Sleepless at Midnight
Grade : B-

Jacquie D'Alessandro is an author who is fast becoming a Buried Treasure. She flies under most people's radar, and while she's yet to have, in my opinion, that fabulous, not to be missed breakout novel, she writes consistently enjoyable characters and stories. Sleepless at Midnight begins a new series with one of my favorite premises: the gorgeous hunk who falls for the plain spinster.

Sarah Moorehouse is our plain spinster who is at a house party as companion to her beautiful sister and several good friends. The ladies have recently formed a book club and meet in Sarah's room to discuss Mary Shelley's scandalous Frankenstein. The lively debate turns to a description of the "perfect man" and they get the idea to construct a dummy, dubbed "Franklin N. Stein" to sit in on their meetings for the duration of the house party. Each woman is to purloin an item of clothing from a man at the party and Sarah's job is to procure a shirt from their host, Matthew Devenport, Marquess of Langston. Sarah has seen Matthew from her window returning to the house late at night, dirty and carrying a shovel. Having just read Frankenstein, her imagination travels to all kinds of outlandish possibilities.

Matthew is indeed up to something. His father left the estate deeply in debt, which Matthew acquired along with the title. Matthew promised his father, when he was on his deathbed, to marry within a year and that year is almost up, hence the house party full of lovely young ladies. However, his father also spoke of some "treasure" hidden on the estate, and Matthew believes it to be in the extensive gardens, hence the shovel and late-night digging expeditions. He is desperate to find the treasure before the year is up so that he need not marry solely for money, but can search for a woman he can love. More and more, his heart seems called to that nosy, bluestocking, bespectacled spinster, Sarah Moorehouse.

There were several times during the laying out of the exposition that I said to myself, "Oh, come on now!" - the Dr. Frankenstein fantasies based solely on seeing a man with a shovel, the insistence on keeping a deathbed promise to a man who treated you like dirt your whole life at the expense of your own happiness, the whole buried treasure cliché. But despite these things, I still ended up liking this book, and that was due entirely to Matthew and Sarah.

The gorgeous hunk falling for the plain spinster is a favorite fantasy and D'Alessandro makes it work and makes it believable. There are many, many scenes of Matthew and Sarah together, which detail their growing friendship, their common ground, their shared humor. This is not one of those romances where - boom! - all of a sudden the hero and heroine are in love and you are left wondering when and how the heck that happened. We get to see it happening and so it is a perfectly believable thing for this dazzling man to fall for this seemingly mousy companion.

Though the sensuality rating is technically "Warm," it's about as "Hot" as "Warm" can get. There are two scenes where Matthew and Sarah take turns watching the other bathe and they are so lovingly described that everybody's glasses - including mine - steamed up.

While I had problems with the believability of some of the plot elements, I had no problem with the believability of the romantic relationship, and so I can recommend Sleepless at Midnight on that basis. This makes the eighth B review D'Alessandro has received at AAR. That equals Buried Treasure Author in my book.

Reviewed by Cheryl Sneed
Grade : B-

Sensuality: Warm

Review Date : July 12, 2007

Publication Date: 2007

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Cheryl Sneed

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