A supernatural thriller with nostalgic 90s vibes. Eddie and April are driving to their honeymoon hotel when they take a “shortcut” along a dark and barren road and see a bloody girl on the side of the road. They stop to help her and after their attempt at a good deed are now suspects of a murder investigation.

You know how when you’re watching a horror movie and the protagonists make poor decisions and you end up screaming at the tv for them to run away? This book was like that. Full of creepiness and mystery, I was hooked from the beginning. The ending was executed better than I expected. This was my first Simone St. James book but won’t be the last.

Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley for this eARC. Murder Road is out now.

This was a bit out of my element with the supernatural aspects but I was game for it. The book was worth reading. I was surprised at the twists in the plot. The characters were very clearly distinguished. I'll read other Simone St. James books.

In July 1995, April and Eddie are driving to their honeymoon when they pick up a hitchhiker along a dark Michigan road. When the hitchhiker dies, April and Eddie quickly become the only suspects. They decide to clear their own names and discover that the road is known for a string of murders going back to the 1970’s and the local legend of the Lost Girl.

Simone St. James does it again with another brilliant ghost story. I loved April and Eddie and that this book was set in 1995. It gave it such an eerie feeling since there were no cell phones or GPS then. It also had a nostalgic feeling for me with the pop culture references since I grew up in the 90’s.

St. James always blends genres so well and Murder Road was no exception. This is a paranormal story blended with a mystery, and it worked so well for this book. April and Eddie’s characters were fleshed out really well, and I enjoyed learning about the secrets of their pasts while trying to uncover the mystery of the Atticus Line. There are some exceptional secondary characters in this book as well. Rose and the Snell sisters were fantastic and put a little humor into an otherwise dark and serious story.

I thought the ghost story was done really well. The Lost Girl had an urban legend feel that worked so well with the small town setting and dark highway that April and Eddie encountered her on. The way the story ties itself together in the end really blew my mind. There were definitely some chilling and frightening moments in this book which made it the perfect spooky read for me!

Thank you Berkley Publishing and NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Definitely not my favorite of this authors. I loved the 90s setting. No cells phones and having to go to the library? Yes but the mystery in this one was pretty lame

I didn't read the description before starting this one, so I loved not knowing what to expect. I had thought it was just a straightforward thriller. The supernatural elements came as a creepy surprise. I liked the 90s setting, I feel like mystery/thriller books are a lot more fun without modern tech. The nostalgia was there, but it didn't feel overdone. I liked the weird small town setting where everyone seemed to have secrets and no one could be trusted. The story had a lot of twists and I never saw a lot of them coming. Overall, a 4.5 star read, another hit from St. James.

Simone St James never disappoints, and Murder Road is no exception. It was fast paced and has all the vibes of a supernatural horror film and I loved every second of it.

What an incredibly thrilling book! This is by far my favorite book by Simone St. James. I don't remember the last time I read a book that started out with such a thrilling first chapter. It kept me hooked until the very end, and I did not want to put it down. Thank you so much for the publisher, author and Net Galley for an advanced copy.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me an advance reader copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

This is (arguably) my favorite Simone St James novel & my favorite so far this year!!!! The premise, the pacing & the plot had me staying up late to finish this one! Couldn't wait to get to the conclusion! I have a small pile of TO BE READ AGAIN titles & this is definitely on my list to revisit sometime in the future! Honestly, I am already in line for the audio version because I LOVED the story so much!!!! Everyone should take a detour down Murder Road this Summer! Will be recommending to all my customers as the perfect SUMMER READ!!!

Description
A young couple find themselves haunted by a string of gruesome murders committed along an old deserted road in this terrifying new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Cold Cases.

July 1995. April and Eddie have taken a wrong turn. They’re looking for the small resort town where they plan to spend their honeymoon. When they spot what appears to a lone hitchhiker along the deserted road, they stop to help. But not long after the hitchiker gets into their car, they see the blood seeping from her jacket and a truck barreling down Atticus Line after them.

When the hitchhiker dies at the local hospital, April and Eddie find themselves in the crosshairs of the Coldlake Falls police. Unexplained murders have been happening along Atticus Line for years and the cops finally have two witnesses who easily become their only suspects. As April and Eddie start to dig into the history of the town and that horrible stretch of road to clear their names, they soon learn that there is something supernatural at work, something that could not only tear the town and its dark secrets apart, but take April and Eddie down with it all.

