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 enlarge | Author: Lisa Kleypas
Publisher: Avon
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy Used: $0.93
You Save: $7.06 (88%)
New (25) Used (48) Collectible (1) from $0.93
Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 219548
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 6.5 x 3.8 x 1.2
ISBN: 0380773538
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780380773534
ASIN: 0380773538
Publication Date: January 1, 1995
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Help save a tree. Buy all your used books from Green Earth Books. Read -> Recycle -> Reuse!
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| Customer Reviews:
Different kind of hero and heroine April 9, 2006
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
Although I agree with some of the reviews regarding negative aspects of this book, I think many of the fine qualities have been overlooked.
I truly loved the fact that Luke adored and missed his first wife. In so many books, the first wife turns out to be a conniving adulteress, but in this one - Mary was loved and remembered for her gentle and passionate nature. When Luke comes to love Tasia, he tells her it is a different love he feels for her. He is older and wiser! Mary is not a forgotten footnote. I think his love for Mary is one reason Tasia resisted marriage (though there were others!). Tasia is complex - is she sweet, innocent Madonna-like or is she a murderous whore? I believe most missed the point on that. She is both! To have survived her own execution and in such a dramatic way, changed her. The old ways were gone. Yes, she did fall into bed with Luke (rather quickly!) but only after the truth of her life was revealed.
Luke was a bit high handed and rough, but I felt Tasia was given a little bite and backbone against him. Side characters were interesting. Although another reader mentions Luke's mistress, I rather felt sorry for her. She was not villainous except to offer money to Tasia for her to leave. Emma was a very interesting as Luke's rather awkward half-grown daughter and I am delighting in her story now (Prince of Dreams). The locale (some takes place in Russia) and cultural shocks in this book made it riveting at times. I was not overwhelmed with the romance, but enjoyed this book.
Very uneven romance July 12, 2005
11 out of 13 found this review helpful
This romance is very difficult to rate. The first half is so bad that I can only give it two stars, the second half is so much better that I would rate it with four stars.
The first half suffers mightily from a way too perfect to be true Mary Sue-heroine and the hero's obsession for his first late wife which grated mightily on my nerves. Nothing against a hero who values his first marriage but a man who still grieves his wife after nine long years so much that he basically shuts himself off from the world and even has hot fantasies about said wife and not about the heroine is hardly romance novel material. Besides his initial reaction to the heroine as the new governess for his daughter is very negative and they hardly keep company with each other, Tasia even takes meals with the servants. To make it worse in the first half of the book the hero is not only still in love with his late wife, he's also very much sexually involved with a mistress.
Thus the social interaction (not to mention the romantic interaction which is completely non-existent) with the heroine remains so sparse that Luke's revelation of undying love for Tasia comes utterly out of the blue especially since his sexual attraction to the very vulnerable Tasia had a twisted and cruel edge until that revelation which suddenly turns him from the brutal would-be despoiler of fragile child-women into a tender and protective lover. And the extremely pious Tasia who has not only been raised to be very god-fearing and innocent but also acts like a Christian martyr in Luke's household falls into bed with her employer as if she were a complete strumpet which is all the more unbelievable since at that point she not even has any romantic feelings for Luke whom she hardly has seen or talked to and who treated her worse than one of his servants, not courting her at all.
What did she see in a middle-aged, grieving and somewhat disfigured widower with a daughter not much younger than herself who was very rough to her, even accosted her and never paid her the slightest consideration that she eventually was able to cast her religiosity out of the window and never had any qualms afterward about having committed one of the deadly sins? And when the hero offers her marriage she refuses?! I don't mind people not being religious or very moral in a romance but if the author portrays them so pious and straight-laced in the beginning she should let them act at least a little bit consistent with their convictions.
After the heroine blissfully and unrepentantly fornicates with Luke she becomes another person altogether, completely gone is the Madonna-like image of a devotedly praying, self-sacrificing and unworldly virgin and the author shows no believable motivation for this change whatsoever.
Like in a bad soap where such drastic character changes happen frequently. Besides since the heroine was a single child, cloistered away with few relatives in the countryside and never had been to a boarding school-how could eighteen years old Tasia who led such a solitary existence possibly be a governess for a twelve ears old girl and deal with her like the most mature and experienced of stepmothers?! This is as marysueish as it can possibly get.
Her Russian cousin comments her character in the latter half of the book with the words: "We take our fates in both hands and mold them to our liking. You used your beauty, your wits and everything else you have to get what you wanted." Now that image doesn't befit Tasia in the first half of the novel at all who was actually self-sacrificial and virtuous to the point of self-destruction and repeatedly rejected Luke who wanted to protect her despite having already slept with him. Had she remotely been as Nicholas draws her in this conversation the novel would have been a lot more interesting, it would also have made the plot and the actions of the characters appear much more consistent.
But after that very unlikely premise and those drastic, unmotivated character changes on both parts the novel progresses just finely. The plot is quite suspenseful and romantic then. I had some minor quibbles with the way the author portrays Russian society and the way men and women interacted around 1870 which seemed way off. Obviously the authoress never touched Russian authors from the 19th century like Tolstoy or Dostojewski with a ten foot pole. Russian aristocrats were very worldly and cosmopolitan and the women had a much higher standing in society and marriage than the author makes us believe here. Nicholas is such a far-fetched character that one thinks he has time-traveled from the middle age right into the Russian salons of 1870.
Not one of Kleypas remarkable romances and a very unbalanced effort. All in all three stars. Readers who don't like the extremely sheltered and young teenager heroines paired of with middle-aged womanizers should really stay away from this book. The hero is clearly very much attracted to Tasia's youth and childlike appearance (he thinks that Tasia doesn't look much older than his daughter who is twelve but nevertheless is attracted to her which I found slightly icky especially since his initial attraction to her frail and ethereal beauty has a sadistic edge which miraculously vanished though in the later part of the book)
 Mesmerizing December 27, 2004
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I cannot share the former comments about this wonderful book. To me, a book is really great when it can make me think about it(even unvoluntarily at times)after finishing it.
Midnight Angel is definitively such a book.
I loved the way Luke was changing throughout the whole book (just a bit like the male heroe in Then came you) and the way Tasia recovered from her former nightmares.
 Boring & Trite - Lose the Bible Quotes! October 7, 2004
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I tried but could not get through this book and quit about halfway through - as much as I like Lisa Kleypas normally, I just couldn't get into the heroine in this book. She's very religious and quotes the bible regularly throughout the novel - not something you expect from an Avon Romance. I think Kleypas tried to make her character reflect the background in which she was brought up - she portrays the culture of Russia at the time as very religious and devout - but it just turned me off. Maybe she comes around and loses the religious piety, but I didn't have the patience to find out. I also was annoyed by the "borrowed" plotline at the beginning where she fakes her death by taking a poison that gives her the appearance of death - right out of Romeo and Juliet. I'd try some of her other good novels like 'Dreaming of You' and not waste your time or money on this one.
Hook meets Star Wars? August 8, 2004
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
O.k., so what is up with the hook?! I mean I felt like I was re-living Empire Strikes Back, only this time it was another Luke who was losing his hand. Coincidence? Creepy, forced, and a little over-the-top. If you like Kleypas, I would recommend you read 'Someone to Watch Over Me,' or 'Dreaming of You.'
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