Dark Roads is inspired by the real-life Highway of Tears between Prince George and Prince Rupert where women have been going missing or were murdered since 1970; a disproportionately high number of the victims are Indigenous women. I was expecting Dark Roads to treat its subject matter with more sensitivity, but instead it is a sensationalistic thriller featuring a crooked cop which verges on the ridiculous. This novel left me feeling disappointed with myself for reading it.

Dark Roads is set in BC in the fictional town of Cold Creek on the fictional Cold Creek Highway, where women have been going missing for decades. The first female protagonist of the novel is teenager Hailey McBride, who has recently been orphaned and moves in with her aunt and her aunt’s family. Hailey is one of those young women who think that just because other young women have gone missing on the Cold Creek Highway, and just because one of her own classmates has been murdered, nothing bad will happen to her.

Hailey’s aunt is married to a police officer, Vaughan, who is called the “Ice Man” by the locals because he is a cold, calculated creep. No one in town will stand up to him. He controls Hailey’s life and will not let her hang out with her friends or get a job in town, and Hailey’s aunt seems oblivious to this. Hailey discovers that Vaughan has been hiding cameras around town to secretly record women, and that he has also been recording Hailey in her bedroom and in the bathroom. Hailey is convinced that this means that Vaughan is the Cold Creek killer, but it would be too obvious for him to be the killer because he is such a one-dimensional villain. She tries to anonymously tell another police officer about what Vaughan is doing, but nothing comes of it. No longer able to live under Vaughan’s control, Hailey concocts a plan to disappear into the wilderness and hide out until she is 18 and she can claim her inheritance from her late father (which does not make sense to me because the age of majority in BC is 19). Hailey naively thinks that no one will assume she was a victim of the Cold Creek killer when she goes missing. *facepalm*

Cut to one year later and we are introduced to our other female protagonist, Beth Chevalier, whose sister lived in Cold Creek before she was murdered shortly after Hailey disappeared. Beth’s life has fallen apart since her sister was murdered, which is understandable. She was in university studying to be a lawyer before she drops out of school, loses her job and becomes homeless. She does not want to go home to her parents because they are religious and refuse to talk about her dead sister. So, Beth decides to go to Cold Creek to investigate her sister’s murder because she is frustrated that the police have not arrested anyone yet.

I understand that Beth is grieving the loss of her sister, but her behaviour is completely disrespectful to her sister’s memory, especially considering her sister was murdered on the notorious Cold Creek Highway. Beth abuses drugs and gets blackout drunk every night; she cannot afford a motel, so she camps out alone in the woods; she goes hiking in the woods alone and ill equipped – I just cannot even anymore. I am sick of reading thrillers with idiotic female protagonists.