Review Down the Darkest Road by Tami Hoag

Once upon a time I had the perfect family. I had the perfect husband. I had the perfect children. I had the perfect life in the perfect home. And then, as in all fairy tales, evil came into our lives and destroyed us.

Four years after the unsolved disappearance of her sixteen-year-old daughter, Lauren Lawton is the only one still chasing the ghosts of her perfect Santa Barbara life. The world has given her daughter up for dead. Her husband ended his own life in the aftermath. Even Lauren’s younger daughter is desperate to find what’s left of the childhood she hasn’t been allowed to have.

Lauren knows exactly who took her oldest child, but there is not a shred of evidence against the man. Even as he stalks her family, Lauren is powerless to stop him. The Santa Barbara police are handcuffed by the very laws they are sworn to uphold. Looking for a fresh start in a town with no memories, Lauren and her younger daughter, Leah, move to idyllic Oak Knoll. But when Lauren’s suspect turns up in the same city, it feels to all the world that history is about to repeat itself. Leah Lawton will soon turn sixteen, and Oak Knoll has a cunning predator on the hunt.

Sheriff’s detective Tony Mendez and his team begin to close in on the suspected killer, desperate to keep the young women of their picturesque town safe. But as the investigators sift through the murky circumstances of an increasingly disturbing case, a stunning question changes everything they thought they knew. 

A good crazy strategically planned thriller is difficult to execute. Its one of the most difficult things to read if its done well, its challenging, its painful to read, it physically hurts. Down the Darkest Road did just that. What would you do if you knew exactly who took your child? What if you knew she was gone and he was out there walking scott free? These are the central and integral questions to do Down the Darkest Road and as you’ll see in the book they take centere stage through the novel. They are what the entire book is based on. And it reads like that, well it does once you get to the end after all the crazy twists and turns and surprises, sweet mother are there surprises gallore in this one. My Jebus it was like every time you turned a corner something new or some truth you thought was concrete turned out to be completely false in this book, which is partly why it was so damn good.

Ms. Hoag obviously started out answering those 2 important questions, what would you do… then she built this suspense novel on top of them, with layer upon layers of pain and intregue, of anger and rage, and Fear. So much fear from everyone even those you wouldn’t expect. Something else you dont see coming is the intense but quick characterization of the secondary characters, the ones introduced in this novel, not the ones we’ve seen in other books.

Ms. Hoag has this way of getting to the meat of a character in so few words that you get EXACTLY who they are without the pages and paragraphs that are necessary for many others. She is able to simply get her characters there without all of the filler, straight no chaser. That may be the best part about Down the Darkest Road, that Ms. Hoag is able to get you there without much extra so she can focus on terrorizing you while you’re in that place instead of focusing on getting you there.

I loved how disfunctional they all were. Lauren, the mother was as screwed up as they come but surprisingly together and resolute given what shes been through. Leah as you see is so angry at everyone, most especially her mother, for not focusing on her pain as well when her sister was taken. For her mother not realizing that while her daughter was taken, Leahs older sister was taken as well, and that pain and the anger displayed as well as how she displays it is haunting and real.

There is So much emotion to Down the Darkest Road, all of it dark, depressing and so achingly alive that it sucks you into its web of overlapping confidences and suspended anger until youre ready to go with the rest of them.

I loved it.

Overall Rating: A-