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Omens

by Kelley Armstrong

Twenty-four-year-old socialite Olivia Taylor Jones seems to have a perfect life: wealthy parents, a successful fiancé, and financial stability. That’s until she finds out that she was actually adopted into her rich Chicago family, and her real parents are serving separate jail terms as the city’s most notorious serial killers. In the opening chapters of this new series, best-selling author Kelley Armstrong seems to be venturing into dark thriller territory, but the story soon cedes ground to the author’s usual supernatural fare, when Olivia begins having premonitions.

The reason for these visions is not made clear, but it appears to have something to do with the small town of Cainsville, Illinois. In an effort to regroup, Olivia holes up in Cainsville, where, with the help of her mother’s former lawyer, Gabriel, she begins to research her parents’ crimes, convinced there is more to the story than what has been publicly reported. The creepy small-town setting is one of the novel’s strongest elements: Armstrong writes about Cainsville so vividly that it becomes another character.

Armstrong also does an excellent job of writing her heroine. Although Olivia initially seems like an annoyingly over-privileged society girl, Armstrong transforms her into someone the reader wants to root for. It’s surprising how smart and fierce Olivia turns out to be once she’s given the chance to break out of her self-absorbed bubble.

The novel’s strengths are the characters of Olivia, Gabriel, and Cainsville itself, but it’s difficult to care about whether Olivia’s parents have been wrongly convicted. Armstrong skilfully entices her readers to crave the next instalment in the series, but frustratingly leaves many questions unanswered.

 

Reviewer: Suzanne Gardner

Publisher: Random House Canada

DETAILS

Price: $30

Page Count: 496 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 978-0-30736-052-6

Released: Aug.

Issue Date: 2013-9

Categories: Fiction: Novels