Looking through my Storygraph I decided to pull out five of my top-rated books this year, so without much preamble, let’s get into it!

A Brush With Shadows by Anna Lee Huber is book six in the Lady Darby Mysteries, a series that I absolutely love. Set in the 1800s, Lady Darby is a widow, whose husband wasn’t the best person when he was alive. He forced her to draw human cadavers and when that was revealed after he passed away, she was shunned from society, so she’s a bit salty with society. Each book follows a different mystery that she and her partner Sebastian Gabe ends up solving, but my favorite thing about this book (outside of Huber’s great storytelling) is just how real the characters feel.

The other Anna Lee Huber book that I loved this year was Treacherous Is the Night, the second book of the Verity Kent mysteries. This one is set after WWI when Verity worked as a spy – something that she couldn’t tell anyone in her life, including her husband¹. Just like her Lady Darby series, Huber knows how to pull you into her worlds, creating complex characters and weaving exciting mysteries. While I won’t call either series a cozy mystery, the independent amateur female detective motif is the center of both.

Continuing in the mystery vain, Murder on Mulberry Bend by Victoria Thompson is the fifth book in the Gaslight Mysteries series set in New York City at the turn of the century. This follows a midwife (who comes from an affluent New York family), who solves crimes while also taking care of pregnant women across the city. One thing I love about this series is how Sarah Brandt’s backstory and the mystery of her husband’s death are interwoven across all the books. I’ve read eight of these books so far and will definitely be reading the rest.²

This book has been on my TBR pile for a long time and I finally read it this year, The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune was an excellent read. The story is heartwarming and the children are wonderfully written, I love them all. The characters are complex and the world-building is great. I would call this more of a cozy fantasy book, because while there is conflict the focus is more on the characters and relationships.

Finally Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson. I have loved every Margaret Rogerson book that I’ve read so far, and I’m surprised I don’t see her mentioned a lot more on BookTok, but Vespertine was a good read with her signature style of world-building and her down-to-earth female protagonists. The ending leaves it open for a second book, which I would definitely be adding to my TBR.

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1. This reminds me a little bit of the Bletchley Circle – only because there is a group of women who worked in codebreaking during WW1.
2. At this point I realized that my top 15 books this year were all mysteries so if I decided to throw a few of my favourite fantasies that I read this year into the mix.

“We all must deal with our shadows the best we can. No one can conquer them for us.”

Anna Lee Huber, The Anatomist’s Wife