Lindsay L's Reviews > Dark Roads

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!