3.5 of 5 stars

Well, I still enjoyed this one, but it was nowhere near as good as the first book.

A Darkness Absolute is the follow-up to the brilliant City of the Lost, continuing Kelley Armstrong’s new mystery suspense series starring an ex-homicide detective named Casey Duncan. Months have passed since Casey first came to Rockton, a secret community nestled in the remote wilds of the Yukon. People come to this town to escape their past lives, expecting a safe haven, but the reality is much more sinister. As we saw in the previous book, not everyone in Rockton is who they say they are.

Now our heroine is on the case again, partnered with her new boyfriend, Rockton’s Sheriff Eric Dalton. Winter has arrived with a vengeance, driving some of the townspeople stir-crazy with cabin fever. One night while Dalton is away on a supply run, one of these listless residents decide to do a runner in the middle of a snow storm, leaving Casey and Deputy Will Anders with no choice but to follow in an attempt at search and rescue. While taking shelter in a nearby cave system, they are shocked when they discover a terrified and malnourished woman trapped in a hole. They are even more horrified when they find out her identity—a former Rockton resident named Nicole, who has been missing for more than a year. This whole time she had been held captive in these caves by an unknown assailant, being subjected to unspeakable acts of abuse.

The mystery deepens further when Casey returns to the cave system to look for clues about the perpetrator, but instead finds the remains of two other women. Rockton’s worst fears are confirmed: there’s another killer on the loose. It’s not clear yet whether the one they’re hunting for is a resident or an outsider, but now that Nicole has been rescued, Casey and Dalton must solve the case before the killer can target another victim.

City of the Lost was my first book by Kelley Armstrong, and I fell instantly in love—with the story, the characters, the setting…with ALL OF IT. It made me excited for the sequel, hoping for the same kind of magic, but unfortunately it just wasn’t there. Don’t get me wrong, because A Darkness Absolute still ended up being a good read, but compared to the first book, something definitely felt lacking.

So, what went wrong? It was likely a bunch of little issues compounded together, but if I had to point my finger at one thing, it was the story’s predictability. I guessed the perp even before the halfway point, and so the rest was watching Casey, Dalton, and Will run around in circles following leads that I knew would go nowhere. Turns out, reading a book like this can feel really tedious. Worse, when looking at the plot from this point of view, the repeated failures only made Casey and her team seem more incompetent. I also thought the mystery lacked imagination, at least when compared to City of the Lost. Sure, Armstrong threw out some red herrings and a few other distractions to try and complicate things, but I was able to sniff them out from a mile away.

Obviously, your experience with this book may differ. After all, I probably stumbled upon the answers by pure chance, especially when I’m usually terrible at figuring out who the killer is in all these other whodunits. Taking out the mystery, there’s still a lot to like about this novel, not least of which are the characters and the exquisite atmosphere of the Yukon. A town like Rockton is the perfect setting for a psychological suspense mystery like this, where the isolation only heightens the tensions and the sense of foreboding. Add to that, every resident in town is an unknown factor, since no one likes to share anything about their past. There’s also no fancy forensic equipment or technology in Rockton, so Casey and Dalton have to do their jobs the old-fashioned way. And speaking of them, I continue to enjoy their relationship. The author has dialed back on the romance big time, or at least struck a better balance so that the drama was spread out and not dumped on us all at once like in the first book.

A Darkness Absolute is also…well, dark. It can be difficult to read these books. People find themselves in Rockton for many reasons, but a lot of them end up there because they are the survivors of violence or abuse, and disappearing into the northern woods is their only chance of escape. We are exposed to a lot of their stories, many of which are troubling or unhappy. It only gets worse with a deranged killer on the loose, and many of the descriptions of what happened to Nicole and the other women can be downright disturbing and chilling.

Bottom line, A Darkness Absolute was a good, if sometimes frustrating, read. I personally found the story way too predictable for the book to be a satisfying mystery, but I still love the series’ world and characters. I’m not about to give up on Casey Duncan, and I look forward to the next installment.

The idea of Rockton intrigued me from the start. A tiny town in the middle of nowhere, Yukon, that takes in those that need to disappear – both the innocent, and the guilty. Every person there is on the run from their past, from what they’ve done and what was done to them. Into the middle of this lands homicide detective Casey Duncan, now known as Casey Butler, whose particular skill-set is put to use hunting a killer who just might be one of their own.

