Emma Holly

Regency/Paranormal

Overall:
Sensuality:
Cover Cheese:

I once told my husband that the day I enjoyed a vampire romance would be the day he could haul me to some forest off the Jersey Turnpike, drop me there, and make me Tony Soprano's problem.

I had that much smug assurance the accursed day would never come.

Well. Don't I stand magnificently corrected.

What did it take to win me over?

"Courting Midnight," the beautifully-crafted, enthralling, and too-sexy-by-half new novel by one of the unsurpassed divas of erotic romance, Emma Holly.

Eldest of the first race of blood-drinkers on Earth, shape-shifting upyr Lucius White suffers from The Mother of All Ennui -- until by happy coincidence he's able to inhabit the human form of a prodigal son come home to claim his inherited family estate.

Lucius becomes desperately entranced by young Theodora Becket, a rather plain, impoverished gentlewoman who's trying to fix him up with her beautiful sister.

Which doesn't keep Lucius from wrapping Theo within his upyr energies so he can bring them both outrageously sensual pleasure before clearing her memory of their trysts.

When Lucius finds himself aching for Theo's affection, his dilemma is vast: If he woos her without his thrall, will she still hunger for him as he does her?

Please don't think of "Courting Midnight" as a vampire novel.

Think of it as an outstanding Regency romance, the hero of which happens to be a vampire.

A book in which all you need to know about Theo, Lucius and the solid supporting cast can be felt by absorbing the prose Holly creates to expose core character motivations --

Realization of hearts' desires, and satisfaction of appetites.

That exposition also is what makes the sensuality in "Courting Midnight" so splendid.

Holly understands that women who adore erotic love scenes in romance want primarily to experience emotion, and secondarily to imagine visuals.

And emotion, girlfriends, is the essential element that makes erotic romance not pornographic.

Emma Holly's lovely ability to turn a phrase, and to make the reader absorb the obsession Lucius feels for Theo, is nothing short of inspirational.

I swear to you that at one point, Holly takes a few pithy phrases about the upyr's fangs elongating in the midst of passion and turns them into one of the most erotic passages I've ever read in a romance novel.

So. Guess I'll be packing for that holiday in New Jersey now.

As Tony Soprano might say, "not for nuttin,' but -- "

Buy the book.

Next Week's Review and AuthorView: "In Deep Voodoo," by Stephanie Bond.