I can't believe this is the fist Chevy Stevens book I have ever read. Where has she been all my life?

I loved the description of the Canadian scenery and her character development is excellent. I was definitely more of a Hailey fan than Beth, but it all worked together perfectly. Beware of some triggering content for some, but it is an extremely entertaining experience overall.

*Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an unbiased review.

Chevy Stevens is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors!

Dark Roads keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire time. The twists and turns that Stevens writes are so brilliant. Just when you think you have figured it out…everything gets flipped upside down.

Dark Roads
By Chevy Stevens

Cold Creek, a small town on a stretch of Canadians 500 mile highway where women go missing. Hailey McBride lives in cold creek & lost her dad. She now lives with her aunt, nephew and her aunts new husband Vaughn, a police officer in the town. He is creepy, cold and won’t let Hailey do anything. Halley ends up leaving to live in the woods and befriends “Wolf”, the 2 colored eyed dog. Everyone presumed that Hailey was taken by the highway killer.

Beth, comes to Cold Creek after her sister, Amber, was murdered to get answers. Beth gets a job at the cafe where Amber worked and lives out at the lake campground. Vonn is almost stalking Beth, but why? And what really happened to Hailey?

I have to admit, I enjoyed this story more than I thought I would. This being the first story of Chevys I have read. It was easy and quick to read.

Thank you to St.Martins Press and NetGalley for the advanced copy on return for my honest review.

I have seen many mixed reviews of this book so I wasn't sure what to expect when I started it. I fall into the category of "I really liked it"! I was not entirely expecting the outcome, but I can't say what I was expecting without giving anything away, sorry. The pace was perfect, moved along quickly but gave enough detail and character development so you got a good feel for everyone and were able to have feelings on things that were happening to them. I really liked the information on missing Indigenous women at the end; I have been learning more and more about this phenomena and am hopeful that there will be more coming to light to find these women and bring them some justice and their families some closure. This was my first Chevy Stevens and will not be my last, I like her style and didn't find her to be gory or gross, at least not gratuitously.

Traveling With T’s Thoughts:

Chevy Stevens does not disappoint in Dark Roads. It’s a story that is dark and twisted…. and oh so good!

What I liked:

The cover. It really went with the book.

The escalating tension in the book. It kept me flipping pages.

The ending! Oh so good!



Bottom line: Chevy Stevens is an author I will always look to see when her next book will be releasing. She does evil characters and girls in peril stories very well!

DARK ROADS – by Chevy Stevens - WOW!

‘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 … 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.’

I love a book that immediately hooks me in, my attention set full throttle as I ride out the twists and turns of the narrative, never knowing where the story will take me, and honestly, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

DARK ROADS checks all the boxes–I Highly Recommend!

‘“Wild roses are tough. You can mow them down to the roots or set them on fire, and they’ll still come back.”’

Thank you, NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press, for providing me with an eBook of DARK ROADS at the request of an honest review.

This was an excellent, quick, engaging read. I loved the character development, how the two main characters were so intertwined but their stories so distinct that you had no trouble knowing who was who. I also loved that this book is at its core about murdered and missing indigenous women. There is far too little ever said or written about them.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press and Chevy Stevens for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review. Dark Roads is available now.

I got about halfway through the book, and put it down. I think someone who likes YA books would enjoy this book.

This was just an okay read for me. It was atmospheric and I was pretty into it the first 40%, but felt a whole lot of nothing happened for a while. I didn't feel like there were enough twists; and this shouldn't have been marketed as a thriller. Maybe mystery or suspense??

Compared to other thrillers I read - I wanted more and a quicker pace.

I got about 20% through this book and just could not keep reading it. While it's marketed as a thriller, it has a teen/YA feel to it and just wasn't particularly grabbing my interest. It's not that it was bad - it just isn't a book for me. Because of this, I did not want to negatively review this book online or continue reading it with the thought that my opinion would be swayed by my interest.

Didn't capture my attention and engagement. Interested in trying it again though and hopefully it will take.

For years, women have gone missing from or have been found murdered along the fictional Cold Creek Highway, in British Columbia. Five hundred desolate miles of highway where women hitchhikers and drivers with broken-down vehicles have been preyed upon and the killer or killers never found.

The story begins as we read about the brutal death of one of the victims, a person who is the victim of violence. And therein sets the tone of the book.

The protagonist is seventeen year old Hailey, who has recently lost her father. Her mother has already died a few years ago and thus after her recent loss, she is now living with her aunt and her cruel, cop step-uncle, Vaugh.
Vaugh is a despicable person who's set his eyes on Hailey. Vaugh also hates Hailey's longtime friendship with Johnny, who is her best friend, and her budding friendship with Amber, a waitress at the local diner. When Hailey finds realises that Vaugh is behind a lot of terrible things which have occurred in the area, she makes it her mission to find evidence. However, when she does have evidence she fears for her life and flees to the hills. The wilderness which her father has taught her to live and to survive.

