I decided it was time to kick off spooky season with Murder Road by Simone St. James. Yes, I know it’s only September, but I’m ready for fall, I’m ready for Halloween, and apparently I’m ready for creepy roads, ghosts, and murder mysteries, too!
This was my first Simone St. James book, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.
She did not disappoint.
Murder Road had everything I wanted for this time of year. A creepy small town, an unsolved murder, a mysterious road with a disturbing history, two newlyweds who suddenly find themselves murder suspects, and just enough supernatural weirdness to make everything even more interesting.
Amazon Summary
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.
My Thoughts on Murder Road
Warning: Major spoilers ahead!
Oh my gosh, this was FUN.
Maybe that’s a strange thing to say about a book involving murdered hitchhikers and a creepy ghost wandering along the side of a road, but I loved it.
The best way I can describe Murder Road is if an episode of Criminal Minds and an episode of Supernatural somehow got mashed together into one story.
There was a murder mystery to solve. There were detectives. There were suspects. There were two main characters with complicated backgrounds and secrets of their own.
And then there was a ghost.
What more could I want?
April and Eddie
I really liked April and Eddie, and I loved them together.
But I was also a little nervous about their relationship.
They seem incredibly close, but they’re newlyweds, and their entire relationship is still pretty new. How well can you really know someone after such a short amount of time?
That question becomes even more important when the police start digging into their backgrounds.
April and Eddie are the people who brought the dying hitchhiker to the hospital, so of course the police are going to look at them. Then investigators start finding things in their pasts that make them look even more suspicious.
And we discover that April and Eddie haven’t exactly told each other everything, either.
I never really believed they were responsible for the murders, but I’ll admit Eddie made me wonder for a minute.
There were unanswered questions about his time away from his military base, and then there was the fact that he seemed almost pulled toward Atticus Line.
Why?
They weren’t supposed to be there. They were trying to get somewhere else entirely, yet Eddie somehow ended up driving down this particular road where people had been murdered for years.
That definitely made me wonder what was going on with him.
And that’s where the supernatural side of the story became so much fun.
The Lost Girl
I LOVED the supernatural element of this book.
I don’t actually read a ton of supernatural books, but whenever that element is done well, I eat it up.
Eddie isn’t even sure at first whether he actually sees The Lost Girl in the back of the truck. Is she really there? Is his mind playing tricks on him? Is something else happening?
Then April sees her, too.
And the description of The Lost Girl, especially those deep, black eyes, was wonderfully creepy.
I wasn’t scared reading this book, but that’s not really what I wanted from it. I loved the eerie feeling that something was always just a little bit off.
There was a real-world mystery happening, but there was also something on Atticus Line that couldn’t be explained by normal police work.
And April and Eddie had to figure out both.
Rose and the Snell Sisters
I also loved the supporting characters in this book.
Rose initially comes across as incredibly curt and harsh. She’s certainly not rushing to welcome April and Eddie with open arms.
But she grew on me.
As she starts to understand who April and Eddie really are, her attitude toward them changes. Eventually, she’s even willing to stand up for them and protect them from the police and detectives who are convinced they must be hiding something.
Then there are the Snell sisters.
I loved them!
I loved their fascination with the Atticus Line murders, their willingness to dig into the history, and the help they gave April and Eddie.
And that’s something I really enjoyed about how this mystery was solved.
It wasn’t one person magically figuring everything out.
It took all of them.
April and Eddie were searching for answers. The Snell sisters brought their knowledge and research. Rose knew the town and its history. Everyone had different pieces, and it took all of them doing what they could to finally uncover the truth.
The Truth About Atticus Line
The final reveal didn’t completely shock me, but I didn’t need it to.
It made sense.
And more importantly, it finally gave Eddie the answers he’d been missing for most of his life.
Learning what actually happened to his mother was horrible.
Her own father killed her and left her on the side of the road.
That revelation made the supernatural element even sadder. Suddenly, The Lost Girl wasn’t simply a creepy ghost appearing along Atticus Line. There was a real tragedy behind her.
And in a strange way, I loved that Eddie had been drawn to this road without understanding why.
He came to Atticus Line as a newlywed on his way to start a new part of his life, and instead, he finally uncovered the truth about a part of his past that had never made sense.
It was awful.
But he finally knew.
There was closure.
And after everything April and Eddie went through, I was really satisfied with where the story left them.
Would I Recommend Murder Road?
Absolutely.
If you like murder mysteries but also enjoy a little bit of supernatural weirdness mixed in, Murder Road is such a fun read.
You’ve got murder, mystery, ghosts, suspicious detectives, complicated characters, small-town secrets, amateur sleuthing, and a creepy stretch of road that you definitely wouldn’t catch me driving down in the middle of the night.
And somehow, underneath all of that, there’s also a really good story about April and Eddie learning more about each other and deciding who they’re going to be together.
The Quarry Girls is still holding onto my number one spot, but Murder Road was a great read, and I highly recommend it for anyone who likes this type of story.
It was also my first Simone St. James book.
It definitely won’t be my last.
And once again, I have to say it:
Someone please make this into a movie.
Seriously. Criminal Minds meets Supernatural, set in 1995, on a creepy, haunted road?
I’d watch that in a heartbeat.