Mist of Midnight by Sandra Byrd

Narrated by Elizabeth Sastre

Although Sandra Byrd is known primarily as an author of Inspirational Romances and I’m not in the least religious, I’m not averse to an Inspy when there’s a good story and the religious element isn’t too prominent. In any case, I’ve got a soft spot for a good gothic romance and the premise of Mist of Midnight sounded interesting. Rebecca Ravenshaw is the daughter of missionaries who were killed in the Indian Mutiny. She was saved by the selfless actions of one of their household servants and eventually makes her way back to England with the intention of settling at her family home, Headbourne House in Hampshire – only to be informed that Rebecca Ravenshaw is recently deceased and now lies buried near the chapel on the estate.

Bewildered and not a little annoyed, Rebecca insists on seeing the man who now lives at Headbourne, Captain Luke Whitfield, a former officer in the Hussars and the very distant relation who inherited the house and estate following her father’s death. Naturally, he is sceptical about Rebecca’s insistence that she is the true Miss Ravenshaw, explaining that the young woman who has recently died arrived with a tale of sorrow, an Indian maid or “ayah” and that they had no reason to believe she was anyone other than she said she was. But recognising Rebecca’s exhaustion and distress, Luke offers rooms to her and her chaperone while she waits for news regarding the enquiries being made on her behalf and removes himself to the guest house in order to observe the proprieties.

This part of the story is well-paced and the author writes Rebecca’s emotions and reactions very well, so that the listener is drawn into her story and eager to find out how she is going to prove her identity. The servants are suspicious of her, but given Captain Whitfield’s continued, tacit endorsement of her presence, she does at least have a home whilst enquiries are made, and, she discovers, an entertaining and sympathetic companion in the captain himself, a man who attracts and intrigues her in equal measure.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that the truth of Rebecca’s assertions as to her identity are proved fairly early on in the book, which means that the story can concentrate on her attempts to discover the identity of the imposter, her motives and what really happened to her. Rumours abound that Whitfield had a hand in her death – after all, his inheriting Headbourne is contingent on there being no other heir – but Rebecca can’t and doesn’t want to believe that such a decent man could possibly have had anything to do with it. Yet she also can’t deny that a wealthy estate might be a tempting inducement to murder…

Mist of Midnight has the ingredients one would expect to find in a gothic romance; a heroine who is a bit of an outsider and who finds herself doubting her recollections and even her sanity; a central mystery which poses a threat to her and a hero whose motivations are unclear. The opening is intriguing and very skilfully sets up the central mystery, but the story loses its way after the first few chapters, and doesn’t seem to go anywhere for quite some time. It’s true that this enables the author to introduce a number of other characters; the young woman who seems to be a rival for the hero’s affections, his snobbish, disapproving parents, Rebecca’s potential suitor and the French lady’s maid who becomes her confidante – but none of them are much more than two-dimensional, and while I enjoyed some of their interactions, I didn’t find any of them to be sufficiently engaging as to be able to hold my interest in those episodes which took place between the establishment of Rebecca’s identity and the final section. This is where the pacing picks up again, with Rebecca receiving some unwelcome news and believing that Luke has turned his back on her, all while she is at last on the trail of the imposter. Unfortunately, however, the big reveal is an anti-climax.

Gothic romances tend – in my experience anyway – to concentrate firmly on the heroine, so that the hero is often almost a secondary character. I wasn’t, therefore, expecting to spend as much time with Luke as with Rebecca, and this being an inspirational romance meant that the couple had very little “alone time”. Rebecca is almost always accompanied by her chaperone, but Ms Byrd does a fairly good job in the few times they are together in conveying their mutual attraction, even though it’s very low key.

Elizabeth Sastre is an experienced narrator, although she’s not someone I’ve listened to before. I enjoyed her performance; she has a pleasant, well-modulated voice which is a good fit for the Rebecca, sounding neither too young nor too old. She differentiates well between the various characters, maintaining a decent Scottish accent for Rebecca’s chaperone, Mrs Ross and adopting a credible accent for the couple of Indian characters who appear in the later section of the book. She lowers her pitch a little to portray Luke and gives him a slightly husky quality of tone; and her characterisations of the other male characters are suitably different from the females and sound fittingly masculine. The other ladies are all easily identifiable, from Micheline, Rebecca’s maid, who has a sultry French accent, to Delia, the young woman she befriends, whose tone is artificially bright and often masks an underlying petulance.

Ultimately, Mist of Midnight was a bit of a disappointment. Elizabeth Sastre’s performance is engaging and skilful, but I don’t think even a top of the “A list” narrator could have managed to cover the weaknesses in the storytelling. The pacing is very uneven, with the middle of the book being especially slow, and as a result, the suspenseful atmosphere the author creates in the first few chapters quickly dissipates and leaves a rather stodgy story.

Caz

Narration: B

Book Content: C-

Steam Factor: You can play it out loud

Violence Rating: None

Genre: Historical Romance/Inspirational

Publisher: Recorded Books

Mist of Midnight was provided to AudioGals by Recorded Books for a review.