In the Midnight Hour by Patti O’Shea

In the Midnight Hour

by Patti O’Shea

Pros: Very satisfying
Cons: Yet another “magic warrior”

 
I picked this book up in a hurry on the way to an appointment when I knew I’d be sitting in a waiting room and needed something to read. What a lucky choice!

 
This is the first of Ms. O’Shea’s novels that I’ve read, but it won’t be the last. Well developed plot, characters and settings allowed me to quickly sink into this story without distractions.

 
Deke Summers is our hero here. A regular human unaware of the secret magical race called the “Gineal” who have been living alongside us for centuries, Deke gets cursed by a practitioner of the dark arts in a particularly creative way.

 
Ryne Frasier is one of the good Gineals and when she realizes Deke’s plight, she does her utmost to get him out of it, even though she’s never met the guy. Together they have to figure out a way to defeat the dark practitioner to keep Deke from being cursed forever.

 
Ryne is known as a “Troubleshooter” – the magical go-to girl who steps in when things start going bad. The opening scene of this book illustrated her job quite well, and I was braced for an action packed ride. However, surprisingly, our characters spend much more time with each other than they do battling evil – which is a good thing.

 
Although I enjoy the action too, often the development of characters and relationship gets lost in an action oriented story. Not so in this case. Ms. O’Shea does a great job of balancing the two and we get to see our hero and heroine build a real relationship and the development of their feelings for each other.

 
I will be looking forward to the next book in this series and hoping it’s about Creed, another troubleshooter we meet briefly. He sounded like a hottie to me!

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