#Review | Dark Roads by Chevy Stevens

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

There is someone who is killing young girls on the Colf Creek Highway. The book has three subdivisions.

Hailey: A 17 year old who lost her mother at an early age and was super close to her dad, who was a wilderness guide. Then tragedy strikes again when her father is killed in a motor vehicle accident. Being a minor, she ends up living with her maternal aunt, her aunt’s husband Vaughn, and their son Cash. Vaughn is the Sherriff of the RCMP and is quite controlling. But even worse, Hailey finds something quite disturbing about him that she runs away into the woods, in hopes that her family thinks she was one of the victims of the serial killer.

Beth: A year ago, her sister was a victim of the highway killer and has not been able to move forward from it. She leaves the life she knows and travels to Cold Creek in hopes of finding answers about her sister.

Hailey and Beth: The 2 girls team up to unmask the killer.

The storyline kept my interest. The suspense and action were palpable.

Even though I enjoyed this read, there were 2 issues, at least for me, that took away from the story and the reason for my rating.

The settings in the first 2 parts were mainly in the woods and were quite in-depth about surviving there. Not being a camping person, I found myself skimming over a lot of it because it was so detailed that at times, it just took away from the story for me. The other issue was that it was obvious from the beginning as to who had involvement in the killings. And because of those 2 reasons, and the fact that I had a mindset of setting the bar so high because of her previous books, that I was just a bit disappointed.

Would I recommend it? Yes! Just because this wasn’t a read that I didn’t 100% enjoy, I’m sure many will. And now, I wait patiently for her next book. I just hope that I don’t have to wait as long as I did for this one.

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