Review – Dive Bar at the End of the Road – Kelley Armstrong (3/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Paranormal/Horror
Length: 281 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Release Date: October 6, 2026
ASIN: B0G7762N51
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: eGalley from NetGalley for Review
Rating: 3/5 stars

“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 to 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 the night.”

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got an eGalley of this from NetGalley for Review

Thoughts: I am a big Kelley Armstrong fan and have read most of her books. I wasn’t a huge fan of her Women of the Otherworld series but really loved her Nadia Stafford, Cainsville, Rockton, A Rip Through Time, Haven Rock, A Stitch in Time, and Age of Legends series. This book was not one of her best stories; it was rough, hard to follow, and rushed.

The story starts with one woman trying to swerve to avoid hitting an old woman in the road and instead crashing into a tree that has fallen across the road. The old woman is nowhere to be found, but then a truck then crashes into the woman who hit the tree. The two crash survivors find a strange bar just off the road, and as they enter it, they hear another crash. A young couple has crashed into the second man’s truck. He knows he left his hazards on, but they somehow ended up turned off. What follows is a gathering of strangers in an odd bar under very creepy and horrific circumstances.

It takes a long time for this short book to get moving, and the beginning is very repetitive. Someone crashes, they express disbelief, they are introduced to the situation…someone else crashes…rinse and repeat. Once we get into the meat of the story, and the characters are trying to figure out what is happening, things get a bit more interesting. However, then the whole mystery laid out to us bit by bit by the bartender. It made you feel like you were putting in effort to solve a mystery that was then just handed to you.

This is very creepy and atmospheric, but the fact that the whole story feels so surreal as to be completely disconnected from reality dampened a lot of the creepiness for me. This also felt like it took a lot from other horror tropes that have been way over done (think Final Destination-like) and because of that this book had a B-movie, campy feel to it.

The characters themselves are pretty forgettable; I can’t remember a single name of any character in this story after reading it. I think that is a bit ironic given what we find out about these characters. However, this echoes how I felt about this whole story. It’s very forgettable. The premise didn’t make a lot of sense, and the plot has a lot of holes in it. The ending felt supremely unsatisfying.

However, I did finish it. I struggled a bit to finish it and had to work to push through this, but I did finish it. I think if you aren’t picky and are just looking for an overdone, somewhat campy, supernatural horror story set in the deep dark woods, this is an okay Halloween read. It just felt choppy and poorly put together to me. Part of that is because I always enjoy (and have high expectations for) Armstrong novels and this didn’t seem up to her normal level of work. The whole story felt like an afterthought.

My Summary (3/5): Overall I finished this but didn’t love it; it was okay. The characters are forgettable, and the story felt like a million other bad B movies out there. It is slow to start and then predictable moving forward. The ending left me unsatisfied. This felt like it could have been something much more interesting but was put together in a choppy way that felt like a bit of an afterthought. I am going to forget I read this and look forward to Armstrong’s future books.