Review: Mine Till Midnight, Lisa Kleypas

I’ve heard a lot about this author, mainly regarding her Wallflower quartet.  I have one of those, but I’m waiting for the first one so I can read them in proper order.  Meanwhile, I saw these new ones about the Hathaway family come out and decided to read them while I had the chance.

Amelia Hathaway’s family is a wreck.  Her brother has inherited a title but is determined to throw it away by drinking himself to death, her sister Win is still weak from an illness, and there is no money to bring her younger sisters out in society.  Their parents are both dead and Amelia takes upon herself the task of managing the family, with the help of Merripen, a gypsy taken in by the family after he was left for dead.  Amelia has decided that she will always be a spinster and her family needs her, but that’s only until the addition of Cam Rohan into her life.  He tempts her very much to let go and think about herself, while he for the first time contemplates putting down real roots.

As always with the romance novels, this one starts off the story of a very enchanting family, and I can’t wait for each character to have their own book.  Amelia is determined and very stubborn, to the point where it annoyed me sometimes, but I still liked her.  Cam, on the other hand, is your typical romantic hero; untamed to an extent, but in the end happy to let the woman “domesticate” him.  They’re both appealing, but I couldn’t help but feel this book didn’t measure up to some of the recent reading I’ve done in the genre, simply because it is too focused on the physical.  I could see Cam and Amelia grow to care for each other, but it irked me that sex seemed to replace this by the second half of the book and that he used their passion as a tool to occasionally keep her quiet; he explained afterwards and it’s not like she resisted but it still bugged me just a bit.  In addition, their story was superceded in the end by other concerns, which I didn’t really appreciate.  Amelia’s family took up more of the story than was warranted in some cases, and I normally prefer them to have their time in the spotlight in their own book.  Perhaps this just underscores their position in her life; far too intrusive.

That said, I liked it well enough to go on to read the next book in the series, which I liked a lot more (and I mean a lot!), and I’m looking forward to the rest.

Check it out on Amazon