Dark Roads: A Novel
Dark Roads: A Novel book cover

Dark Roads: A Novel

Hardcover – August 3, 2021

Price
$14.28
Format
Hardcover
Pages
384
Publisher
St. Martin's Press
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1250133571
Dimensions
6.64 x 1.38 x 9.48 inches
Weight
1.4 pounds

Description

Praise for Dark Roads : "Masterful... for all fans of psychological thrillers." ―Booklist Online"Gripping, unsettling, and brimming with suspense, Dark Roads is another worthy entry from the accomplished mystery storyteller." ―BookRiot"A well told and all-too-believable tale, Dark Roads borrows from the real-life tragedies along the Highway of Tears in British Columbia. It's a surprisingly fast read, full of action, surprises, despair and hope. It's a keeper for thriller fans." ―Minneapolis Star Tribune"My favorite Chevy Stevens book since Still Missing . Stevens reliably creates complex, resilient female characters, and Hailey and Beth - whose lives collide in Dark Roads - are utterly compelling. The suspense builds with every page, and the ending is a complete shocker." ―Sarah Pekkanen, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of The Wife Between Us "Aptly named, Dark Roads is deep, dark, and unsettling. From the opening page, it’s clear you’re in the hands of a master storyteller. The missing, the dead, those left behind, the ones who know what's happened, all explode onto the page. With brilliant characterizations, tight plotting, and a setting bound to give you chills, this is Steven's finest book to date. A tour de force mystery you do not want to miss."―J.T. Ellison, New York Times bestselling author of Her Dark Lies “Chevy Stevens is a brilliant and unique talent and Dark Roads is an instant classic. My hat’s off to her.” ― C. J. Box, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Long Range "Chevy Stevens is back and better than ever with a grisly tale that will make you think twice before driving down any deserted highways at night. Dark Roads is a chilling, pulse-pounding thriller that also tugs at the heartstrings. It's everything you've come to love from a master of the psych thriller genre!" ― Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of The Other Mrs. "Chevy Stevens does it again in her new thriller, Dark Roads .... Dark Roads is a fast-paced thriller filled with action and brilliant characters. The characters are very real and come to life on the page as they find themselves in danger on several occasions. This is a must-read for fans of the author. It’s a real page-turner." ―Portland Book Review Praise for Chevy Stevens: "Gripping...unforgettable." ―Gillian Flynn "Heart-pounding." ―Lisa Gardner "Will have you spellbound." ―Karin Slaughter“Engrossing, suspenseful.” – Library Journal "Utterly absorbing." ―Kathy Reichs“Chilling, compelling.” ―William Landay“Tense…Action-packed.” – Kirkus Reviews “Fast-paced and thought-provoking.” –Kimberly McCreight “An emotional rollercoaster you’ll be sorry to get off of when you finish the last page.” –Jennifer McMahon “Stevens skillfully builds suspense.” – Publishers Weekly “Haunting and harrowing.” –Megan Abbott“Taught and riveting.” –Hilary Davidson“Deep and exciting.” –Lisa Unger“Riveting.” –Alafair Burke CHEVY STEVENS lives on Vancouver Island with her husband and daughter. When she isn’t working on her next book, she’s hiking with her two dogs on her favorite mountain trails and spending time with her family. Chevy's current obsessions are vintage Airstreams, Hollywood memoirs, all things mid-century modern, and stand-up comedians--not necessarily in that order. Her books, including Still Missing, a New York Times bestseller and winner of the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel, have been published in more than thirty countries.

Features & Highlights

  • “Chevy Stevens is a brilliant and unique talent and
  • Dark Roads
  • is an instant classic. My hat’s off to her.” ― C. J. Box, #1
  • New York Times
  • bestselling author of
  • Long Range
  • "My favorite Chevy Stevens book since
  • Still Missing
  • ...The suspense builds with every page, and the ending is a complete shocker."―Sarah Pekkanen, #1
  • New York Times
  • Bestselling Author of
  • The Wife Between Us
  • "Aptly named,
  • Dark Roads
  • is deep, dark, and unsettling. From the opening page, it’s clear you’re in the hands of a master storyteller...With brilliant characterizations, tight plotting, and a setting bound to give you chills, this is Stevens's finest book to date. A tour de force mystery you do not want to miss."―J.T. Ellison,
  • New York Times
  • bestselling author of
  • Her Dark Lies
  • "Chevy Stevens is back and better than ever...
  • Dark Roads
  • is a chilling, pulse-pounding thriller that also tugs at the heartstrings. It's everything you've come to love from a master of the psych thriller genre!"― Mary Kubica,
  • New York Times
  • bestselling author of
  • The Other Mrs.
  • 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…

