Review: Dark Roads by Chevy Stevens

Being addicted to ID Discovery shows about murder and mayhem, I was instantly intrigued by Chevy Stevens's newest novel, Dark Roads. I vaguely remember watching a special about a Canadian highway that was the last known location of a lot of missing women and is believed to be the hunting route of a serial killer. So when I read the synopsis of Dark Roads, about a similar stretch of highway through the dark Canadian wilderness where women from all walks of life, especially indigenous women, disappear never to be seen or heard from again, I knew I needed to add it to my TBR pile.

The story is narrated by two young women who experience first-hand the evil that can lurk in the dark. Hailey was recently orphaned when her father died in a tragic accident and now has to live with her aunt and uncle. Her Uncle Vaughn is referred to as "The Iceman" by the kids in town because of his strict demeanor. He is always nagging Hailey about not walking or biking at night along the Cold Creek Highway. An apparent control freak, Vaughn and Hailey do not get along well under the best of circumstances, so it's no surprise that things come to a head when Hailey discovers that Vaughn is keeping a dark and dangerous secret. Fearing for her safety, Hailey runs away to live off the grid in an attempt to free herself from Vaughn's control. It doesn't take long for the town to assume that Hailey too has become a victim of the Cold Creek Highway.

One year passes and the story picks up with Beth, a young woman who drops out of law school after her sister is found murdered in a ditch along the infamous highway. Beth is struggling to come to terms with her sister's death and the fact that the police don't seem to have answers about the monster who destroyed her family's lives. She decides to visit Cold Creek herself and steps into the life her sister lived, waitressing at the same restaurant and living out of a motel before deciding to set herself up at the local campground. When Beth accidentally crosses paths with Hailey, the two girls must work together to stay out of the clutches of a ruthless killer who is watching their every move.

This turned out to be a completely different story from what I had been expecting, but I still enjoyed it. Dark Roads started off really strong. I flew through the first part of the book where Hailey was the only narrator. Stevens did a wonderful job of developing characters and building the 'creep' factor. Her ability to create a realistic setting is quite impressive. Unfortunately, the novel really slowed when the narrator switched to Beth and took quite awhile to pick back up again. Having read the whole book now, I would say this is just a minor flaw considering the intensity takes back over for the last 20% of the book. There were times I considered not finishing it because I was bored of Beth's day to day life in Cold Creek, but I'm so glad I stuck with it because what followed was action-packed and exciting! There will be a few spots you'll have to trudge through in order to get to the thrilling ending, but it really is worth it! If that sounds like something you can handle, go check it out!

My Rating: ★★★★☆

At the time of this post, this title is set to be released on August 3rd, 2021.

*Thanks to the author, St. Martin's Press, and Netgalley for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Review: The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

One thing I love is a good scary movie from the 1980s, before horror movies became all about the gore and shock value. When I read the synopsis of Grady Hendrix's novel, The Final Girl Support Group, I knew it was something I would have to read. It follows the lives of several "final girls" decades after they each became the sole survivor in their own real-life horror movie. Many of these women's tales inspired hokey film franchises and tell-all books written by horror-obsessed fans. Lynette is one of these final girls and finds life after tragedy to be difficult, to put it mildly. Scared that she'll one day be the target of a psychotic killer again, she practically lives as a shut-in, literally behind a cage she's installed in her apartment. She has no one in her life, besides a plant she talks to and her fellow final girls, who meet monthly for a group therapy session in secret. All of Lynette's precautions prove inadequate though when the final girls become the target of someone who wants them all dead. She must face her fears of the outside world and put decades' worth of preparation into action if she wants to survive and save the only people who understand her.

This book was a fun read! It got a bit over-the-top with the gore and violence for me in a few bits, but I'm not going to hold that against the story because it is in the appropriate horror genre. It honestly felt like I was watching a modern-day horror movie. There were a lot of connections to famous horror films like Halloween, Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Scream, just to name a few. I found myself spooked quite a few times while reading this late at night when I was the only one in the house awake. My biggest complaint is that the ending to the big scene at the end seemed a little rushed. I went back a few pages just to make sure I hadn't accidentally skipped over a big chunk because I couldn't really believe that was it. The build up to the scene was great and then it just deflated. There were also several instances throughout the novel where the characters were just too unbelievable or stared to annoy me. Lynette could be very repetitive and whiny. Also, there's no way the cops would have acted towards Lynette the way they did in the novel. I mean, they refuse her right to a lawyer, lock her up for days while taunting her with graphic material related to her traumatic past. Maybe a handful of cops would've been jerks, but an entire station psychologically abusing someone like that without repercussions just seems so far-fetched. 

Overall, The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix is worth your time, especially if you're a fan of classic horror movies. Despite some minor issues with the story, it is mostly fast-paced and suspenseful with some surprising twists and a lot of bad-ass female characters. 

My Rating: ★★★★☆

At the time of this post, this title is set to be released on July 13th, 2021.

