Lady in Glass and Other Stories” (Ace) by Anne Bishop collects shorter works set in the author’s most cherished, fantastical worlds, transporting us over a 25-year career of dark fantasy.

“A Haunting in the Arctic” (Berkley paperback) by C.J. Cooke is a dual timeline story with the main thread taking place after an early 20th century, haunting attack aboard the whaling ship Ormen. The wreck washes up a century later on the remote coast of Iceland, bringing to the present a dark past of cruelty and murder.



“Ghost Island” (Berkley) is Max Seeck’s fourth book in Ghosts of the Past, a series that has been building suspense and thrills since the author’s 2020 U.S. debut, “The Witch Hunter.” An atmospheric mystery, the novel is a driving Nordic procedural from the first Finnish author in seven decades to make the New York Times bestseller list.

Reveal
Some the titles I’ll be working on for next in "Review, roundup, reveal and rewind," with the books' scheduled publication dates, include:

“Hello, Alabama”(Arcadia) by Martha Day Zschock, March 4.

“The Unquiet Bones” (Montlake) by Loreth Anne White, March 5.

“I am Rome: A novel of Julius Caesar” (Ballantine Books) by Santiago Posteguillo, March 5.

“Murder Road” (Berkley) by Simone St. James, March 5.



“The Luminous Life of Lucy Landry” (Holiday House) by Anna Rose Johnson, March 5.

“The #1 Lawyer” (Little, Brown and Company) by James Patterson and Nancy Allen, March 18.

“Lilith” (Blackstone) by Eric Rickstad, March 19.

And, watch for a couple of interviews that are also scheduled for March, including “After Annie” (Random House) by Anna Quindlen and “Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood” (Montag Press) by Bradley Sides.

Rewind
Finally, in case you missed a few notable titles from earlier in the year:

“Unbound” (Blackstone) by Christy Healy is a tale of betrayal and unrequited romance, with the author bringing Celtic myths into a gender-bent reimagining of “Beauty and the Beast.”



“The Devil’s Daughter” (Blackstone) by Gordon Greisman is solid PI noir and gets a screenwriter’s touch — the author earned an Emmy Award nomination for his NBC mini-series “The Drug Wars: In the Belly of the Beast." Tempering period characters (Thelonious Monk, Marlon Brando) with private investigator Jack Coffey’s search for the daughter of an uptown financier presents a dark story about redemption.

“Masters of the Air” (Blackstone) by Donald Miller isn’t a new book, but it gets a new audio treatment with the addition of narration by veteran raconteur Joe Barrett. Not just for the World War II aficionado, you can find a visual complement to the story with a recently launched Apple TV+ series by the same name.

I love Simone's books. They are the perfect combo of "stay up to finish" and "horror lite". This one was no different, and I loved the mystery that the main characters faced in this book. And one particular side character was just a gem!

Simone St James has become one of my go-to thriller authors to read. I enjoy her characters and stories that she comes up with. This book was no different. A rather simple storyline, but with some twists and turns that left me guessing what the end would be.

4.5 stars

Thank you Netgalley, Berkley, and Simone St. James for the #ARC in return for an honest review!

Why did I wait so long to read this? One of my favorite authors coming out with another spooky, thriller with true crime elements. It was so good! Beware of your honeymoon adventures...

What did I enjoy?
🚗supernatural twists mixed in with true crime
🚗90's nostalgia
🚗fast paced
🚗unreliable narrators
🚗investigation style
🚗ghost stories

What could have been better?
👻I was a little disappointed by the ending. It felt a bit rushed and knocked the five star rating down for me.

I would recommend!