MURDER ROAD by Simone St. James – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Murder Road by Simone St. James
Published by Berkley on March 5 2024
Genres: Adult, Thriller
Pages: 352
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads

The nitty-gritty: A newlywed couple out of their element try to solve a murder involving an angry ghost in this fast-paced, emotional thriller.

Simone St. James is back with another twisty supernatural mystery, and while I didn’t like this quite as much as her last book, The Book of Cold Cases, there is plenty here to enjoy.

The story takes place in the summer of 1995 and follows newlyweds April and Eddie, who, when the story opens, are driving to Lake Michigan for their honeymoon. Somewhere along the way, Eddie winds up on a dark, unfamiliar road, although he can’t remember how he got there. Before they can figure out how to get back on course, they spot an injured girl walking on the side of the road. They stop and pick her up, intending to drive her to the local hospital for help. But the girl, whose name is Rhonda Jean, dies from her injuries, and suddenly April and Eddie are murder suspects.

Forced to stay in the small town of Coldlake Falls while they are questioned by the police, the two find themselves embroiled in a decades-long investigation where other people have disappeared or been murdered while walking on Atticus Line, the road where Eddie and April picked up Rhonda Jean. An urban legend about the Lost Girl, a ghost who haunts the road and kills lost travelers out of revenge, captures April’s imagination, and before long she’s delving into local history, trying to uncover the identity of the girl. But the Lost Girl isn’t finished yet, and Eddie and April are in her crosshairs.

The story is told from April’s first person point of view, and I enjoyed her unique voice and her determination to find the truth, even though she has no experience in law enforcement. Through her eyes the mystery unfolds, so the reader is just as much in the dark as April and Eddie are. St. James does a great job of slowly revealing the mystery of Atticus Line and the Lost Girl by adding in lots of creepy moments as well as introducing side characters who help fill in the blanks. I loved the scenes that take place on the “murder road.” It’s almost as if a spell were cast over it, since there seems to be a supernatural force that draws people in but plays with their memories as well. Both Eddie and April see things—or think they see things—that can’t be explained, and as the story goes, anyone who sees the Lost Girl on Atticus Line will be the next to die. 

The story starts off with one murder to solve, but the author makes her plot more complex when other deaths from the past, also connected to Atticus Line, seem to suggest a serial killer might be involved (although remember this is Simone St. James, so nothing is quite as it seems at first). Then there are April’s and Eddie’s backstories, which are seamlessly woven into the narrative. We know from the beginning that April suffered some kind of trauma as a child and that her mother is dead. We don’t find out the nature of that trauma until later, but it’s presented as a big secret, since April hasn’t even told Eddie the whole truth of what happened.

Eddie is ex-military and served in Iraq, and therefore has his own trauma to deal with. Certain events trigger his PTSD, and being involved with Rhonda Jean’s death isn’t helping at all. Both Eddie and April are keeping secrets from each other too, which I didn’t like at first, because I really loved their relationship and I didn’t want any drama to come between them. But St. James handled it so well, and in the end I loved the way they worked things out. I do want to mention a few other things about their relationship that I loved, since it felt unique from any other fictional relationship I’ve seen before. Both come from modest roots and neither has much money. April spent a great deal of her life doing odd jobs just to stay afloat, and Eddie’s PTSD prevents him from holding down any job for long. But together they complement each other perfectly, and each feels lucky to have found the other. It was truly a beautifully written marriage, and I wanted nothing more than for them to both make it to the end of the story.

There are some really good side characters as well. The couple ends up staying at a bed and breakfast run by a prickly woman named Rose, who later takes Eddie and April under her wing and helps them solve the case of the Lost Girl. Rose is obsessed with Princess Diana (the story takes place before her death), which was bittersweet because I was a big fan of hers as well. I thought the detective in charge of Rhonda Jean’s murder was a little to much of a typical story villain, so I didn’t really like his character that much. His immediate assumption when Eddie and April bring Rhonda Jean to the hospital is that they must have attacked her, because they have her blood all over their clothes, lol.

April and Eddie do some stupid stuff too, like going back to Atticus Line after their first bad experience on the road. True, they are trying to figure who the Lost Girl was, but come on! Some of the reveals about the murder were a little far fetched for me, and I was hoping for some kind of shocking twist near the end, but I sort of figured things out myself. I thought the characters’ personal dramas were actually more interesting than the ghost storyline, and in the end it was April’s and Eddie’s backstories that had the most impact on me.

Still, this is another fun supernatural mystery from an excellent writer.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.