Book Review: White Line Fever by K.C. Jones

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

White Line Fever by K.C. Jones

Mogsy’s Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Genre: Horror

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Nightfire (March 18, 2025)

Length: 368 pages

Author Information: Website

When it comes to horror stories, a girls’ weekend road trip meets a haunted highway sounds like it would be a match made in heaven. This is essentially the premise of K.C. Jones’ White Line Fever, which made me very excited to read it. But while the book is brimming with terrifying potential and starts off on the right track, it struggles to maintain that momentum, and by the end, I found myself more frustrated than thrilled.

The book follows Livia and her lifelong friends Ash, Mo, and Becka, who have affectionately called themselves “The Scoundrels” ever since their childhood days of adventure and mischief. As the story begins, Livia is passing another normal day doing laundry when she makes a devastating discovery while emptying her husband’s pants pockets—an unfamiliar condom wrapper, torn open. The shocking revelation of his infidelity immediately plunges Livia into a dark place. After growing up in an abusive home and eventually escaping her cruel and violent father, she’d thought she finally found happiness. Alas, it was not to be. Needing to get away, Livia turns to her old trio of friends, who suggest taking a road trip into the Oregon wilderness where they can all benefit from some quiet time away from life’s ugly realities.

However, their trip takes a dark turn when an unsettling encounter with an aggressive driver in a pickup truck forces them to take a shortcut through the backroads, onto County Road 951—known to locals as The Devil’s Driveway. Short as it may be, countless tragedies have occurred on this road, spawning dozens of urban legends about it and earning it its sinister nickname. Initially unfazed, the group is just glad to be back on schedule, but after a while, strange things start happening that make them question their sanity. All of them experience losing time and begin having nightmarish visions, and after driving for what seems like hours, they never seem to make progress off this lonely stretch of blacktop that’s only supposedly 15 miles long. Desperation and panic set in as they eventually realize they are trapped with no way to escape.

As this surreal ride unfolds, the novel shifts between past and present, allowing readers a glimpse into the characters’ traumatic pasts that have shaped each of them. Especially prominent are flashbacks to Livia’s childhood, which was spent in the small, insular town of Newberry. There, she and her mother lived in constant fear under the brutal authority of her father, who ran an auto shop and fixed up junk cars. For relief, Livia often sought the company of her friends, including sisters Ash and Mo, and hung out secretly in the junkyard. At some point, though, all of them have come up against the threat of Livia’s father, whose shadow looms over them even after all these years.

At first, this back and forth proved generally effective at creating an unsettling atmosphere and establishes reasons for Livia’s breakdown following the implosion of her marriage. The flashbacks were also welcome breaks in the present timeline in which the intro mainly featured the women driving and talking. However, this pattern quickly became repetitive, resulting in a long, drawn-out buildup period that ruined the eventual payoff. For one, the plot repeatedly teases the horror elements, then pulls back just as they start getting interesting. For another, the characters gradually reveal themselves to be frustratingly dense, doing more bickering than solving problems even as their situation went downhill. Simply put, after a while I just got tired of being jerked around and spending time with these moronic ladies.

Don’t get me wrong. Annoying characters and wonky pacing aside, the book is still pretty solid. But I do think the best parts came too late, especially towards the end when the group meets up with another character whose part in the story was actually introduced in the prologue. Still, while this connection brought the cohesion which had been lacking back to the book, it wasn’t enough to redeem all its earlier missteps. In fact, here the story veered into even weirder, more confusing territory, making for an interesting but somewhat disjointed conclusion.

In the end, White Line Fever is a flawed horror novel which excels in certain areas but falls short in others. But although the thrills didn’t live up to the premise, it is still worth checking out if you enjoy unsettling character-driven stories, and the concept of an all-female cast trapped in a supernatural horror predicament makes me think this would appeal to fans of Rachel Harrison.