Twenty-four-year-old Olivia Taylor Jones has the perfect life. The only daughter of a wealthy, prominent Chicago family, she has an Ivy League education, pursues volunteerism and philanthropy, and is engaged to a handsome young tech firm CEO with political ambitions.

But Olivia’s world is shattered when she learns that she’s adopted. Her real parents? Todd and Pamela Larsen, notorious serial killers serving a life sentence. When the news brings a maelstrom of unwanted publicity to her adopted family and fiancé, Olivia decides to find out the truth about the Larsens.

Olivia ends up in the small town of Cainsville, Illinois, an old and cloistered community that takes a particular interest in both Olivia and her efforts to uncover her birth parents’ past.

Aided by her mother’s former lawyer, Gabriel Walsh, Olivia focuses on the Larsens’ last crime, the one her birth mother swears will prove their innocence. But as she and Gabriel start investigating the case, Olivia finds herself drawing on abilities that have remained hidden since her childhood, gifts that make her both a valuable addition to Cainsville and deeply vulnerable to unknown enemies. Because there are darker secrets behind her new home and powers lurking in the shadows that have their own plans for her.

Olivia’s life changed in a moment when the media discovers her true identity. In a single moment she learns she is adopted, that the couple she has grown up believing were her parents are not and, worse, that she is the daughter of notorious serial killers. As her adoptive mother reveals herself incapable of thinking of Olivia before herself and her fiancee, with his political aspirations, distance themselves and postpone their wedding, Olivia finds her world upended. When reporters break into her family home and her mother flees so does Olivia; eventually ending up in Cainsville an odd small town close to Chicago. She visits her bio-mother in prison and finds herself drawn into the question of whether or not her parents are actually guilty of the heinous crimes they have been convicted for. Working with her mother’s latest lawyer, cold and enigmatic Gabriel Walsh, she delves into the last murder her parents were said to have committed and uncovers secrets that even twenty years later people are willing to kill to keep hidden.

Ms Armstrong brings us yet another gripping series. This reads as a pretty straightforward mystery, at least until Olivia arrives in Cainsville and hints of the paranormal creep in.  The town is typical small-town America until you start to look a bit closer, symbols of good luck that appear and disappear, viscous ravens, gargoyles on every building and an atmosphere that seems to awaken Olivia’s talent for seeing omens. I raced through this in one day and am eager to move on to the next in the series to find out more about Olivia, Gabriel, the town of Cainsville and, of course, the ultimate question - are Olivia’s parents innocent or are they really sadistic serial killers. Highly recommended ~~ Stephanie L Bannon

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