Mist of midnight

Rebecca Ravenshaw has barely escaped India with her life and is still grieving the brutal mirder of her parents. She hopes to come home for a good rest—and, instead, is greeted by skeptical chill. She is shocked to learn that someone impersonated her only months before, took possession of her home, and died by suicide. She has an uphill battle to prove herself to the wary community and servants, and in addition she begins to fear that the woman who pretended to be her was, in fact, murdered.

There was plenty of suspense, and I loved how accurate to the time period Rebecca's voice was, especially since it's written in first person. There was only one thing that kind of suspended my belief For a young woman so devoted to converting the heathen, it seemed odd to me that she would only witness once to the man she fell in love with and to be content with him telling her at the very end that he'd "prayed in the church"...her whole life was supposedly devoted to saving souls, so her lack of witness to him suspended my belief quite a lot. Thus, for all the parts about her personal beliefs, the book did not seem to be evangelical at all; simply that her faith was part of who she was.

In the recent past years I discovered a new author, Christine Lindsay, and her novel Shadowed in Silk was my first experience reading characters set in India. While Mist of Midnight is actually set in Victorian England, it has an Indian native flavor with the heroine living her growing years as a youth to missionary parents and aristocratic English gentry. Yet disaster sends her home to what might no longer exist.

Intrigue, friendship, romance, hardship, pride, adventure, feminist independence, and gentlemanly flirtations all reside within these pages.

Sandra Byrd writes across the genres yet I know her for Christian Historical Fiction. I fell in love with her narrative pen in her Ladies in Waiting (Henry VIII - Tudor) series and I'm delighted to anticipate the rest of the Daughters of Hampshire series. Mist of Midnight is a different experience as a Gothic Romantic Mystery which brings to mind Jane Eyre and Northhanger Abbey, but is told in a narrative voice I enjoy with plenty of wit on the page.

I found myself to be captivate from the first paragraph to the back cover. Enough mystery to keep me going and enough romance to keep me hopeful. Sandra weaves and incredible historical tale (and keeps my up reading well into the night!)

Now I'll have to bide my time waiting on the next in her series by going to Christine Lindsay's sequel in her Twlight of the British Raj series Captured by Moonlight and the latest Michelle Moran's Rebel Queen (released February 2015!).

posted: http://creativemadnessmama.com/blog/2015/03/06/mist-of-midnight/

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