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Stealing Midnight

by Tracy MacNish

reviewed by Valarie Pelissero

October 2009, 352 pages, Publisher: Zebra, ISBN: 1420101706

WOW! I don't think I've ever read a non-paranormal book that starts off as darkly as does Stealing Midnight; not even the Gothic's I've read are this dark. A lot of books have heroines that have had hard lives, but not like Olwyn Gawain. Her father is an anatomist, and in 1806 that means that he pays for stolen dead bodies to dissect and study. Rhys Gawain doesn't do this for the sake of science or medicine he does it because he went insane after his son's death and he is now searching for the secret of life. Rhys has fired all but one of his servants leaving Olwyn as servant, but he also forces her to assist him with his work by sketching the body parts as he cuts them up.

When a newly dead body is delivered to Rhys he can't wait to compare its organs to the older ones he has, but at the first cut the man bleeds, showing that he still lives. Rhys is full into his madness by now and doesn't care that he will be committing murder, he wants those healthy organs. Finally seeing her chance to escape the man and the madness, Olwyn pulls a gun on her father and his servant, locks them up, and escapes with the victim. The last thing Aidan Mullen remembers is dying onboard ship. Being the son of a duke, Aidan was interred rather than tossed overboard after he succumbed to the illness that broke out on that ship. After nearly dying Aidan realizes that he does have a future not dictated by whether he or his twin brother is the first born. Olwyn is his future, not the woman with whom he was forced into a betrothal. Aidan hasn't slept a full night in years which is probably why he succumbed so easily to the illness, but when he is with Olwyn his phantoms disappear, and on the road to his home he sleeps in her arms every night. Aidan is an honorable man, which is how he became betrothed to a woman he can't stand, yet he never takes advantage of Olwyn, and by the time they return to his family he is in love and ready to call off his betrothal. But, his betrothed has a nasty streak and will not be dismissed so easily.

This book had me on the edge of my seat throughout its entirety. It was at turns gruesome, poignant, sweet and heartbreaking. All through the story I knew that Olwyn's father was going to come back for his daughter and I could hear the music in my head slowly building to a crescendo warning of the danger coming ever closer. This author knows how to write atmosphere! Normally, when I know the book is going to end with a confrontation between the villain and the hero and/or heroine I cringe wondering how clichéd it will be, but not so with Stealing Midnight. I was on tenterhooks reading each page because I could feel the madness coming off the pages and I didn't know what was going to happen. MacNish didn't disappoint. It was gruesome and graphic and it fit in perfectly with the entire tone of the story.

Olwyn was a strong character and she did not take crap from anyone; she stood up for herself but she was never spiteful about it. Aidan and his twin were brought up never knowing who was the firstborn because their parents wanted them raised on an equal footing and without the prejudice and jealousies of the heir and the spare syndrome, which caused some hurtful moments for Aidan because he wanted a simpler life and couldn't have it. I didn't agree with everything Aidan did, but the author was very good at showing me how Aidan and Olwyn fell in love. They didn't have an easy road of it, but everything they went through together, even the pain they caused one another, was necessary to bring them their HEA, and I believed it.

WARNING If you are like me and don't like books where animals get hurt, know that there is a pretty graphic scene in Stealing Midnight. As much as I hated this scene and even intuiting beforehand that it was coming, after reading the rest of the book I realized that this one scene was necessary to the overall plot of the book.

Which leads me to the heroine's TSTL moment. After standing up for herself throughout the book, Olwyn allows herself to be blackmailed into doing something stupid, the standard romance cliché. Up until this point Ms. MacNish had written a book without the stagnant clichés, instead giving them her own unique twist, which had me totally digging the book, but this almost made me lose faith in the story. Despite this detour down the road always taken, Stealing Midnight turned out to be a darn good read, though it is not for the faint of heart. I will definitely be picking up her next book.