Cainsville series

## Genre Information

Urban Fantasy
Mystery

Paranormal Romance
noir

 (Series Content Ratings Click on Explicit Ratings for details.)

## About the Series

* **Genres:** Urban Fantasy / Mystery - Contemporary mystery/thriller with hints at supernatural elements
* **Theme:** Adoption and how people are viewed who are adopted. Switched at birth
* **Narrative style**: Some chapters: First person narrative told by Olivia, protagonist. Other chapters: Third person narrative.

## Series Description

24 year old Olivia Taylor-Jones, has led a fairy tale life. Being the only daughter of a well to do family, she has received an exceptional education, and she has learned how to help those in need. Having never been there herself, she is full of kindness and concern. Engaged to be married to a CEO with political ambitions she is on top of the world. Always a daddy’s girl, her life begins a strange exodus when he dies. Suddenly she finds out she has been adopted, and everything she believes of her life is wrong.

Her real parents are notorious killers, both having received life sentences for murder and she is suddenly no longer the woman she was. As her life begins unraveling around her, she does her best to hide. She has become an instant celebrity, one that does not fit in the mold of the life she had planned. Everywhere she turns she is recognized, and her inability to disappear just keeps the rumors more vicious and profound. Even her (adoptive) mother has distanced herself.

Several incidents occur that lead her to the small town of Cainsville. Here she can hide from the sudden notoriety. Yet the town itself adds a sinister cast to the unfolding drama. When her real mother’s attorney seeks her out, she is immediately distrustful. She finds herself drawing on strange abilities, as she tries to come to terms with her past. An eventful meeting with her real mother entangles her in an investigation into the killings that happened so long ago. Were they really guilty, or were they just an easy answer to a series of macabre murders?

## Books in Series

1. Omens (Cainsville Book 1) (2013)
2. Visions (Cainsville Book 2) (2014)
3. Deceptions (Cainsville Book 3) (2015)
4. Betrayals (Cainsville Book 4) (2016)
5. Rituals (Cainsville Book 5) (2017)

#### Shorts, Anthologies and Guides

* 0.5. The Screams of Dragons (2014) anthology — "The Screams of Dragons" short story prequel (Gabriel Walsh as 10 year old narrator)
* Gifted (2014) ~ Contains two holiday stories, one Otherworld Pack and one Cainsville
* Cainsville Files (July 2013) (interactive story)

## World Building

### Setting

* Cainsville: A town about an hour away from Chicago.
* Chicago: Where Olivia lived.

### Fantasy Elements

Omens, psychics, Welsh folklore/mythology, faeries, hobgoblins, changelings, crone, Bean Sidhe (Banshees), ravens, Celtic lore, mythological hunt, Wild Hunt, stone Gargoyles.

### World

The world of Cainsville is mysteriously steeped in Celtic and Welsch folklore.

In this alternate world, a magical community exists alongside but unknown to the mortal world. The magical beings appear to be related to the Fae, but few details of their mythology are spelled out in the first book—just subtle hints. The small town of Cainsville, in the isolated countryside outside of Chicago, is the center of this magical life.

On the surface, Cainsville is an idyllic little village with a cozy, otherworldly, old-fashioned feel. The buildings feature 19th century architecture with gargoyles on the roofs, and most of the businesses are owned by families who have lived in the town for many generations. Spend some time there, though, and it soon becomes obvious that dark secrets and mysteries are hidden under Cainsville's bland, comfortable surface.