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(941)
★★★★
25%
(784)
★★★
15%
(471)
★★
7%
(220)
23%
(721)

Most Helpful Reviews

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Another Chevy Stevens Book I Didn’t Want To End

Ohhh Chevy, you’ve done it again ❤️ A story that tugs at the depths of your soul, turning the page ferociously wanting more, but afraid what the next page might reveal. Characters that become so alive you cry with them, get angry for them, and want them to prevail. Twist and turns you never see coming, inhaling the book so fast, but wanting it to last much longer than it ever does because you can’t put it down. A Prologue and Epilogue that sent chills through my body, but was beautifully done with tact and reverence. What else can I say, but thank you, and can’t wait for your next one😉 no pressure, lol!
10 people found this helpful
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Chevy wrote another winner!

Love all her books but this one is her best yet. I could not put it down. Fantastic story with great characters
I highly recommend it.
4 people found this helpful
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Best One Yet!

I loved Dark Roads. Chevy Stevens is on top of her game. Loved the characters, and the story kept me enthralled. Highly recommend!
3 people found this helpful
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Good

It was a good read. Glad I picked it up. But wasn’t my favorite book from Chevy.
3 people found this helpful
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Sad and Disturbing.

I was ok with the start of the book - interesting and I wanted to find out "who done it". As I read into the later chapters, it became increasingly graphic and sadistic. I don't care "who done it", I just want to get the images our of my mind. Truly disturbing novel. Will not finish reading.
2 people found this helpful
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Another 5 star book!

2 people found this helpful
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Dark Roads

I realize that I am in the minority here with my review. This story just did not do it for me. The entire book just seemed to be thrown together by several different people who did not talk to one another about the story that they were putting together. It was all a little disjointed and well, it came down to the fact that I just did not care what happened.

My thanks to Netgalley and St Martin's Press for this advanced readers copy. This book is scheduled to release August 3, 2021.
2 people found this helpful
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Excellent Thriller set in BC Canada

Chevy Stevens is one of my go to authors for suspense and thrillers. Being a Canadian, many of her books are set in Canada, with this one set in the Cold Creek wilderness in the interior of British Columbia. Residents have been warned about the Cold Creek Highway where hitchhikers and women whose cars have broken down have vanished never be seen again. Local teen, Hailey McBride, decides she needs to leave home when things become unbearable for her, so she takes to the Cold Creek Wilderness, hoping people will think she has disappeared. At the same time, Amber Chevalier, a waitress that has come to Cold Creek to live, is murdered. When her sister Beth comes to Cold Creek a year later for a memorial, she stays with a plan to find out who killed her sister. She gets a job at the local diner where her sister worked and gets to know her friends trying to solve the case. What she doesn't realize is that her snooping is putting her in danger.

Chevy Stevens has done it again, penning a perfectly-paced thriller. Dark Roads hooked me from the first page and kept me on the edge of my seat until the jaw dropping conclusion. The characters were all well developed. Hailey and Beth were both very brave and daring. Hailey knew how to survive in the wild as her father had taught her well. As we got to know her and her life before his death, it was quite emotional. I felt her pain and sorrow. Amber is a young woman, estranged from her family working at a local restaurant. Amber and Hailey become quite close, so when Amber disappears it’s the last straw for Hailey and she decides she has to disappear. Vaughn, her uncle she was living with was creepy. He was an alpha male who wanted everyone to know that he was in charge and had the power. He was an extremely unlikable character. He was hard to figure out, I wasn't sure if he was trying to protect Hailey, or if he had something else in mind. Jonny is Hailey's friend, a young, good looking guy who works with his dad repairing dirt bikes. Vaughn seems to have a vendetta against Jonny, but Jonny is helping Hailey to hide. Then there was Wolf, Hailey's dog. He was perfect for her companion and protector. They have some close calls with danger throughout the book. There were realistic relationships between the characters but the story really focused on the mystery.