🎧𝐌𝐮𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐑𝐨𝐚𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐒𝐢𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐒𝐭. 𝐉𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐀𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰🎧

Thank you to @prhaudio for this audiobook! I devoured it!!! Great narration👏🏻🎧

“A young couple find themselves haunted by a string of gruesome murders committed along an old deserted road in this terrifying new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Cold Cases.”

Wow! This book was an UNEXPECTED read for me!!! I went into it thinking it would just be a thriller and let me tell you, it takes a bizarre genre turn haha I finished it last week and I’m still not sure how I feel about it😂

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

‘July 1995. April and Eddie have taken a wrong turn. They’re looking for the small resort town where they plan to spend their honeymoon. When they spot what appears to a lone hitchhiker along the deserted road, they stop to help. But not long after the hitchiker gets into their car, they see the blood seeping from her jacket and a truck barreling down Atticus Line after them.

When the hitchhiker dies at the local hospital, April and Eddie find themselves in the crosshairs of the Coldlake Falls police. Unexplained murders have been happening along Atticus Line for years and the cops finally have two witnesses who easily become their only suspects. As April and Eddie start to dig into the history of the town and that horrible stretch of road to clear their names, they soon learn that there is something supernatural at work, something that could not only tear the town and its dark secrets apart, but take April and Eddie down with it all.’

Let’s talk paranormal thrillers!! Love them? Hate them?!

What’s your favorite paranormal thriller you’ve read?!

I usually love Simone St. James, but unfortunately this missed the mark. I'm not a big fan of the twist being reliant on mental illness, and I also just didn't find this spooky or thrilling.

I usually love SSJ but this was a miss for me. Didn’t find it spooky or all that interesting. Seemed like she churned this out without flushing out a lot of the details.

I love Simone St. James, so when I saw that she had another book coming out I jumped on requesting it!

This is not my favourite of Ms. St. James' books. I felt it was a tad too far-fetched, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it and read it fairly quickly.

Once again St. James delivers a tale filled with mystery steeped in the supernatural. Newlyweds April and Eddie get more than they bargained for when a wrong turn takes them on a decidedly different honeymoon than they were expecting. Trying to do the right thing, they find themselves the prime suspects in a murder case and soon learn that this death is just the latest in a long series of deaths leading back twenty years. April and Eddie are likeable but real feeling protagonists and the mystery, while perhaps a little predictable, is engaging enough to pull you through the story. Looking forward to the next by St. James!

I thought this was really well written and I look forward to reading more from this author in the future. I think it will find readers at our library, so we will definitely be purchasing for the collection.

3.5!

Really great plot, and the supernatural element to it was so well done! Perfect story for a crisp fall night.

This was a very binge-worthy, spine-tingling read, however I found some problems with it. I am not a huge fan of interweaving mental illness with plot-building (in a seemingly untrustworthy kind of way).

Murder Road review: You ever read a book from an author and immediately know you need more from them? But simultaneously don't want to finish all their books because you won't have any left? Yeah, that's me with Simone St. James. I have had The Broken Girls on my shelf since it came out and I'm scared to read it because I know I'm bound to love it so much. Irrational, I know. But will I ever stop? Nope. Did I also collect her backlist in its entirety? Yep. Have I read those? Nope. It's a sickness, ya'll. But when I do decide to go in, I won't stop till I've devoured her entire catalog. I think 2024 might be the year. I feel it in my bones. In March 2020, I read The Sun Down Motel and loved it. That was a month into it's release (Feb 2020). Then The Book of Cold Cases came out in March 2022 and sounded so up my alley I couldn't read it fast enough. True crime blogger? Um, yep, totally my brand. For some reason, this one didn't work for me as well. But, then I saw St. James was releasing Murder Road. Title, cover, description- it all worked for me...sign me up! So I was approached to do a review and received an ARC, shoutout to Berkley for the opportunity! The description reads like a horror movie, and I don't know about you but I'm a huge horror buff. To the point that one of my best girlfriends and I call certain movies (looking at you Scream) "comfort" horror. April and Eddie are our good samaritans, trying to help out what appears to be a drunk or lost woman on a lone stretch of highway. Here's their first problem, the book takes place in '95 and by then we all knew you shouldn't be picking up hitchhikers! My true crime roots told me that back in the 70s-80s (second-hand because I was born in '87). But it's actually not the hitchhiker that is the problem, it's what comes after! The person they picked up was injured and by the time they get them to the hospital, the hitchhiker succumbs to their injuries.

