The best of the Louise Penny books thus far, A Trick of the Light had everything I love from Penny and then took another step up the mountain to greatness.

First, the art. Penny's ability to translate the untranslatable, the essence of art—whether it's music or painting or sculpture, is one of the strongest aspects from Penny's writing. She speaks in the language of creating while retaining both the trueness and the beauty of it. In A Trick of the Light, Clara Morrow's art again plays a key role, and is finally set to thrust Clara into her new future. The future the reader has known would come—or hoped, anyway.

To counteract all that otherworldly beauty from the art itself, Penny introduces us to the dirty, gritty underbelly of the art world. The cynical, skeptical, hypocritical, pervasive nastiness that art somehow brings out in people. While the beauty of life is on full display with the paintings themselves, the greed and the compulsion from this side represents the dark side of human nature.

Penny also explores the part of humanity where addiction grows. Bringing up so delicate a topic is tricky, and I think Penny handles it expertly. As nuanced as her ability to deconstruct an artist's mind, she pulls back the layers on destructive characteristics of those struggling with a substance addiction. Not only do we visit this aspect with a stranger, the victim—Lillian Dyson, and others from Dyson's circle, but within our own home as well in dear Jean Guy Beauvoir.

Connecting it all are the relationships. Typically, Penny handles an excellent history lesson where she uses some facet of Canadian history to delve further into exploring an aspect of human nature. Here, she veers from the typical and instead we explore the very personal histories of our characters. Penny's ability still amazes me. I know these characters. I know this art. And never did I expect Ruth to hold as much of my heart as she does in this one.