We’re back on track with A Brush wth Shadows, the sixth book in Anna Lee Huber’s Lady Darby Mystery Series. We’ve got personal ties to strain and tug on, a lush scenery with its own moodiness and raging emotions, tense relations and interactions and the ever-necessary hidden truths and layers of lies that make a complex narrative for the reader to unwind.

First, let me warn you loud and clear. DO NOT READ THE BLURB BEFORE YOU READ THIS BOOK. I made that mistake at the sixty page mark to see what, if any, incentives there would be in the first half of the book and I was told a plot point that, had I not read it, would’ve had me hung up on who the villain was for a lot longer. Instead, I knew certain details and behaviours didn’t matter and I was rather annoyed at myself for spoiling my read.

Finally, we get a glimpse into the fraught relationships between Gage and his family members. Remember how I said in A Study of Death that his private thoughts and demons would take weeks, if not months to come out – this is an excellent show of that. Gage is forced to attend on a principle of obligation to his family, something everyone can notice, and if Kiera hadn’t been so persistently demanding, we could have had a great first look into the depths of Gage’s character here. Not only do we get an analysis of him, but of Emma, his late-mother, which is something I didn’t realise I would find intriguing.

The character interactions, reactions, and exposés into the haunted past of the family as a whole was great. Highly enjoyed that aspect of this book. The mystery aspect of this book was very well done too, the small little occurrences and the bigger happenings truly made this read the best one yet. In fact, I can stand on this hill and say A Brush with Shadows is the best Anna Lee Huber book in the Lady Darby Mystery Series that I have read so far.

I think I’m warming back up to Kiera but we’ll see in the next one. One line from my book journal about this book is “very excited for the next one with that particular plot point” and I laughed upon rereading it. It’s true though – many things could happen and many relationships could change. I hope it’s not so predictable and that there is some originality about it and I also hope there isn’t a huge change in one particular characters way of behaving because of it.