### Protagonist

Olivia Taylor-Jones
the daughter of the wealthy owner of a department store, recently received her master’s degree from Yale and does volunteer work in her spare time like her philanthropist mother. She is soon to be married to the CEO of a tech company who was voted one of Chicago’s most eligible bachelors three years in a row. However, her life falls apart when her identity is revealed: Eden Larsen, the daughter of the notorious serial killers Todd and Pamela Larsen.
Since Olivia’s parentage was only known by her deceased adoptive father, this news comes as a great shock to everyone—especially to Olivia, whose parents had never told her she was adopted as a toddler. The media constantly hounds her, her adoptive mother distances herself from Olivia after learning she’s related to criminals, and the only person who seems at all sympathetic toward her is her fiance James. Yet even he would like to postpone the wedding until things settle down, a desire Olivia suspects is connected to his recent decision to enter politics. Olivia breaks off the engagement and leaves, planning to find a job and a place to live, but these goals are hindered by the fact that everyone recognizes her as Eden Larsen and no one wants to hire the daughter of the infamous Larsens. Olivia leaves Chicago entirely and relocates to the mysterious town Cainsville, where she rents a small apartment and gets a job as a waitress at a local diner.
✥ Olivia acquires a possibly hexed apartment, nosy neighbors, a crappy waitressing job at the local diner, hallucinations and/or mystic visions, and an imposing if slightly terrifying defense attorney—Gabriel Walsh. She ends up investigating her real mother's case to prove her innocent with Gabriel.

## Book Descriptions

1 *Omens* (2013)
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.
2 *Visions* (2014)
Olivia’s power to read omens leads to the discovery of a gruesome crime with troubling connections to her new hometown. Omens, the first installment in Kelley Armstrong’s exciting new series, introduced Olivia Taylor-Jones, daughter of notorious serial killers, and Gabriel Walsh, the self-serving, morally ambiguous lawyer who became her unlikely ally. Together, they chased down a devious killer and partially cleared her parents of their horrifying crimes. Their success, however, is short-lived. While Olivia takes refuge in the old, secluded town of Cainsville, Gabriel’s past mistakes have come to light, creating a rift between the pair just when she needs his help the most. Olivia finds a dead woman in her car, dressed to look like her, but the body vanishes before anyone else sees it. Olivia’s convinced it’s another omen, a sign of impending danger. But then she learns that a troubled young woman went missing just days ago—the same woman Olivia found dead in her car. Someone has gone to great lengths to kill and leave this young woman as a warning. But why? And what role has her new home played in this disturbing murder? Olivia’s effort to uncover the truth places her in the crosshairs of old and powerful forces, forces that have their own agenda, and closely guarded secrets they don’t want revealed.
3 *Deceptions* (2015)
Visions continue to haunt her: particularly a little blond girl in a green sundress who insists she has an important message for Olivia, one that may help her balance the light and darkness within herself. Death stalks both Olivia and the two men most important to her, as she desperately searches to understand whether ancient scripts are dictating the triangle that connects them. Will darkness prevail, or does Olivia have the power to prevent a tragic fate?
4 *Betrayals* (2016)
Working with Gabriel Walsh, a fiendishly successful criminal lawyer with links to the town, she discovered the truth about her parents' crimes in an investigation that also revealed the darker forces at work in the place that had offered her a haven. As if that wasn't enough, she also found out that she, Gabriel and her biker boyfriend Ricky were not caught in an ordinary sort of love triangle, but were hereditary actors in an ancient drama in which the elders of Cainsville and the mysterious Huntsmen who opposed them had a huge stake.
Now someone is killing street kids in the city, and the police have tied Ricky to the crimes. Setting out with Gabriel's help to clear Ricky's name, Olivia once again finds her own life at risk. Soon the three are tangled in a web of betrayals that threatens their uneasy equilibrium and is pushing them toward a hard choice: either they fulfill their destinies by trusting each other and staying true to their real bonds, or they succumb to the extraordinary forces trying to win an eternal war by tearing them apart.
5 *Rituals* (2017)
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.
## References

1. ↑ Omens by Kelley Armstrong | Blogcritics
2. ↑ Cainsville File - Kelley Armstrong
3. ↑ Fang-tastic Fiction: Kelley Armstrong: CAINSVILLE SERIES
4. ↑ Fantasy Cafe