Review: Silent in the Sanctuary by Deanna Raybourn

Fresh from a six-month sojourn in Italy, Lady Julia returns home to Sussex to find her father's estate crowded with family and friends— but dark deeds are afoot at the deconsecrated abbey, and a murderer roams the ancient cloisters. Certain of her cousin's innocence, Lady Julia resumes her unlikely and deliciously intriguing partnership with Nicholas Brisbane, setting out to unravel a tangle of deceit before the killer can strike again. When a sudden snowstorm blankets the abbey like a shroud, it falls to Lady Julia and Nicholas Brisbane to answer the shriek of murder most foul (summary from goodreads).

 The second installment in Deanna Raybourn's Lady Julia Grey mystery series was even better than the first, Silent in the Grave. I was eager to see more of Julia and Nicholas Brisbane's passionate but unsettled romance and enjoyed Julia's witty narrative voice and the coloful cast of secondary characters. Similar to the first book, the murderer was unmasked and the mystery solved by the last pages, but not fully. Like real life, there is never a perfect ending or justice entirely served, and the loose ends and unanswered questions made the story more realistic. I felt like the characters were fully formed and multi-dimensional, with their own quirks and unique qualities that made them seem like flesh-and-blood people.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars. This book held my attention with the descriptive writing and mix of Victorian mystery, humor, and romance. I've already started the third book in the series, Silent on the Moor.

Source: personal copy