Midnight’s Bride
Sophia Johnson
Zebra, Oct 2007, $5.99
ISBN: 9780821780497
In 1073 England, Baron Wycliffe is wary of his beloved daughter Lynette ever getting married. Every male he brings home she finds fault with. Frustrated and wanting her out of the castle, he decides she will marry the next male to enter the gates.
Netta disguises herself as a servant to elude her father's plot when Mereck of Blackthorn enters. Although the warrior knows since he was a little boy that he is cursed with the berserker strain that killed his mother in childbirth, he must marry; however, Mereck will adhere to the vow he made as a seven year old in 1050 to never love a woman. He meets Netta and agrees to help her escape while also signing the betrothal documents. On the trek back to his home Blackthorn castle in Scotland, she seeks a kindhearted caring person concerned for her safety and as much as possible her comfort. Netta falls in love with her host, but rejects the concept that she could admire and cherish a berserker; now to convince her betrothed that he will make a great husband and father when he spent his life persuaded otherwise.
MIDNIGHT’S BRIDE is an entertaining medieval romance starring a likable “picky” heroine and a fascinating champion with enough mental issues that the British Psychological Society would have a fabulous case study. Although the Berserker romantic subplot has been used often, Sophia Johnson provides an intelligent story line that maintains high tension and critically and slowly evolves the relationship between the lead couple from wary partnership to admiration and trust and more. Readers will appreciate this deep character driven historical in which the love of a caring woman struggles to overcome the lessons imprinted as a small boy as the child is the man.
Harriet Klausner
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