Dive Bar at the End of the Road by Kelley Armstrong

A forested road at night, slick from the pounding rain and eerily illuminated by flashes of lightning. Just before midnight, a car swerves to avoid something—or someone—mysteriously standing in the road, only to slam into a fallen tree instead. In the pitch black, four more cars follow in a pileup no one can seem avoid.

Stumbling out of the wreckage, soaked from the rain and nursing various injuries, five strangers find themselves in a backwoods dive bar, waiting for daybreak and hoping for cell service. But as tensions rise and the storm rages on outside, the occupants of the dive bar start to notice that not everything is as it seems. Time is moving differently, and they quickly learn that going outside—whether to assist another accident victim or to hike for help—is a very bad idea.

There’s something in the woods, something that isn't natural. Could the figure in the road have been a warning? Or something more sinister? None of this is normal, and they'll need to work together to figure out what’s happening if they have any hope of surviving through the night.

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Sometimes the most frightening thing isn't what's waiting in the woods. It's discovering that you don't understand the world you're standing in.

✶ PRE-READING ✶

A group of strangers trapped in a dive bar after a series of mysterious car accidents, with something unnatural lurking outside, sounded like exactly the kind of atmospheric horror I wanted to read.

And Kelley Armstrong had an intriguing premise here. I don't think I've come across quite this particular combination of ideas before, so I was very curious to see where she would take it.

✶ POST-READING ✶

As I thought... this is a seriously clever idea.

I'm deliberately not going to say much about exactly what's happening, because discovering the truth is one of the pleasures of the story. What initially looks like a fairly straightforward “strangers trapped in a creepy location while something hunts them” setup turns into something considerably more interesting.

And the tension is excellent.

I genuinely didn't want to put this book down. The storm, the darkness, the strange behaviour of time and the growing understanding that going outside is a very bad idea create this horrible sense of confinement. The characters don't know what the rules are, and every attempt to understand their situation seems to reveal another reason they should be worried.

It surprised me by... how much of the story worked because I didn't understand what was going on.

Usually, I want a book to give me enough information to build a mental model of what's happening. Here, the uncertainty is part of the horror. You know something is wrong, but you don't know what kind of wrong it is.

There were a couple of things that didn't work quite as well for me. One character dies almost immediately after being introduced, and I couldn't help feeling that we'd been given just enough of them to make their death feel like a waste of potential.

And then there's the ending.

I don't want to spoil it, but there is a difference between an ending that leaves you thinking and an ending that leaves you feeling like the story has simply stopped. This one is firmly in the latter category for me.

And I am still irritated about it. 

Which is particularly frustrating because I enjoyed the rest of the book so much.

I think that's ultimately where I land with Dive Bar at the End of the Road: I have mixed feelings about the destination, but I really enjoyed the journey. The premise is clever, the atmosphere is excellent, and the tension kept me reading long after I should probably have gone to bed.

I'll definitely be looking out for more from Kelley Armstrong, because I enjoyed her style enormously.

✦ RECOMMENDATIONS ✦

Book Recommendation: The September House by Carissa Orlando, for another atmospheric horror story where a seemingly ordinary location turns out to have considerably more going on beneath the surface.

TV or Movie Recommendation: The Mist. Not because the stories are particularly similar, but because it captures that same deliciously horrible feeling of being trapped somewhere while something incomprehensible waits outside - and the characters have to work out the rules before it's too late.

✧ VIBE CHECK ✧

A colour palette: midnight blue, storm-cloud grey and the sickly yellow of fluorescent bar lights.

A soundtrack: rain hammering against the windows, distant thunder and the low hum of an old jukebox.

A season: late autumn, when darkness arrives early and a storm can make the outside world feel impossibly far away.

A mood: tense, suspicious, disorientating and deeply uneasy.

A scent: wet clothes, spilled beer, damp wood and the metallic smell of rain.

A texture: cold vinyl seats, sticky bar tops and rainwater dripping down the back of your neck.

★ TAROT CARD PULLED ★

The Moon.

The Moon is the card of uncertainty, illusion and things that cannot yet be seen clearly. It represents the uncomfortable space between what you know and what you fear might be true.

That's exactly where Dive Bar at the End of the Road keeps its characters.

They're trapped somewhere they don't understand, surrounded by a world that isn't behaving according to the rules they know. The woods are frightening, but perhaps more frightening is the possibility that the characters' understanding of reality isn't reliable enough to keep them safe.

The Moon doesn't promise that the truth will be comforting when it finally emerges.

It simply promises that there is something beneath the surface.

✦ THE TRUE QUESTION ✦

How do you know what is real when the rules have changed?

The characters begin the night believing they understand the world they're in. There's a road, a storm, a bar, some injured strangers and a forest outside.

Then the rules start breaking.

The real horror isn't simply that something is hunting them. It's that they have to figure out what kind of reality they're dealing with before they can work out how to survive it.

Final Thoughts

Dive Bar at the End of the Road publishes on the 6th of October. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.