Forever Midnight

Forever Midnight is a collection of stories about lovers who all face some obstacle to their happiness.

Silver Cuffs by Kate Hill was my favorite of the three. Pierce Durant has purchased the historical Whittle House, planning to knock it down to build condos. Tabatha Lane works for an historical preservation society. She tries to talk Pierce out of destroying the structure, believing there is historical value because of the rumors surrounding it. Local legend has it that the son of the man who built Whittle House was a werewolf.

Pierce and Tabatha are immediately attracted to each other, but are in a standoff concerning Whittle House. Pierce is a cold, hard entrepreneur who doesn’t plan on changing his mind. When Tabatha tells him if he would just visit the place, he’d see its value; he decides to prove her wrong. Taking a couple of bottles of wine, he spends the night at Whittle House and ends up reliving the past love of Samuel Whittle and his servant Maggie Springfield. Their relationship was taboo at the time, but somehow their love was strong enough to survive.

Silver Cuffs is sexy, romantic, and suspenseful. I loved the “story within a story” approach. It’s mainly the story of Samuel and Maggie, who love each other so completely that the love scenes just melted my heart. This is some of Kate Hill’s best work, and with her extensive backlist, that’s really saying something!

Shadow-Time Lover by R. Casteel is the story of Filip and Zolona, two more lovers who have many obstacles that they must overcome. This time it’s a curse sent by Filip’s mother Helen. The evil woman cursed her own son to walk as a wolf at night. The only way to break the curse would be that a virgin of the Garlanzo family mate with him on a sacred stone. Zolona is that virgin.

Because of Zolona’s gift of her body, Filip is released from the curse. The problem is that his mother never mentioned that the woman to break the curse would in turn be cursed. Zolona is now half beast, doomed to take the form of wolf at night. Filip is a man of honor and decides to stay with Zolona, even though it means giving up his birthright as the heir to the Garlonzo fortune.

Shadow-Time Lover is a very interesting story. The background about Romania and Dracula that Mr. Casteel includes at the end makes it even more intriguing. Filip is a good man who loves Zolona enough to choose being with her over power and wealth. Instead of moving to the castle he was shunned from all these years, he stays with her on the outskirts of the village. The reader wants to see them both find happiness after all the hardship Filip’s mother has put them both through.

A Matter of Duty by Elizabeth Jewell is the sequel to her story in the Shifting Faces anthology, A Matter of Face, although it can stand alones. Two years ago, Piper and Trey fell in love. Trey is a shape-shifter, who took on the persona of Piper’s dead boyfriend and eventually won her heart himself. They have lived happily until the day Trey gets a phone call summoning him to father a child with Nadia, a female shape-shifter also married to a human. It seems that shape-shifters and humans genes won't work together, so in order to continue the race, male shape-shifters are paired with appropriate females. Although Piper was told that this would happen eventually, she has to deal with her emotional response to the fact that another woman will have Trey's baby. Even worse, the pregnancy cannot be achieved artificially. A pair of shape-shifters must have sex to breed successfully.

When Piper is given the option of making a baby with Nadia’s husband for herself and Trey to raise, her emotions are even more torn.

The feelings Piper experiences at the thought of her husband sleeping with another, very attractive woman are heart wrenching. The reader can't help but wonder what choice they would make in her circumstance. Ms. Jewell’s spin on shape-shifters is also thought provoking. What would it be like to have a lover who was able to change their appearance into anyone--movie star, athlete, man, or woman?

Since it was in time for Halloween, I expected Forever Midnight to be geared more towards that holiday. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it is much more than that. This is an uplifting, emotional anthology. It has something for paranormal fans of all types, but also has more than enough passion to satisfy any romance buff.

Reviewed by: Shelley