So here comes the entanglement with the local police, the police have been looking to pin this and similar crimes on someone for years. April and Eddie seem to have the bad luck of wrong time, wrong place. In typical St. James, the book is described as having a paranormal/supernatural element. But wait-I haven't even mentioned the worst part for April and Eddie, they are supposed to be on their honeymoon. Talk about the honeymoon from hell!

This book really worked for me, not all supernatural elements in books do but I loved this twist. Detective Jen was on the case, and per usual I was working it from every angle. I get excited when I can predict an outcome but I don't want it to be too easy. This was a perfect story for me, small town cops, mysterious backstories and a possible serial killer or killers. This one was hard to put down and gave such an eerie tone that I sometimes didn't want to read at night. It takes a lot to do that to me, so kudos St. James! This book is out now, so be sure to snag it at your favorite bookstore or place a hold at the library to. Happy reading!

Murder Road by Simone St. James tells the story of newlyweds Eddie and April who are on their way to a small resort for their honeymoon when they notice a woman walking on a secluded road in the middle of the night. They're not far from their destination and decide to pick the girl up, but as they continue on their way they notice that something is terribly wrong with the hitchhiker. She's bleeding. She's dying. And there's a pickup following them. As they quickly find their way to a hospital (using a paper map - it's the 90's!) they are soon looked at with suspicion. A couple from out of town, clothes and car covered with blood and a now dead hitchhiker - they're quickly detained by the police and questioned. There are a lot of strange things happening around Coldlake Falls, specifically the stretch of road where they found the girl called Atticus Line (aka Murder Rd). April and Eddie deal with secrets in their pasts as they help local teens investigate a series of murders - while the police think they are to blame.

Over all, this was an okay book. I thought it was a bit too long and too repetitive. I thought that this was my least favorite St. James book by far. She had a lot to live up to after The Sun-Down Motel and The Book of Cold Cases, and this was a bit of a disappointment. The supernatural element was lacking the creepy factor. Eddie and April basically had to do the police's jobs. And the twists were not really a surprise for me.

I did enjoy the 90s setting and a couple of the supporting characters (the Snell Sisters and Rose). I thought overall it was okay but definitely not one of Simone St. James finest books, however if you do like ghosty/supernatural storylines you will enjoy this.

This book didn’t waste time getting to the point which I appreciated. There was a mystery surrounding Eddie and April and I couldn’t figure it out. April was more mysterious, which made her more intriguing to me. These newlyweds didn’t really know each other, so I couldn’t get a read on them as a couple. I didn’t particularly like any of the characters at first. My favorite was the side character Rose, who gave me all the sass and grumpiness I needed.

As always with this authors titles, there was a paranormal element to the story. The tension was very clear from the start, and I wanted to know what or who was haunting the road. I was not expecting the story to turn the way it did, and I wasn’t really a fan. I usually am a huge fan of Simone St. James’ books, but this one just missed the mark for me. I had more unanswered questions by the end, when I initially thought the story started off solid.

Thank you @prhaudio for access to the audiobook version of this novel. Brittany Pressley did an amazing job with this one and I found it so hard to turn it off! #prhaudioinfluencer. Also, thank you so much Berkley Publishing for access to the arc of Murder Road and for gifting me a finished copy of this novel #berkley #berkleypartner

Wow, the audiobook version was so good for this novel and honestly sent chills down my spine during different scenes because they were JUST THAT CREEPY!!!! The storyline was intriguing and the focus on the history of Atticus Line was really well done. I like the characters and all the layers that were revealed with them regarding their troubled pasts and secrets they held from others slowly coming out. Rose and Snell sisters were great secondary characters and really brought a lot to the story for me. The supernatural aspects were well executed and the reveal was satisfactory for me. Overall, a solid read that makes me excited to pick up more of Simone St. James’ previously released novels!