I don't want to reveal more because there is so much more to this story than what meets the eye. The author has done a great job in characterisations and world-building. I thought the story was a little long but that's a personal opinion.

I will still recommend this book because it should be read.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for sending a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was my first book by Chevy Stevens and it won't be my last! This story hooked me from the start! So much drama with the characters and filled with suspense. This had me turning pages very quickly!

This is the second book by Stevens and it completely blew me away. This dark, thrilling, and suspenseful book pulled me in from the beginning and didn't let go until the very end.

The book starts out with the missing girls on Cold Creek Highway. which gives the impression that this is going to be about that and a possible serial killer. Well, that's not exactly right. This was more suspense than a psychological thriller but had me guessing to the end (the end was really drawn out and I fought to stay interested). After the death of her father, Hailey is sent to live with relatives. She lives with her aunt's family that includes her young nephew and Uncle Vaughn, who makes me very uncomfortable with his creepy behaviors toward Hailey. He is a police officer and uses his badge to intimidate. The vibe in the house is uncomfortable as Hailey doesn't feel she has anyone to confide in as things begin to get to strange and deadly. While the book did drag on at times, and, if you suspend disbelief, it's a good story with an interesting twist and it's a;; wrapped up nicely in the end.

I am a HUGE fan of Chevy Stevens. ANYTHING she writes is worthwhile. With that, I do usually find her story telling unique and that is a quality I find interesting and what makes me pick up the books. However, Although I did like this book, I found it NOT to be my favorite from her. Worth the read though.

Cold Creek Highway winds its way through vast and rugged wilderness in British Columbia. Its isolation in places has become a hunting ground for predators, with scores of missing girls as proof of its dangerous nature. Hailey McBride lives in Cold Creek, forced to live with her aunt and overly strict uncle after her father dies in an accident. Vaughn is a policeman, controlling in a way that seems unnatural to Hailey. As Vaughn seems determined to take away everyone Hailey hold dear, including her best friend Jonny and a young waitress named Amber, will she make a decision that will put all at risk?

I usually like the books by Chevy Stevens, but this one is too overly complicated. There is a lot going on and the introduction of a new main character later in the book convolutes the novel even more. Having read another book similar to this one, with young women going missing from the roadway as a major theme, I could not help but to compare. The distasteful and aggressive Vaughn is so over the top that it seems obvious that he is not who he appears to be. Each character has a side plot and this leads the book astray.

Overall, I was not a fan of Dark Roads and would be hesitant to recommend it to other readers.

Disclaimer: I was given an Advanced Reader's Copy of Dark Roads by NetGalley and the publisher, St. Martin's Press. The decision to read and review this book was entirely my own.

I LOVED this book. This is the first novel I have read by Chevy Stevens and without a doubt it will not be the last.
This book is about a highway where women tend to mysteriously disappear. The story is told by two women, one escaping a terrible living situation and letting people believe she has been abducted and another coming into town looking for answers. I don’t want to spoil anything for future readers.
I really liked how this book was written, being told separately by the two main characters and then switching.
Normally I have an idea of how the story might end, but this one had me guessing quite a few times. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good thriller. Plus it’s by a Canadian author, so that’s a bonus!

1.5 stars.

A complete miss for me. I cannot, in good conscience, give this a full 2 stars.

This was my first experience with this author. I don’t like writing negative reviews, but I believe in being honest. Sadly, this is one of the worst books I’ve ever finished. I listened to the first 20% on audio and found myself cringing at the awkward dialogue so I switched to reading the physical book with the hopes that it was the audio narrator I wasn’t clicking with. By 50%, I switched back to audio knowing it had nothing to do with the audio narrator and everything to do with the book itself. I refused to give up because of all of the raving reviews - I was sure it had to get better. Unfortunately, this got progressively worse with each chapter in the second half. I quadruple checked Goodreads to confirm I was reading the same book everyone else loved.

I will start by saying I don’t enjoy YA and this felt very much like a story for a younger target audience. The premise intrigued me since it is based on real events. I expected to read a book giving voice to the victims of the Highway of Tears but this novel lacked focus and instead centred around wild teenage characters gallivanting around the small town. In my opinion, this book failed to deliver what it intended and there was far too much ridiculous side story going on.

It was a complete disconnect for me with the writing. I didn’t care for any of the characters except Wolf, the dog. The dialogue and inner thoughts of the characters were consistently cheesy and cringey, lacking any sort of natural ease. I have never rolled my eyes as much as I did with this novel - the behaviour became more absurd and outlandish as each chapter went by. The amateur sleuthing was too much for me to handle.

I will stop here as I recognize how much time and effort goes into writing a novel and clearly this wasn’t intended for me. I would be very hesitant in picking up another book by this author.

Thank you to the publisher for my digital review copy! Thank you to my lovely local library for the physical and audio loan!

Not my favorite title by Chevy but I still enjoyed reading it. I just wasn’t connected to the characters as well as I usually am with her books and I found it kind of slow. However, I still enjoyed it and would recommend it to others.