Hi friends, happy Monday! I hope you’re all doing well! Today I’m posting my review of the final novel in Kelley Armstrong’s Cainsville series, Rituals.

You can read my review of book one: Omens
You can read my review of book two: Visions
You can read my review of book three: Deceptions
You can read my review of book four: Betrayals

Rituals by: Kelley Armstrong: Just when Olivia has thought she’s finally started to understand her linage, Gabriel’s mother, who everyone thought to be dead, shows up to shake things up one last time. Now, a third supernatural force is at work threatening to destroy Olivia and the paranormal influences that keep Olivia bound to Cainsville and to Gabriel and Ricky. With the help of the town, she must find out the truth once and for all to take out those forces and help set her parents free. The final novel in the Cainsville series and it was good, but not great. This series could have been so much more; it started with so much potential, then got very lacklustre and boring in the middle and then it tried to come back in the final book and it did so clumsily. There was so much happening in this one in terms of plot and character development that left the reader feeling very overwhelmed at times. If Armstrong would have balanced this out more, we wouldn’t have felt like we were learning all this information in the last book to tie everything up; if she had spent less time building up a love triangle in the last two books, and started creating a cohesive arc that would lead to everything in this one, it wouldn’t have made this last novel feel rushed and like we were sprinting a marathon. As for the actual plot itself, it was definitely fast-paced, a little too fast at times because the reader felt they needed to go back and read things over due to the sheer volume of folklore and backstory we were getting. Everything felt so loaded and there was a lot to unpack, but Armstrong didn’t really give enough time to let everything sit. Once we learned about one thing or another, it was straight onto the next, there was never any time to breathe or take in the information. The reader enjoyed reading about the Welsh and Celtic folklore, but they didn’t really feel like they learned about it, more like everything was shoved in our faces for us to know and take at face value. What was enjoyable was the fact that we got a resolution on Olivia’s parents because that has been a looming question since the start, and one that seemed to get forgotten in the past books. It was good to see that it came to an ending the reader could believe. The reader wasn’t sure why Gabriel’s mother needed to be brought into the fold, it honestly felt like adding extra, unnecessary drama to an already over packed book. As for the whole Olivia, Gabriel, Ricky mess; we’re happy to see the love triangle end, but when we learn of Olivia’s “choice” it felt underwhelming, unimaginative and boring, all those stakes that were supposed to be building up, really felt like they were for nothing. In the end, this wasn’t a bad book because it did keep the reader’s attention and captivated them to find out all the answers, but it could have been done so much better.