Review of Mine Till Midnight by Lisa Kleypas

Lisa Kleypas' Mine Til Midnight is pure romantic gold. Twenty-six year old Amelia Hathaway is trying to keep everything together for her three younger sisters even as her older brother, Leo, is likely to pull the family down with him. Leo is bent on a path of self-destruction after losing his fiancée to scarlet fever.

Amelia's attempt to keep Leo safe brings her across half-Gypsy, half-Irish Cam Rohan. Because of his mixed heritage, Cam was an outsider during his childhood traveling with his gypsy clan. And as an adult, he's still viewed with amusement and suspicion by the elite. But he has used his mind for numbers to build a successful but lonely life managing a casino and catering to the wealthy. But he longs to return to the unfettered world of his Gypsy childhood.

When these two come together, Kleypas' writing excels. It's not just that they fall for each other but how they fall. The details speak volumes. For example, Amelia has a nervous tick of tapping her foot and Cam tells her that when building a nest, a hummingbird will to the nest side with one foot and tamp the nest down with the other. From then on, he uses "hummingbird" as an endearment.

The secondary characters are all real and solid, except perhaps the antagonist Christopher Frost, who doesn't have enough depth for the reader to really understand what drives him. He ends up seeming a bit one dimensional.

But that hardly matters given the soft touches Kleypas uses to drive the plot along. The love scenes are sensual, ranging from an gently steamy to forceful. The pages fly by as the reader is transported into a world where love can mean freedom. Any fan of Amanda Quick, Cheryl Holt or Julie Anne Long will enjoy it.

Kleypas has written nearly 20 romance novels and I've read more than half but this by far is my favorite. St. Martin's Paperbacks published Mine Till Midnight in October 2007.