This book has a lot of action and scenes in the outdoors with hiking, swimming, etc. The area was well described allowing the reader to become immersed in the story. This was a well-written and plotted story. I did not figure out who the actual perpetrator was until just before it was revealed. I thought I had it all figured out, but should have known better. There are some exciting action scenes in the second half which had me holding my breath, hoping for a good outcome. With just enough information to keep you guessing, the story held my attention to the end where everything wrapped up well. I enjoyed the author's notes that shared information about the actual highway in Northern British Columbia that this novel is loosely based on, all of the women, mostly indigenous, who have gone missing and their abductors never caught, which was her inspiration for this story. The publisher generously provided me with a copy of this book upon request. The rating and opinions shared are my own.
2 people found this helpful
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Great book on tough women and an awesome dog

Chevy Stevens has wowed me yet again with another empowering, thoughtful, character-driven suspense novel. This book is more of a character drama than some of her previous more pure thrillers, but there is suspense and mystery aplenty in this well-told tale of female survival. I listened to the audiobook and also read along in the physical copy. Both reading experiences were great but I especially loved the narration of the audiobook.

The book focuses primarily on two women, and one wonderful dog, Wolf. (As a dog lover, I really just can’t adequately express how much I just loved the character of Wolf.) In the fictional town of Cold Creek, women are disappearing and turning up murdered along the highway. Stevens, in a very informative and sad afterward, shares how the story was inspired by a real highway that has claimed the lives of numerous First Nations women, murdered by a killer or killers as yet unidentified.

In this book, we meet the wonderful and irrepressible character of Hailey, a young woman who has to turn to shocking methods of survival after she is orphaned and placed in a home with an uncle who is beyond creepy and possibly extremely dangerous. We also meet Beth, the sister of one of the highway victims, who is attempting to start a new life in Cold Creek after her sister’s death. The stories of the two women intersect almost magically, with one woman acting as almost the guardian angel of another (as we women should maybe do more in this world that is dangerous for us). The second guardian angel in the form of Wolf was also wonderful. You could read this book for Wolf alone, but that would do a disservice to the two equally wonderful female protagonists.

The story is part wilderness survival story, part violence survival story, and part wonderful dog story, and all parts were equally wonderful and well-developed. I will say, however, that I rarely read wilderness survival type stories but this was not your typical one in that genre and I absolutely loved this aspect of the book.

I really loved this audiobook, so richly narrated with wonderful and distinctive characters (including the dog!) and was riveted to the audio from beginning to end. This is one of those occasions in which the wonderful narration definitely enhanced my experience of the book. But as always, Chevy Stevens’ beautiful prose shines, and her thoughtfulness places her a cut above the many more superficial stories in this genre. This is a really rewarding heartfelt story of female survival of violence, the human spirit, and the dog spirit. I really recommend this book, and especially the beautifully read audiobook, to all fans of the suspense genre, But know that it is more of a character-driven drama than your typical fast suspense tale. This is a story to be savored rather than raced through. I have always liked Chevy Stevens, but this is the book that made me a full-fledged fangirl.

Many thanks to St. Martin’s Press, NetGalley, and the wonderful author for this exceptional reading experience.
2 people found this helpful
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Don't Hitchhike!

Chevy Stevens has created the fictional town of Cold Creek and the Cold Creek Highway for the setting of this one. It’s based on the real Highway of Tears in British Columbia. Hundreds of miles of desolate highway where too many women have gone missing over the years. Women are warned not to hitchhike or travel alone on the highway or surrounding remote logging roads.

This one starts out with an atmospheric prologue and then we meet our first character Hailey, she’s grown up in Cold Creek. Tragically, her father died recently in a car crash and she’s now living with her aunt and uncle. Vaughn is a police officer and not liked around town for his strict adherence to the rules, bullying, and violence. Hailey bristles under his controlling ways and soon she escapes to the mountains where she spent lots of time with her dad.

The next part of the book focuses on Beth, she is lost in grief. She’s come to Cold Creek one year after her sister was killed there. Beth gets a job at the same diner where her sister worked, and she feels like she’s being watched. Can Beth escape the fate of her sister and find the answers to who was behind her murder?

This one has elements of wilderness survival that I really liked and a wonderful dog, Wolf. I thought the characters were well developed and I rooted for Hailey and Beth. It was well-paced. Don’t miss the author’s notes at the end. I will be looking for more books by this author!

Thank you to St. Martin's Press for my gifted copy. All opinions are my own.
2 people found this helpful