*Thanks to the author, Berkley Publishing Group, and Netgalley for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Review: The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean

Jane lives a simple life as a farmer's wife. Each day blends into the next as she follows a mundane routine of cooking and cleaning. Her husband, Leonard, works all day in the fields and rules his home with an iron fist. He punishes Jane for any act of disobedience by burning her prized possessions, one by one. What makes this punishment all the more harsh is that Jane is a victim of human trafficking and hardly has anything to call her own other than some letters from her sister and an old copy of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Leonard keeps her captive in the isolated farmhouse where she is monitored by security cameras that record her every move. After exhausting all attempts to escape in the first few years of her captivity and suffering a terrible injury to one of her ankles, Jane has more or less become resigned to her twisted role as Leonard's wife. That changes when Jane becomes pregnant.

Determined that her daughter will not grow up to be preyed upon by such a monster as Leonard, Jane again begins dreaming about escaping one day. Things get even more interesting when her husband kidnaps a local woman and keeps her in the cellar below the farmhouse where is forced to endure unspeakable horrors. Kidnapping and holding Jane against her will was easy enough since she was a Vietnamese woman who had been smuggled into the country illegally. There was no one looking for her when she went missing. It's an entirely different ball game with Cynthia, Leonard's latest victim, who is on the nightly news and has become the focus of local law enforcement. He's starting to feel the pressure and it's not long before Jane realizes that this situation might provide her with her one and only chance for freedom, if she's brave enough to risk everything and try.

When I first heard about this novel, it was being compared a lot to Room, which I read several years ago. I have to say that I enjoyed both novels, but The Last Thing to Burn was so much more engrossing to me. I practically devoured it in one sitting. Kudos to Will Dean for being able to write about such a mundane existence without actually boring the reader. There was always something going on to keep me turning the pages. While there were instances of abuse mentioned in the novel, I appreciated that they were more alluded to rather than described. I was already unsettled by Jane's situation and I think gratuitous descriptions of rape would have made this too much for me to stomach. If you are looking for a thrilling page-turner, look no further!

My Rating: ★★★★1/2

*Thanks to the author, Atria Books, and Netgalley for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Review: Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris

Jack and Grace are one of those couples you love to hate. Jack is a lawyer for battered women who charms everyone he meets with his dashing good looks and chivalrous manners. (The fact he's incredibly wealthy doesn't hurt either.) Grace is the girl-next-door who loves art and takes care of her younger sister, Millie, who has Downs Syndrome. Millie has always stood in the way of Grace getting next-level serious with a guy, but Jack accepts them as a package deal. Who wouldn't be just a little bit envious of their perfect life? I mean give me a bucket to puke in already! However, from the very first chapter of Behind Closed Doors, the reader is subtly made aware that not everything is as it seems in this fairy tale relationship and I was immediately hooked.

I've been a volunteer at my local women's center for the past few years and while I am mostly a sexual assault advocate, I did go through the training for domestic violence. I thought B.A. Paris did a great job showing all the manipulative tricks and traps an abuser subjects on his or her victim. It's very common to hear people say, "Why don't you just leave if your husband is abusing you?" No one knows how dangerous a relationship like that is until they've been in one themselves. On average, it takes seven attempts for a battered woman to successfully leave her abuser for good. Seven! And that assumes she lives through the previous six attempts, because not everyone's always that lucky.

Okay, I got off on a tangent there, but here's what you need to know about this book. I won't spoil anything for you. The writing is superb. The suspense is there from the very first chapter and never lets up.  The characters are very real and I was completely invested in Grace and her fate. The abuse/violence gets unsettling at times, but it was necessary to build to the climax. Overall, this is a great book choice if you're looking for something you could easily read in one sitting. If B.A. Paris continues to write such thrilling novels, I am prepared to become a fan for life.

My Rating: ★★★★★

Review: The River at Night by Erica Ferencik

It's so easy to get stuck in the motions of daily life.  We have jobs, responsibilities, and relationships that need constant attention.  Sometimes you just need a little getaway to recharge your batteries and renew your vigor for life.  The characters is The River at Night by Erica Ferencik are searching for just such a getaway, but they got much more than they bargained for in the Allagash wilderness of rural Maine.

In this suspenseful survival story, four average, middle-aged women embark on an adventure in the name of tradition.  They hire a guide to lead them as they white-water raft their way through the unfamiliar terrain.  Mixed with emotions of fear and excitement, the women plan to use this vacation as a reprieve from the struggles of their daily lives: addiction, loneliness, illness, and abusive relationships.  When plans go terribly awry, these women are faced with dangers they did not prepare themselves for.  They must lean on each other for support as they try to survive the elements and unforeseen violence that's waiting for them in the woods.  This novel is like a female rendition of "Deliverance" and it lives up to its expectations.

From the moment I read Gary Paulsen's Hatchet in the fifth grade, I've always been drawn to survival stories. Overall, I really enjoyed this book. There were slow parts here and there, but the characters were deep and real. Each woman had a unique story and believable flaws. Ferencik did a great job making the characters relatable to the targeted female audience. The tension continued to build on itself throughout the last two-thirds of the book, and I found myself staying up late into the night so I could read just one more chapter.  There was quite a bit of violence, but I never felt as if it was unnecessary or just thrown in for the shock value.  Everything that happened to this group of friends advanced the plot and kept me turning the pages. If you're looking for a page-turning summer read, you could certainly do much worse than The River at Night.

My Rating: ★★★★☆