As I mentioned in my review for the previous book in this series, I believe this should have been a trilogy. The 5th and final volume to the Cainsville series sees Oliva and Gabriel about to go on a weekend getaway, when they are interrupted by the return of Gabriel's mother Seanna. The start was alright, but it got a bit convoluted in an effort to wrap everything up, introducing a big bad rather late in the game. I'm not a fan how that played out, or how Liv's parents case ended up taking a large back seat in the final two installments. Had this been a trilogy, it may have tied up into a nice, neat bow for me, but with 5 books, it seemed to fizzle out after its natural conclusion. ( )

Second time I read this, but I didn't write a review the first time
Love.
That's the summary I guess. I'm not always convinced by the short stories in this series, but the books are great and the characters are phenomenal. I absolutely love them. ( )

This is the final volume of the Cainsville books and brings the story to a satisfying conclusion. Gabriel's mother makes a surprising reappearance. After years of abusing him, she abandoned him when he was fifteen leaving him to survive on the street. Gabriel is a success but it has come at great cost. It is only recently the Liv discovered photos showing that Gabriel's mother died of an overdose soon after she abandoned him. Turns out that Seanna faked her own death and ran from trouble.

Liv has some mother-issues too. Her parents are convicted serial killers. She was adopted and her new family had a loving father and a distant mother. Now that her adoptive father is dead, she doesn't have much of a relationship with her adoptive mother. Gabriel was her parents' lawyer which is how they met. After growing up as a trust fund baby, Liv now works for him as an investigator. They are investigating the murders her parents supposedly committed. Liv would love to get her father out of prison because she is convinced that it was her mother who was the murderer. But her father remains loyal to her mother and isn't quite as innocent as Liv believes.

Learning more about the crimes is where the magic comes into this story. Liv, Gabriel and Liv's ex-boyfriend Ricky are the latest iterations of an ancient trio who control the fates of the fae. Gabriel and Ricky represent the two main kinds of fae with Liv supposed to choose which of them to love. And by choosing, strengthening that sort of fae. Throughout these stories Liv has been told that she has to choose and both groups are courting her.

It is in this story that Liv, Gabriel and Ricky learn that there is a third sort of fae who has been manipulating them all from before they were born. The sluagh manipulated events that caused Gabriel's birth and Liv's parents' crime spree. Unlike the other two groups of fae, they are threatening Liv rather than trying to court her. This manipulation makes Liv, who is already stubborn, even more determined to chart her own path. All three agree that they need to stand together to set their own future instead of repeating the errors of the past.

The story was filled with action and adventure. I liked the romance between Gabriel and Liv. I also like the touches of humor supplied by the dryads and also liked how they became heroes too. This was a very enjoyable series with a fascinating story and engaging characters. ( )

A great ending to a good series. This one was a rollercoaster of action and emotion. One of the few well written endings I've seen in a while. ( )

Talk about bad mothers, it's hard to imagine worse than Seanna, Gabriel's druggie abusive, absent, but the story behind that is a huge darkness of sluagh manipulations. Lots of great bits in this fast moving complex story, but I remained totally unclear as to what Liv's exact choices were - how in any sense she could choose the sluagh other than becoming evil in a way that just wasn't her, how her choosing one or the other of Tylwyth Teg or Cŵn Annwn would benefit the sluagh considering all the efforts they are revealed to gone to to get to the point where she has to make one. Could the sluagh be trying to corrupt one or both of the champions as a result of Liv's choice? The revealed details of the original Arawn's actions are the most interesting bits, but that really just gets us back to the original 'those two guys were real twits, our new guy are actually improvements'. I was expecting the final choice to be one whereby Tylwyth Teg and Cŵn Annwn were more unified and could both be part of a more enriched realm as a sort of re-unified entity, and thus my disappointed expectation re-enforce the confused view of the book's thrust. Oh, and Liv's adoptive mother and her whole previous life have entirely been dropped for the last two volumes, leaving a sort of hollowness behind her character. ( )