Murder Road by Simone St. James – Review

Published: March 5, 2024

Publisher: Berkley

Series: N/A

Genre: Thriller

Pages: 350 (Kindle)

My Rating: 4.5 Stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
A young couple find themselves haunted by a string of gruesome murders committed along an old deserted road in this terrifying new novel.

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 hitchhiker 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.

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Simone St. James is a new author to me and Murder Road certainly was a strong introduction to her work. This is a thriller set in the 90’s with supernatural elements that will keep you on the edge of your seat, frantically turning the pages.

Murder Road follows April and Eddie Carter, mid-twenties newlyweds on their honeymoon. Or, at least they were headed to their honeymoon destination before they took a wrong turn late at night and stopped to help a woman who had been attacked. The woman, Rhonda Jean, died shortly after they got her to the hospital and now the police think April and Eddie might have done it. The pair of lovebirds might not have murdered Rhonda Jean, but they each have their own secrets and in order to get back to their lives they have to start doing a little digging on their own. 

Atticus Lane, the road they were traveling on into Coldlake Falls, has a dark history of mysterious murders starting in the 1970’s. Young men and women were found brutally killed with no evidence and Detective Quentin has been trying to catch the killer for years. April and Eddie just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and the Detective would love to finally have a resolution to a series of cold cases. 

I loved reading about April and Eddie investigating all these cold cases on their own. They make a determined pair and take their research to multiple locations – from the local lake hangout to the hometown of one of the murdered women. They’re aided by the odd woman who owns the bed and breakfast they’re staying at. She’s got a vendetta against the police department because her husband, a police officer before his death, was always passed over for promotions and big cases due to his race. The supernatural elements of this story are extremely creepy and added a nice bit of extra complexity to the plot.

Overall, I was really impressed with this and will definitely prioritize picking up The Sun Down Motel, which I’ve had a copy of for several months. I was completely hooked on this story and I loved both April and Eddie. I appreciated the fact that even though they both know the other has secrets, they respect the other’s privacy and trust one another enough that this doesn’t create relationship issues. If only fantasy romance could take a hint from this. I’d highly recommend this for folks who enjoy a good crime thriller and like a smidge of horror thrown in for good measure. Murder Road would make a fantastic movie and I guarantee I’d be hiding underneath a blanket while watching it!