After Midnight by Teresa Medeiros

🍎🍎🍎🍎 

Taking a small break from my Maiden Lane binge, I was excited to start After Midnight by Teresa Medeiros. This is the first book in her Cabot series and the May book for the Rake Appreciation Society hosted by Jen and Crystal! What's fun is this is a historical romance AND a paranormal romance! Update: I have applied this book to the Romancing Summer Challenge for the new to me author prompt.

Our heroine Caroline has come to London to meet the beau of her sister Vivienne. Their youngest sister Portia however is aware of all the gossip (despite her and Caroline living in the country) and shares with Caroline that he's rumored to be a vampire. Caroline doesn't believe her, but is still wanting to meet the Viscount that is courting her sister and offer her blessing. However, she gets intrigued by his actions and Caroline starts to believe Adrian might actually be a vampire. 𝅘𝅥𝅮dun dun duuuuun~𝅘𝅥𝅮

The writing is so catching in this book and really drew me in. I couldn't put it down. I started this a couple hours before bed and kept finding myself saying "one more chapter" over and over. It just was so intriguing and kept taking turns I wasn't expecting. I also love the original meeting between Caroline and Adrian. She doesn't realize who he is and brings up the vampire gossip. They had such an instant connection and their banter was so perfect. I love meet cutes like this, especially in historicals. This book also has my favorite trope, wrong sibling. I loved how despite Caroline having to be the parental figure to her two sisters, she still wanted and yearned to be more to someone else. Their first embrace she thinks that she couldn't help leaning into him and letting him help hold her burdens for just a moment. It really hit me and I could relate to Caroline in a lot of ways. 

I really struggled with rating this book. I ended up giving it 4-stars, but maybe it's more like a 4.5-stars. I just didn't think it was quite 5-stars. The biggest reason why is the ending with the villain. It just felt super rushed. I also didn't like the whole "white fang" talk where Adrian tried to push Caroline away to keep her safe. I did like how she fought back and kept trying to not allow him to push her away and that their "separation" didn't last that long. However, once the villain acts everything just flips a little too quickly for Adrian both romantically and for how long he's helped his brother. Even though this is more a 4.5-stars for me, I don't think I'll round up my rating on goodreads like usual. I did enjoy this book and am intrigued to read the second. I'll probably add it to the paranormal readathon that's later this month (tbr coming Monday!). Also, a side note, for my statistics I'm listing this as a paranormal romance. Yes it's also historical, but since the paranormal aspect is more unique, I'm going with that. This is most definitely both sub-genres though and I can see readers of both enjoying this book. This was such a fun read and I couldn't put it down!

Have you read After Midnight?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: After Midnight, Teresa Medeiros, 4-stars, 2 days, eBook, 370 pages, published in 2005