Review: In Another Light by A.J. Banner

Title: In Another Light

Author: A.J. Banner

Year Published: 2021

Category: Adult fiction (suspense/thriller)

Pages: 251

Rating: 4 out of 5

Location (my 2021 Google Reading map): USA (WA, OR)

Summary (from Amazon): Three years ago mortuary cosmetologist Phoebe Glassman lost her husband in a tragic accident. No longer the hopeful wife and mother she once was, Phoebe is disappearing into her grief and into the quietude of her job―restoring to the dead the illusion of life. Then the body of a woman named Pauline Steele arrives in the mortuary, and for Phoebe, everything changes.

Pauline is unmistakably Phoebe’s mirror image and bears an alarmingly familiar tattoo. Even more startling is that among Pauline’s effects is a faded photograph of Phoebe. Aided by an eccentric colleague, her curiosity sparked, Phoebe investigates her doppelgänger’s life and death―and uncovers surprising clues to a shared past.

Phoebe’s emotional journey soon leads to shocking revelations about those closest to her…and even herself. When she’s driven to the brink, how much of what she discovers can she trust?

Review: I am excited to read another A.J. Banner book! I've enjoyed her previous mysteries (Poison Garden, The Good Neighbor, After Nightfall, and The Twilight Wife) and enjoy reading books written by someone with whom I attended high school. It is fun to see things about the author in the story.

I like the premise of this suspense: a connection to a dead body that shows up in her mortuary. I like the idea of secret connections and doppelgängers. And if they reveal something about ourselves? Even better. I like and sympathize with Phoebe who is grieving, confused, stuck, and overwhelmed. The loss she has experienced (and is experiencing) is great and Banner did  good job of showing how it can be all consuming.

I also like the setting of the pacific northwest. Banner posts images from her travels around Washington state on Instagram, asking readers which houses they like, showing scenes she is thinking of incorporating into her novels and it is fun to see them show up when I read her books. She has a talent for painting a real setting and making helping the reader to "see" where the characters are.

This book ended up in a place that I didn't see coming, which is a good thing. I thought I knew what the truth was, but I didn't until it was revealed. 

Challenges for which this counts: 

• Cloak and Dagger
• RIP