Midnight Embrace [Mass Market Paperback]

And then one night when she's caught in the forest in a rainstorm, she stumbles on his secret lair, finding him close to death after an attack from another vampire. Without giving her any indication of what's going on, he feeds from her in order to live. And from then on, she knows that he is a vampire.

And from then on, this book is pretty much like A Darker Dream, though with the addition of an evil vampire villain and a housekeeper instead of a butler who knows Allesandro's secret. The housekeeper is in love with him - a rival for Analisa? Well, not really, though Ashley tries to make it appear so at one point. But other elements are indeed the same: the vast luxuries, Allesandro's frequent attempts to send Analisa away or to abandon her himself, his frequent attacks of conscience when he is driven by the need to feed on her, his demand that she at least once stay by his side when he sleeps during the day, and so on.

Well, Ashley writes Gothic vampire novels, so it shouldn't really be surprising that there are similarities - though even still, neither this nor A Darker Dream match up to Embrace The Night. I would like to see a novel from Ashley in which the heroine is *not* a naive, innocent and poverty-stricken seventeen-year-old, and in which the gulf between hero and heroine is not exacerbated by his wealth, his intelligence and education and familiarity with the ways of high society. Her heroes do begin to run the risk of appearing like paedophiles.

Finally, this book, we are told, is set in late Victorian times - probably around the 1880s, though this isn't specified. And yet the 'feel' is very much of the Regency period: around the 1800s. The balls, masquerades and Society rules are very much of the Regency (though, Ashley, it was no more than two dances, not three). The period in which this book is set was of the Industrial Revolution: where is the sense that this is a time of new, life-changing inventions? Where are the gas lights that all wealthy people had in their homes by this time, and which were installed in the streets in the posh parts of London? Rail travel was also in its heyday, and the rich rarely travelled by horse-drawn carriage any more. Ashley needs to do a little more research on her period, instead of assuming that 'one size fits all' when it comes to historical England.

Rodrigo has been hunting Alesandro for four hundred years (and you can never forget the four hundred years; Ashley says it too often, as well as other things). He's angry at Alesandro because he drove his own sister (whom Rodrigo was in love with) to insanity, then death. This is a little bit difficult to swallow. Four hundred years?! You'd think Alesandro would be dead.

I'm not quite sure how Analisa loves Alesandro. Just because he took her in, is my guess. Now she loves his body and feels unsafe without him. I really don't understand where her love comes from. Alesandro's love for her is a bit far-fetched, too. Her blood is the sweetest he's ever tasted to date, and it calls to him. He finds himself falling in love with her. But Ashley never goes into it any deeper than that. WHY does he love her and vice versa? We never know.

The one thing I have to fault Amanda Ashley for is her repeatitive useage of words. Example: "Tall, broad-shouldered, and dark", the description of Alesandro is overused WAY too much, even tot the end. "Four hundred years" and "four centuries" is used WAY too much, again, to the end. The servants ask too many of the same questions that you may have read three or so pages earlier. Other pages will go by and you'll read the same phrase again and again and again. It's not a very successful interest-keeper to the reader; rather, it comes on as deathly annoying. It certainly didn't float my boat smoothly.

Overall, the story is doable, though it could be stronger than what it is. It's just a bit too long. We know by the middle of the book that Alesandro doesn't want to have to compromise or destroy Analisa mentally or physically. We know that she doesn't want to leave him. Yet Ashley insists on turning to that same channel throughout the book, which makes you feel as though you're running in a circle. When's it gonna end?!