Blurb:
Things are getting desperate for Maya and her friends. Hunted by the powerful St. Clouds and now a rival Cabal as well, they’re quickly running out of places to hide. And with the whole world thinking they died in a helicopter crash, it’s not like they can just go to the authorities for help.

All they have is the name and number of someone who might be able to give them a few answers. Answers to why they’re so valuable, and why their supernatural powers are getting more and more out of control.

But Maya is unprepared for the truths that await her. And now, like it or not, she’ll have to face down some demons from her past if she ever hopes to move on with her life. Because Maya can’t keep running forever.

Old secrets are revealed and unexpected characters make a surprising return in this stunning conclusion to Kelley Armstrong’s New York Times bestselling Darkness Rising trilogy.

My Review: Kelley Armstrong is one of my favorite authors, and YA books are my favorite genre (yes, I know there are tons of genres in YA, I like them ALL better than “grown up” books). I was SO excited when she started writing YA. I am again going to point out how much her books are like L.J Smith’s books. Much more fleshed out of course, and better quality, but you have to understand how much the expectations of the genre changed since the 80’s. Anyhow, the first trilogy reminded me of all the good stuff from L.J Smith’s Dark Visions trilogy. Chloe is my favorite female MC ever. I modeled Persephone after her a bit (just a bit, Persephone got her voice pretty quickly and it wasn’t quiet once it made itself known).

This trilogy reminded me of the first one. Great tension, good characters. Maya wasn’t as good as Chloe (to me) but she was still better than most YA narrators. Armstrong allows her characters to think rationally and react to crazy situations realistically. When Maya’s long lost bio family is thrown at her, it is a tense and awkward reunion full of angst and mixed feelings as it would be. I was super happy to see Chloe and group in this book. Overall, very well done.

Really* good book. I only had two problems. The ending was….good but a little too good and happy for what they gave up. I felt like Armstrong was trying to be a bit too realistic. What would a group of teens do against a super powerful corporation? How could they have any hope of succeeding? True, it’s a pretty big obstacle to overcome, but that’s kind of a corner that the Armstrong wrote herself into. I just think another resolution could have been found that FELT better, or at least the characters should have felt worse.

The other problem was that it was a chase novel, which would be good, in fact, for a chase novel it was GREAT. 5 stars. But the second book in the series was a chase novel too. And so was a small chunk of the first book. Actually, if you removed the chase scenes from the second book, the actual progression of plot would fit neatly in book one and three. Or more from the first half of this book could have been introduced in book 2, like one of the new characters, which would have given hum more time to develop. There was a lot in this book that could have been focused on rather than running if some of that could have been shifted to book 2. More time could have been spent on the combination of trilogy one group and trilogy two group. I wanted to see more of their interaction. A lot of that learning about their powers and researching bit could have happened in conjunction with Kit, who would have a very logical reason to know what the experiments were trying to accomplish. And maybe the ending could have progressed without needing an epilogue to tell us what happened over bulks of time.

Don’t let any of those nitpicks deter you from reading this series though. It IS really good, all six books. I really did enjoy them. I love Kelley Armstrong 🙂