ARC Review: The Deck of Omens by Christine Lynn Herman

The Deck of Omens by Christine Lynn Herman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The teenagers of Four Paths must save their home.

Though the Beast is seemingly subdued for now, a new threat looms in Four Paths: a corruption seeping from the Gray into the forest. And with the other Founders preoccupied by their tangled alliances and fraying relationships, only May Hawthorne seems to realize the danger. But saving the town she loves means seeking aid from the person her family despises most–her and Justin’s father.

May’s father isn’t the only newcomer in town–Isaac Sullivan’s older brother has also returned, seeking forgiveness for the role he played in Isaac’s troubled past. But Isaac isn’t ready to let go of his family’s history, especially when that history might hold the key that he and Violet Saunders need to destroy the Gray and the monster within it.

Harper Carlisle isn’t ready to forgive, either. Two devastating betrayals have left her isolated from her family and uncertain who to trust. As the corruption becomes impossible to ignore, Harper must learn to control her newfound powers in order to protect Four Paths. But the only people who can help her do that are the ones who have hurt her the most.

With the veil between the Gray and the town growing ever thinner, all of the Founder descendants must put their grievances with one another aside to stop the corruption and kill the Beast once and for all.

But maybe the monster they truly need to slay has never been the Beast…

Warnings: mention of family abuse, death of loved one and grief, body horror, disease

As the founder families continue to squabble for power, the younger generation is trying to fix the problem of the Beast in this sequel/finale to The Devouring Gray. As mentioned in the synopsis, a new threat has been rising from the Gray, and as May, Harper and the others investigate, it seems that this new threat may not be the Beast’s doing. Diving back into their history for clues, they stumble upon old family secrets and the truth of the story the town was built on. While the central plotline is about the elimination of the Beast and Gray, the story itself is character-driven, taking into account the complicated relationships between the founder teens, their own relationships with their family legacy and their troubled childhoods.

The Deck of Omens falls on expected storylines, so there aren’t many surprises (well, expect for one that kinda made me go ‘whoa’), but it does quite well even when you are expecting things to turn out as they do. The development of the storyline leading to those reveals is handled very well. Also, the relationship development between the characters, the character’s arc and their decisions are all made organically, and I liked that I could predict the character’s actions because the groundwork for the character was laid so well in the last book and in this one. Overall, it is an enjoyable read, taking the threads from the first book and leading them well to their conclusion.