Format: Hardcover, 384 pages
Release Date: August 3, 2021
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Source: Publisher
Genre: Contemporary / Thriller
The acclaimed and beloved author of Still Missing is back with her most breathtaking thriller yet.
For decades, people have been warned about the Cold Creek Highway.
Hitchhikers have vanished along it over the years, and women have been
known to have their cars break down... and never be seen again. When
Hailey McBride decides to run away from an unbearable living situation,
she thinks that her outdoor skills will help her disappear into the Cold
Creek wilderness, and she counts on people thinking that she was the
victim of the killer.
One year later, Beth Chevalier arrives
in Cold Creek to attend a memorial for the victims of the highway, but
it might as well be one week for the amount of pain that Beth is still
dealing with after her sister, Amber, was murdered the previous summer.
Beth has quit university, is lying to her parents, and popping pills
like Tic Tacs. Maybe this will finally bring her peace.
When she
gets a job at a local diner where Amber once worked, she connects with
people who knew her sister. Beth wants to find who killed her sister and
put her own life back together, but as she gets closer to the truth,
she learns that there is more than one person lying in Cold Creek.
Author Chevy Stevens' Dark Roads explores the real life highway of Tears in British Columbia which she calls Cold Creek Highway. For decades, people, especially young women, have been warned about the Cold Creek Highway. Don’t hitchhike, don’t drive on the highway at night, and do your absolute best to avoid it altogether. 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. 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. Women, especially from the First Nation, have been known to have their cars break down and never be seen again. 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. She loves her aunt and cousin, but Vaughn makes her life miserable. He is controlling, rough, and secretive. Hailey's only real friend is Jonny who is constantly being harassed without valid reasoning by her aunts husband.
After her girlfriend Amber is found brutally murdered, and dumped in the woods, things change. Hailey is overwhelmed by grief and forbidden to work, socialize, or date by her overbearing uncle who works for the RCMP. Hailey chooses to vanish into the mountainous terrain with her trusty side kick Wolf, hoping everyone will believe she’s left town until she turns 18, and then Vaughn won't have any control over what she does. However, rumors begin to spread that she was taken by the highway killer—who’s claimed another victim over the summer. The only person who knows the truth is Jonny.
The second part of the book focuses on Beth Chevalier, who is Amber's older sister. One year after Amber's death, and Hailey's disappearance, Beth arrives in Cold Creek, where her sister Amber lived—and where she was murdered. Estranged from her parents after dropping out of her path to becoming a lawyer, she chooses to seek answers and 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.
Beth's only hope is that by befriending those like Johnny, she can get answers. But the answers she may find may end up putting her directly in the killers path. What
she finds is an opportunity to pull back the layers of mystery still
shrouding these cases and her sister's untimely death, and she follows
in her footsteps by taking a job at the local diner and getting close to
Jonny. But the killer is out there--unchained,
untethered, and looking for his next victim---and Beth fits the profile
all too well.
The identity of the serial killer was surprising, especially after the author spends so much time building up another character as being the one most likely to be a serial killer. What's even more diabolical, is that you, as the reader, won't be able to help yourself by hating the man the author builds up to be a man whose character has forever labeled him as Iceman. Can Beth find answers to what happened to her sister? Will Hailey ever be able to go home again after all that's happened to her, and the shocking revelation about her father's death?
The author’s note is also worth a read, as she was inspired by the Highway of Tears. Apparently there is a real life highway in British Columbia called the Highway of Tears. The Highway of Tears is a 725-kilometre corridor of Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada, which has been the location of many missing and murdered Indigenous women beginning in 1970. In the book, it is alleged nearly 1,000 victims. In real life, it's more like 80-100.
Thank
you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of
this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and
opinions are my own.
The highway is not apparent, it's real. :-)
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