Favorite Lines: “The unusually mild December wind sent brittle leaves dancing like skeletons over the concrete parking lot. The echoes of their skip and scratch made the warehouse district seem even more desolate and remote despite the distant sounds of Atlanta’s midday traffic.” (p. 2)
The citizens of three worlds are desperately trying to live together on earth, but someone is making it hard for them to get along. That someone is killing Elysians and it is up to Detective Charlie Madigan and her partner Hank, a siren, to find the killer before a war between light and dark breaks loose in Atlanta.
The Darkest Edge of Dawn is Kelly Gay‘s second book in the Charlie Madigan series. Book one, The Better Part of Darkness, introduced Detective Charlie, a divorcee, single parent and human along with her partner Hank who is a siren. The Darkest Edge of Dawn picks up two months after the end of book one. Two months since the sunshine went away and darkness covered Atlanta.
Gay makes the darkness plausible by discussing ways the humans have adjusted their lifestyles in order to live in an environment which doesn’t produce sunshine. Even better is the way she gets new readers up to date with the situation in her urban fantasy series by slipping small details from the first book into this installment.
Gay tells readers how Charlie came to be different, explains the changes in Hank and describes where and how the darkness came to be, all without ever making me feel like she was regurgitating information. She made Charlie’s character feel growing pains as she sought to adjust to the changing relationships surrounding her.
One of my favorite relationships in the story is the one between Charlie and her best friend Liz which reminds me of the TV show Rizzoli and Isles. While that particular relationship is stable, most of the other relationships in Charlie’s life are in upheaval. The consequences from the events in book one are wreaking havoc on her life, as well as that of her daughter, partner, sister and ex-husband.
The Darkest Edge of Dawn can be read as a stand alone, but I would suggest you pick up the first book so you can see the world being built, meet the key characters and decide the series is worth following.
A well paced tale, The Darkest Edge of Dawn is a book which had me squealing with pleasure, cringing with embarrassment and feeling the torment of motherhood. Want to know more? Read an excerpt Gay posted to her site.
Scooper Speaks 