As of A Darkness Absolute, Casey has been in Rockton for four months, and she already has one major case under her belt. She is settling surprisingly well into her new life, her new relationship with Sheriff Eric Dalton, and her new freedom from her past. I enjoy Casey, she is no-nonsense and tough without being over the top. I always enjoy Kelley Armstrong’s leading men since they are not your traditional “heroes”, and Eric is no exception. He is rough around the edges, foul-mouthed and quick tempered, but he also has an honesty and earnestness about him that balances it out. He doesn’t play games, doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what he is, and he does the best he can to not only keep order in the off-the-grid town, but to keep everyone safe from the dangers surrounding it. And there are many. Casey and Eric must balance their professional and personal lives while investigating some of their own, tracking a killer, and dealing with the mysterious council who controls Rockton – and who has an agenda of their own.

I enjoyed finding out more about the “outside world”, as well. What exists outside the borders of Rockton isn’t always pretty, but it is interesting. We delve a bit more into Eric’s backstory, his family and his feelings about where he came from, and I hope we learn even more in the books to come. The only thing that threw me a bit in A Darkness Absolute was how many times Casey wandered into mortal danger. That happens, and it is what drives the story forward, but it just kept happening. She would be told “don’t do that, because…”, and she would do it anyways. It wasn’t like she fell into the too-stupid-to-live category, and she did usually manage to go a long way towards extracting herself from whatever the situation was, but I did find myself saying “Again?” a couple of times.

So, all in all, I enjoyed A Darkness Absolute a lot. I like the whole idea of Rockton, I like the idea that nobody there is what they seem, and where the story can go from there. I very much like Eric and his relationship with Casey, and I hope to find out more about his past. The action starts at the first page and never stops, and there are a lot of twists and turns that I didn’t see coming. I do wish that Casey might’ve been in peril a couple less times, but it was a small thing that didn’t affect my enjoyment of the story. Definitely worth a read if you are looking for a solid mystery/thriller. You can pick this one up on February 7th.

I loved this book. I know it was the second in the series. It did refer to the first book in the series which did not keep me from reading this one. However, I still don't know some of the friction or other events that the second one referred to. So that just makes me want to read the first one.

This book dealt with a out of the way town that no one knows about. You have to be invited to live in this town (Rockton). It's a town where abused women, witness protection people, white color crime people, or people that pay a lot that have people looking for them come to live. There is one sheriff and two deputies. There are no doctors. However there is a person trained as an army medic, one trained in EMT services, a psychiatrist and a person trained to look at criminal behavior.

There is also a bar owner/madam and a butcher. Everyone has a job. There is no need for money as everyone is paid and uses credits or rations.

Out of town, there is like 2000 acres of wilderness. There are several settlements, but they are not sanctioned. The people who live there are people who did not like living with rules in Rockton and left the town to start out on their own. There are also people who don't live in a settlement who are on their own.

In this book, the two deputies go looking for a man who has left town without permission. During their search, a huge winter storm comes upon them all of a sudden and they have to look for a place to ride it out. They find a cave and while there, they discover a woman who they thought died over a year ago. She is deep in a hole in the cave where she has been held hostage the whole time. That means someone out there or someone in town has captured her and done this to her.

I really got into this book. I loved the characters and how they all looked out for each other, well most of them. There is one character who is a royal beatch who has nothing but insults for everyone. She doesn't discriminate. But for the most part, people are nice. It's amazing how they have to live. They have no electricity, no fancy gadgets and hardly no outside intervention. It's kind of like an apocalypse book as they are almost the only people around.

I can't wait for the next book in this series. And this book isn't even out yet. Ugh!!

Huge thanks to St. Martin's Press for approving my request and to Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

Book two of the Casey Duncan series. I was able to get my hands on an ARC copy (release date is February 7) and I am so happy!! I really enjoyed the first book which follows Casey as she moves with a friend to a hidden community in Canada that was created for people to disappear. She is a homicide detective so her skills will be highly useful as they discover the secrets that the Council is hiding from them. This story picks up shortly after the first one, and it has a little bit of everything: action, adventure, drama, romance, sex, and plot twists. It kept me hooked all the way to the end making fall in love with it which earns it 5/5 stars.

I spent most of the book guessing who the kidnapper is. I really enjoyed the suspense and the character development. I am looking forward to seeing if the issues with the council get answers and how the hostiles develop. I loved the progress with Cassey & Eric.