“Through a Darkening Glass”

R.S. Maxwell

I enjoyed this book a lot more than I expected to. Honestly, most of the way through I was looking at the protagonist like “you’re kinda the worst.” She is, though — bursts into this town and starts nosing around in everyone’s business, digging up the past, and it’s not even a “let’s help people figure this out!” kind of thing, she’s just over here like “I’m an English major and I’m gonna write a book about this!” That said, by the end of the book I was just accepting that that’s what she was like, and she learned some discretion at least, and meanwhile I was having so much fun with everything else going on that I didn’t much mind it anymore.

The overall feeling of this book is… a Gordian knot. It actually did a great job of tripping me up; I thought I’d figured out how everything was going to be tied together into one big bow at the end, and I was hilariously wrong. I think that’s about all I can say without it being too much of a spoiler.

Suffice it to say, I enjoyed the heck out of this book. It struck a truly wonderful balance between some Gothic spookiness, a romance arc, some mystery, a surprising amount of comedy, and a reasonably-accurate historical feel. Absolutely worth a read; check it out.1

This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