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March 07, 2016

Review: City of the Lost by Kelly Armstrong - Creepy, gruesome, and addicting

City of the Lost (Casey Duncan, #1)
Title: The Dark Days Club (Lady Helen, #1)
Author: Alison Goodman
Publisher: Random house Canada
Publication date: January 2, 2016
Genre(s): Adult mystery/thriller 
Source: Publisher
Pages: 496
Add to Goodreads | Chapters | Amazon CA | B&N

Casey Duncan once killed a man and got away with it. But that's not why she's on the run. Her best friend's ex has found Diana again, despite all Casey has done to protect her. And Diana has decided the only way she'll ever be safe is if she finds the mythical town she's heard of where people like her can go to hide. Turns out the town really exists, and will take Diana, but only if Casey, a talented young police detective, comes too.

Imagine a hidden town, isolated in the Yukon wilderness, where everyone is pretending to be someone they're not. Even good people can get up to some very bad stuff. The laconic town sheriff dispenses his own frontier justice, but he's more accustomed to sobering up drunks in the horse trough, than attempting to solve the series of brutal murders that has rocked the town. As much as he hates it, he needs Casey. As for Casey, coming to the far North may have started out as a sacrifice she was willing to make for her best friend. But maybe, just maybe, she needs Rockton as much as the town needs her.
 

City of the Lost grabbed my attention by its tagline:
I have ninety-six hours to prepare for my disappearance 

Also the first sentence in the book? 
"I killed a man," I say to my new therapist.

I was immediately hooked and needed to read and find out what Casey's story was. The first 100 pages or so were very thrilling and exciting and I personally couldn't put the book down. I won't be revealing anything, even if you find out what happened in the first chapter, because I want you all to experience the thrill I experienced reading that. Fast forward 100 pages and we get a twist in the plot that I personally wasn't happy about. Casey and her friend move to "City of the Lost" to escape the past that is catching up to them. However immediately Casey, a detective, gets thrown in a murder mystery composed of a series of murders over the past couple of months. 

It was hard for me to adjust to a much slower pace when the first 100 flew by, so it honestly took me a very long time to finish the rest of the book, however I did enjoy it. I loved how I didn't know the direction the author will take or how these mysteries tied to their past or if they even did tie to their past. I have to give some fair warning that some scenes are very gruesome and gory that I personally had to skim through, however I am a squirmish person but I was able to get past that. I was so wary and suspicious of everyone from that city (composed of 200 something people) and I liked that I was on high alert all throughout reading the novel. 

I highly enjoyed my first Kelly Armstrong novel and I will definitely give any new mystery novel she writes a chance. The plot line was very unique and even the direction she took with the story and the ending were surprising. This unpredictability is often rare in many of the new releases and I welcomed it with open arms. 

2 comments:

  1. This sounds really good but I'm a very squeamish person haha, so I'm a bit on the fence about reading this as I'm really not a fan of gore! Great review! :)

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  2. Nice! I LOOOOOOVE Kelley's books! So looking forward to reading this one! Sounds like it will be fun and mysterious! LOL! She has another series called Cainsville that is sort of mysterish. There's a lot of "weird" to it too! Hard to describe weird but since her first series dealt with paranormal characters, it kind of bounces off that kind of weird! I pretty much recommend reading any and all of her books! She's a favorite author of mine and an autobuy too! Great review!

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