City of the Lost: A Rockton Novel (Rockton, #1)

by Kelley Armstrong

Welcome to Rockton: a secret town cut off from the rest of the world. If you need a place to hide, this is the perfect place to start again. There's just one catch. You can't leave. Even if there's a killer on the loose.

Detective Casey Duncan has a dark past, and it's about to catch up with her. When her best friend Diana is attacked by an abusive ex, the two women realise they have to disappear, fast. Diana's heard of a hidden town that's so remote it's almost impossible to reach. A town that desperately needs a new detective.

Casey has barely arrived in Rockton when a body is discovered. A man's been murdered and there's no time to waste. Casey's job won't be easy: everyone in town has a secret. Meanwhile her boss, Sheriff Eric Dalton, is a brooding, troubled man who's hard to read and even harder to please.

With no chance of help from the outside world, Casey must rely on her wits and experience to solve the case. But she's running out of time. Rockton's killer is on the hunt, and this deep in the wilderness, no one is safe.

Gripping, fast-paced and atmospheric, City of the Lost is the brilliant new thriller from international bestselling author Kelley Armstrong.

• ISBN10: 142727942X
• ISBN13: 9781427279422
• Publish Date: 3 May 2016 (first published 14 January 2016)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Imprint: MacMillan Audio
• Format: Audiobook (CD)
• Duration: 13 hours and 42 minutes
• Language: English

Reviews

[mitabird]

4.25 stars

[bookperson]

This book scratched very specific itch I didn't knew I had.

Strong Pines by Blake Crouch vibes, but without sci-fi element.

Also the fact that everyone in that city is a criminal? amazing. we love to see it. perfect setting for a mystery novel.
and relationship between Eric and Casey - *chef's kiss*. I loved how author lured us into miscommunication trope and then instantly pulled us out of it like "gotcha" *finger guns*.

New favorite and I can't wait to continue the series!

[cornerfolds]

Read more of my reviews at Cornerfolds.com!

This was my first Kelley Armstrong book and I picked it up after seeing it a few times over at Greg's Book Haven. I was in a true crime (but not) kind of mood, so I decided to give it a try!

Casey and Diana have been best friends forever and both have troubled pasts that they could stand to escape from. The chance comes in the form of Rockton - an off the grid town that gives people a fresh start, for a price. Casey is allowed in as the town's new homicide detective because of the recent murder in the town that the current sheriff can't handle alone. Once she gets there, she must navigate the town and the murder with a town who keeps its secrets close.

I don't read a lot of adult fiction, so I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy this one, but I was pleasantly surprised! Casey was a fantastic main character and the Rockton characters were all well developed. I liked that I was never completely sure if anyone was who they said they were. The murder mystery part of the story was twisty and well written! My main complaint was that it did take a while to get moving and the story dragged for me until halfway through. Overall, I enjoyed it and I'll probably be picking up part two.

[jesstheaudiobookworm]

4.5★ Audiobook⎮City of the Lost is my first novel from author Kelley Armstrong. I’ve begun a few of her other titles, but have been put off for reasons varying from narrator dislike to protagonist annoyances. Thankfully, neither of those applied here. I’ve been in the mood for something suspenseful, thrilling, and gritty. City of the Lost checked those boxes and then some. An off-the-grid city for people who want to disappear? My arm needed no twisting to jump into this audiobook.

City of the Lost features the exact type of the protagonist I love. Casey Duncan is flawed, yet tough as nails. She’s also extremely savvy and it’s easy to believe that she is a police detective. She meets my high standards for a heroine with ease. Armstrong is a good enough author that she doesn’t need a conveniently naïve main character in order for her plot to fall into place. And although I had the “whodunit” culprit pegged before the big reveal, there were several other curve balls thrown my way before that revelation, thanks to Armstrong’s delicate weaving of plots and subplots.

Intensely satisfying is the best way to describe City of the Lost. Or maybe intense and satisfying, because it was so much of each. I was there for the mystery, which certainly didn’t disappoint, but the romantic element of the story caught me by surprise. Unlike most other romantic subplots, the progression in between our main character and her man felt natural, not forced or out of place. Like everything else, it fit beautifully into the larger arc of the story. I became overwhelmingly invested in each character individually, as well as their pairing.

My only complaint, if you can call it that, was the final resolution. I wish it had been drawn out a bit more and “shown” more than “told”. Still, City of the Lost left me as satisfied as a cat with a full belly. City of the Lost is an edge-of-your-seat thriller that burns like dry ice. It consumed me from start to finish and, once it was done, I couldn’t reach for the next installment fast enough. Now that I know what Kelley Armstrong is capable of, I won’t be so easily put off by small annoyances with her other work. I’m currently reveling in the excitement that comes from the discovery of a new favorite author, so expect to see a lot more of a Armstrong on The Audiobookworm!

