TEST
Midnight Secrets is a gothic tale that takes place on the Cornwall coast in an atmospheric castle inhabited by a very mysterious and elusive master. Too elusive a master for my tastes, for, as the story is told in the first person by the heroine, we don’t get to know the hero very well at all. Writing a romance in first person is always a tricky proposition, for inherent in a romance are the feelings of two people as they fall in love. In a first person narrative, we are only privy to one person’s feelings and, in many instances, the story can suffer as a result. Unfortunately, that is the case with St. Giles’ newest.
Cassiopeia Andrews, the eldest of three sisters all named for constellations, is the daughter of archeologists and responsible for the family while her parents are off on a dig. She helps to support the family by writing an etiquette column for a ladies’ journal. Cassie is very proper but hides a secret: she is clairvoyant, as are all her sisters. Specifically, Cassie has dreams which are premonitions of death. Her most recent one was of herself and her cousin Mary reliving the time when they were ten years old and almost drowned. However, in the dream, Mary was swept off into the sea.
The next day, Cassie receives a telegram saying that Mary has drowned off the Cornwall coast where she worked as a tutor to a blind girl. All three sisters leave their Oxford home for Cornwall to join their Aunt Lavinia, who hopes to recover Mary’s body. While there, Cassie asks some questions, but is brushed off by the local constable and refused an audience with Mary’s employer, Sean Killdaren. Knowing that something is rotten in the county of Cornwall, Cassie gets a job as a maid at Castle Killdaren to ferret out clues to Mary’s fate.
Cassie learns much at the castle. She learns that Mary was well-loved by all and that her young charge, the blind child, knows more than she has told. She learns of the Dragon’s Curse put on Sean Killdaren and his twin brother Alexander, Viscount Blackmoor, that one will die at the other’s hand. The curse almost came true eight years ago when both men fell in love with the same woman. When the woman was discovered murdered and the brothers subsequently nearly killed each other over it, they decided to live apart and vowed to never see each other again. She learns that there are maids who have worked at the castle for years but never seen Sean, for he sleeps during the day and moves about at night, leading to rumors that he is a vampire. She learns that if he is half as handsome as his portrait, she would be well and truly smitten. But mostly she learns that life is not easy as a maid and the injustices and ill treatment they routinely experience are a real eye opener.
Sean Killdaren is a mystery for much of the book, and I found this to be frustrating. His appearances are very episodic. He has a short one page encounter with Cassie and then disappears for several chapters. And then there is another short encounter thirty pages later. And then another one twenty-five pages after that. He doesn’t become a real, consistent presence until around the hundred page mark. And because this is written entirely from Cassie’s point of view, we never know what Sean is thinking or doing when he’s not running into Cassie in the library late at night. And, because their encounters are short and far between, I didn’t buy the attraction between them or how it could have any depth.
Having the story told by Cassie did succeed in keeping the reader in the dark about the mystery of Mary’s disappearance, so that we experience the discovery of clues as Cassie does. I did enjoy all the rampant downstairs intrigues and getting to know all those odd, but well-defined characters. However, the well-developed secondary characters only highlighted for me how much less defined was the hero of the book.
There were other things left unexplained for too long – like what in the world are Cassie’s sisters doing at the local inn for the weeks and months Cassie is slaving away as a maid? And what of her job as a newspaper columnist? More importantly, there are lots of unanswered questions surrounding Mary’s death at the end of the book. I assume they will be addressed in the next two books about Cassie’s two sisters, but I won’t be reading them to find out what they are.
Too many unanswered questions, too little hero time, and too disjointed a narrative all added up to a too uninteresting, and often frustrating, read.
Grade: C-
Book Type: European Historical Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 06/06/06
Publication Date: 2006
Related Reviews
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.