Review – Rituals (Cainsville, Book 5) by Kelley Armstrong (5/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Length: 496 pages
Publisher: Random House Canada
Release Date: August 15, 2017
ISBN-13: 978-0345815231
Stand Alone or Series: 5th book in the Cainsville series
Source: Borrowed from Library
Rating: 5/5 stars

“When Olivia Taylor-Jones found out she was not actually the adopted child of a privileged Chicago family but of a notorious pair of convicted serial killers, her life exploded. Running from the fall-out, she found a refuge in the secluded but oddly welcoming town of Cainsville, Illinois, but she couldn’t resist trying to dig out the truth about her birth parents’ crimes.

She began working with Gabriel Walsh, a fiendishly successful criminal lawyer who also had links to the town; their investigation soon revealed Celtic mysteries at work in Cainsville, and also entangled Olivia in a tense love triangle with the calculating Gabriel and her charming biker boyfriend, Ricky. Worse, troubling visions revealed to Olivia that the three of them were reenacting an ancient drama pitting the elders of Cainsville against the mysterious Huntsmen with Olivia as the prize.

In the series’ fifth and final novel, not only does Gabriel’s drug addict mother, who he thought was dead, make a surprise reappearance, but Kelley Armstrong delivers a final scary and surprising knock-out twist. It turns out a third supernatural force has been at work all along, a dark and malevolent entity that has had its eye on Olivia since she was a baby and wants to win at any cost.”

This was the fifth and final book in the Cainsville series. I absolutely loved this whole series and this book was just as wonderful as all the others. I am so sad this series is over.

This is the book where all the secrets and mysteries finally come together. Gabriel’s supposedly dead mother enters the story and we find out even more about both Gabriel’s and Olivia’s pasts. The story continues to be mainly an urban fantasy mystery with some elements of fae in it.

I don’t want to say a whole lot else about the plot because of spoilers. So, let’s talk about the writing style. This book is so well written and so easy to read. The settings are easy to picture and really come alive, the characters are engaging and interesting, the story mysterious and masterfully revealed.

You do get a lot of page space with Olivia and Gabriel in this book and that was absolutely amazing. I was just very pleased with how engaging and entertaining this was and happy with how everything was wrapped up.

Overall this was an excellent conclusion to the Cainsville series. While I am sad to see this series end, I was also very please with how everything wrapped up. I would recommend this series to those who enjoy investigative urban fantasy with fae themes. This is one of my favorite urban fantasy series and I hope to re-read it at some point.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
– New Release Reading Challenge
– Flights of Fantasy Reading Challenge
– Paranormal Reading Challenge