Omens by Kelley Armstrong

Olivia is a society princess with a fiance to match until she discovers (1) that she's adopted and (2) that her birth parents were actually these awful serial killers who went after couples. The perfection of her life is immediately shattered as she is forced to flee, and seek answers elsewhere. Her searching takes her to a strange town called Cainsville, a place where everyone knows everyone and sinister omens run rampant.

I read some of this author's urban fantasy works years ago and was curious to see how she'd make the transition to thrillers. For the first 75% or so of this novel, I was in love. It was giving me STILLHOUSE LAKE vibes, which is probably one of my favorite thriller book series (and was also penned by an author who I knew primarily for her urban fantasy works).

OMENS is mostly a detective story but it has paranormal elements, as well. Mostly, I thought this worked out in the book's favor, and gave it a creepy, psychological horror vibe that managed to be spine-chilling without a whole lot of gore. There were a couple scenes in particular that made me certain that I shouldn't be reading this book at night. It's only when this book begins to stroll down the path of bunk psychology that I broke out the side-eye. I wasn't really a huge fan of the ending, to the point where I'm not sure I want to read more.

OMENS isn't a bad book by any means and the suspense will keep you turning pages, but I think it's a flaw in this case that it doesn't seem to know what genre it'd like to fall under. For some readers, I'm sure it will be an amazing book, since it draws from pseudoscience, folklore, and horror, and there's even a bit of romance and unresolved sexual tension with an attractive, morally grey bad boy.

I wish I'd loved this book more than I did but man... it got a bit too ridic.

3 to 3.5 out of 5 stars