Be Mine Tonight by Kathryn Smith

New book for me.  And it only took me about four hours to read.  After HP&TOOTP took me so long, I was kinda worried about my ability to finish 100 books, but now my confidence is back.  I don't usually read vampire novels, but since Kathryn Smith is one of my favorite, and one of the best, romance novelist, I bought it anyway.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Minimal Spoilers

Be Mine Tonight is the story of Prudence Ryland, great-great granddaughter of Devlin and Blythe Ryland (For the First Time, my favorite of the Ryland Brothers novels).  She's dying of cancer and is desperately searching for the Holy Grail so she can drink from it and be cured.  As she and her friend Marcus begin to excavate a site believed to hold the chalice, two men representing the Catholic church, a kindly priest and a mysterious man named Chapel, come to oversee their work.  Chapel is a vampire, made such 600 years prior while on his own quest for the Grail.  Chapel and Pru quickly form a bond, and once Pru learns what Chapel is and that he can make her the same, she must decide if she wants to live forever, and he must decide if he is willing to let her damn her soul so he can keep her. 

Good Stuff 

Very rarely do romance novels deal with such serious subjects as this.  Because Prudence is struggling for her life, the tone of the novel is darker than most of the genre.  Though I like lighter books very much, the change is nice.  

Chapel is not your typical alpha male romance hero.  He's tortured and brooding.   He's very conscious of others feelings, and he cares for Pru so much it just breaks your heart.  He's strong and handsome, but he doesn't use it to his advantage except when he absolutely must.  Again, it's a nice change from other heroes- the rakes and rogues who think they know everything, have no doubt that a woman would desire them, and would only admit they had feelings under threat of death (maybe not even then).

Prudence is a nice balance of typical romance heroines.  She's not a pushover, and while she rarely does anything wrong, her goodness doesn't seem unnatural.  She's a normal woman dealing with extraordinary circumstances in believable ways.  On the other side, she's not a complete shrew who has to prove her independence and the fact that she doesn't need to rely on a man.

Bad Stuff

I can't really blame Smith for this, because all romance novels have the same problem, but, though Smith does a good job of building a little suspense, there's no doubt in the reader's mind what will happen at the end.  This is a romance, after all, and the number one rule of romances is there is to be a happy ending.  

The editor (copy editor, proofreader, whoever handles these things) did a really horrible job of editing.  Lots of words had been left out of sentences (or letters left out of words); Smith used almost the same exact analogy twice (which a good editor would have spotted); and a whole entire paragraph is repeated.  Lazy, lazy, lazy.


Overall a great book.  Definitely one for people who sneer at romance novels.  Maybe it'll even get me into vampire books.