Narration review: Therese Plummer was the reason I even gave City of the Lost a second look. The synopsis intrigued me, but Plummer sealed the deal. I loved her performance in This Savage Song enough that her name and voice have become recognizable me. Plummer does excellent characterization for women and her primary male characterization is one of my favorites. If you haven’t heard anything from her, I suggest correcting that immediately. She has a ton of fantastic titles to choose from and I’m having a blast working my way through them. ♣︎

[kimbacaffeinate]

I am coming to appreciate Armstrong's gift for story-telling. Casey Duncan is a homicide detective with a dark secret. When her friend's ex-begins stalking her again, and Casey's past meets her present, the two relocate with the help of a contact to the remote town of Rockton. The community is rustic, and the residents are all hiding from their pasts.  Casey joins the local law, as a detective under Sheriff Eric Dalton and begins working the murder mysteries. Things get complicated as bodies pile up and Casey gets the lay of the land so to speak.

The worldbuilding was brilliant, providing readers with just enough information to visualize Rockton and the surrounding landscape. There are no cell phones, electric or computers. Rockton is wholly cut off from the outside world with its own currency. No one can get in or out without the help of the council.  The "council" is a secretive (faceless) group who have control over the town. Sounds like a government experiment right? The town is full of dysfunctional folks, most for safety reasons but we quickly learn that politics and money sway the council. For every detail, we learn new questions arise.

Armstrong does an excellent job of delivering characters that allow the readers to become emotionally connected. Some you admire and others you will loathe. I like Casey. She is a tough, somewhat jaded heroine who is a damn fine investigator. Sheriff Eric Dalton seems cold at first, and the man can be gruff, but we quickly learn his story, and I enjoyed the interaction between Eric and Casey. Secondary characters, suspects and others added depth and kept the pacing tight.

The story has some dark elements from rogues in the woods to mutilated bodies.  I loved this darker thread. When you add in the town, council, and residents you get a creepy vibe. We are treated to a romantic thread that moves from trust and respect to something unexpected. It felt genuine from wicked banter, to shared interests. While I don't necessarily need a romance, this thread was useful in making the characters, and their circumstances feel realistic. This review was originally posted at Caffeinated Reviewer

[Melanie]

Review originally posted at RabidReads.ca.

I started out a Kelley Armstrong fan when I read Bitten many years ago. I was a faithful reader of The Otherworld series. I was very sad when it ended. I had, however, already read Armstrong’s Nadia Stafford series, so I was very aware of her ability to write suspense without any paranormal aspects to it. I finally got around to starting this series about Casey Duncan. I shouldn’t have waited so long.

Casey Duncan is a homicide detective with a past. Her best friend is running from her ex. Her friend, Diana, is aware of a town for people to hide away from the world. They are also in need of a homicide detective in this town because they have a serial killer, so Casey is able to get the council to allow both her and Diana a spot in the town.

Once Casey arrives in the town, things really get interesting. We meet the sheriff, who is a real piece of work. He raised in the town and one of only a handful of people who isn’t forced to leave after their maximum of five year stay in Rockton. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him.

There are a ton of really great characters in this book. The deputy, the bar owner, the doctor and the liaison with the counsel are all interesting characters. I also love the town. Rockton is a small town in the Yukon. No one knows it exists. They live mostly off the grid. They do have generators, but they don’t use them much. They try to grow and hunt as much food as possible and the sheriff flies in supplies from outside the town.

There are also some people who live outside of the town in the forest. They are separated into two groups, the settlers and hostiles. The settlers are people who mostly once lived in Rockton, but left to live outside of town, rather than go back to the real world. There are also the hostiles. They live outside the town, but they aren’t just people living off the grid, they’ve gone feral. They rarely bathe, they kill and some even believe that they eat people.

Casey is tasked to find the person killing the townsfolk. Her and the sheriff look into the backgrounds of the townsfolk, but also consider the settlers. She is also trying to deal with Diana who is not happy with not being the most important person in Casey’s life.

This is a fun suspenseful story. I loved the cop dynamic of the investigation. It gave me a chance to learn about all the townspeople, without it feeling like a huge info dump about characters.I was surprised when I learned who the real killer was.

The only thing that I would really fault this story for is that Casey develops a love interest before she leaves to go to Rockton. I didn’t really understand the point of it, since she leaves and can’t go back for a minimum of two years. Now that being said, I don’t know if he becomes a player later in the series.

Narration
I really love Therese Plummer. She does a great job with the narration of this series. I love all the voices she chose to use. The voice for the grumpy sheriff was just perfect. There is also the voice for the bar owner and madame (yes prostitution is legal, much to Casey’s dismay). The voice of the flurty deputy was a good one too.

[wyvernfriend]

Interesting. Basically a locked room murder mystery with a limited set of characters and a lot of possibilities for everything to go wrong.

[justine_manzano]

Once again, I find myself singing the praises of a Kelley Armstrong book. I have so much fun with her characters and her twisty plots! Armstrong hits it out of the park again with a suspenseful story that kept me guessing until the very end. I thought I had everything figured out two different times, and I was wrong, but once the killer is discovered, the clues have been there the whole time. That's what you expect from a well-written mystery. Casey, the book's main character, is a realistic female character - strong, but with vulnerability. Her main love interest is as complex as all of the love interests in Armstrong's books. You have to know him to start to appreciate him, just as the character does. The town they are in provides some great opportunities for story mining, and I can't wait to see what Armstrong comes up with for book 2. Great. I needed another series to obsess over... ;)