Customer Reviews

Midnight Rain

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This romantic thriller has just about everything you could ask for in an action packed story filled with suspense, intrigue, a broad brush stroke of the paranormal, and topped off with a great romance that makes it sizzle. Phoebe Rain had survived 8 years married to a sick psychopath. She evaded him for two years until the day he finally tracked her down showing up in her classroom to create total mayhem and killing two of her students before she was able to stop him. Struggling with the injuries she sustained from the gunshot that blew out most of her knee, Phoebe was ever vigilant just knowing that he still lived, even though he was still in the coma she'd put him in for the last two years. When threatening phone calls started, Phoebe didn't want to believe, but knew that the voice belonged to the twisted man who had vowed to never let her go.

Once before, Phoebe had ignored the warnings she'd heard from beyond and disaster had struck. She would not ignore the warnings again and when the apparition of a young girl appeared to her begging her to go and help her neighbor, Phoebe listened. At 3:00AM in the morning, she went and knocked on the door of her neighbor, Dr. Alan MacKerrie, to warn him of the danger. Extremely apprehensive of the warnings from a comparatively stranger, a young woman he'd lived next door to for two years, he found her story hard to believe except that he himself had received warnings from the same young child - and he knew that child to be his very own daughter who had died five years earlier.

Using an inventive plot the author pits these two wonderfully needy protagonists together to battle inexplicable threats from a psychopath killer lying thousands of miles away, in a coma, reportedly at death's door. Phoebe who hadn't dared to dream of a happy ending for herself, and Alan who had ceased to believe in living after the fiery death of his beloved daughter were drawn together by need and a mystical connection through his daughter's warnings. To put it bluntly, this was one heck of an absolutely riveting suspense/paranormal romance - totally AWESOME! Hello, Hollywood this could be a blockbuster! Frankly from Chapter 21 on I was having such an adrenaline rush, I could have jumped out of my skin for all the suspense and terror. BOTTOM LINE - This is superbly, fascinating ride of a suspense filled romantic thriller that culminates with a perfectly wonderful heart wrenching soggy tissue ending! Do yourselves a BIG favor and find this book for a FABULOUS read. --- Marilyn Rondeau, for www.allromancewriters.com ---

Holly Lisle is an author that after only one read I've added to my "must read" list of romantic suspense authors. "Midnight Rain" is a compelling read that is both chilling and riveting. I was totally absorbed into the fast paced read from the very beginning.

Phoebe Rain's life has never been simple, easy, and safe. She lives in hiding fearing that her abusive husband will finally finish what he started years earlier. Working as a tarot card reader for a phone network and living without friends or family is starting to take it's toll. Just when she thinks that maybe...just maybe she can start opening up she starts getting phone calls from her husband that should be in a coma. She knows that it's him and she knows it's only a matter of time before he makes good his promise to see her dead. If this was not enough on her already full plate she has developed a friendship of sorts with her next door neighbor. She finds herself drawn to Alan and hopes that she manages to live long enough to see what being truly loved and cherished feels like. Problem is she has been told that her husband has died and the person she's being stalked by could in no way be Michael. Does this mean she's being haunted and stalked by a ghost or is her nightmare truly a flesh and blood person?

This book offers the ultimate nightmare situation. This book was chilling and the evil element in this story is truly amazing. Phoebe and Alan are dynamic characters' that come with their own individual problems but at the same time are open and willing to trust. Their relationship is slowly built over the course of this read and therefore believable for the reader. It has been a very long time since I've read a book that made me want to keep the lights on after I put the book down. For spine chilling read I highly recommend "Midnight Rain" as your reading choice.

Official Reviewer for www.romancedesigns.com

This is the first review I've done on a book I didn't read, but I will try to make it helpful despite that fact.

Having stumbled across Holly Lisle's fantasy books, I decided to purchase Midnight Rain for my wife. She is an avid suspense/thriller reader. My wife could not put the book down. She stayed up late on a work night to read the last 100 pages. Now, this is pretty rare around our house. Very few books she reads captures her attention like Midnight Rain did.

Holly, my wife wants more along the same style. Get writing!

Once she was in an abusive marriage to Michael Schaeffer, but when he threatened to kill her, Phoebe ran away. It took him three years to track her down. He entered her classroom intending to kill her and her students, but after he murdered a few she disarmed him and knocked him into a coma. He lies in a hospital not expected to awaken so when Phoebe receives the call from Michael that he is coming to get her she is horrified.

Her next door neighbor emergency room doctor Alan sees the ghost of his daughter Chick in another world with a different climate. Chick visits Phoebe and tells her to go see her father; not sure why she does as the ghost asked. Alan and Phoebe exchange stories, but fail to see the connection between them. Michael remains comatose but the calls continue to haunt Phoebe as now he threatens Alan too. As his daughter plays matchmaker and rescuer from beyond, Michael intensifies his efforts while Alan and Phoebe hope to stay alive long enough to fall in love.

MIDNIGHT RAIN is a dynamic romantic suspense as readers' perceptions of reality is cleverly distorted by Holly Lisle. The audience goes back and forth between Michael reaching out from the other side to an associate pretending to be him, but whom. The romance eases some of the tension although for Alan, burned badly once before, opening up is difficult. His ghostly daughter coaxes him to give his heart freely as she as an otherworldly matchmaker brings hope to the beleaguered duo.

Harriet Klausner

Phoebe Rain is a woman with a past - a terrifying past of being trapped in an abusive marriage. When she manages to escape her husband, Michael, and forges a new life as a school teacher she thinks she's safe. Then he finds her one day and shoots two of the children in her class before she manages to attack him, knock him out (causing him to fall into a coma) although she's badly injured herself by his shotgun blast.

We meet Phoebe in this book as she tries to rebuild her life two years after the classroom attack. Her husband Michael is still in a coma, her life has disappeared to almost nothing as she feels responsible for the deaths of the two schoolchildren. She makes a living by doing telephone tarot readings but is constantly frightened that one day Michael will wake up and come back after her.

And then it appears that he has done just that - who is it who is telephoning her? And why does she have strange nightmares now? Why do things in her house move? And what is the ghost of a child that she is seeing? She finds herself getting to know her next door neighbour, Alan MacKerrie, a widowed doctor whose daughter died five years ago - and whose ghost is appearing to Phoebe.

This book is full of suspense - is Michael alive? Is it him to blame for the phone calls? How does he know everything Phoebe is doing? Alan the neighbour vacillates between trusting Phoebe and wondering if she's a bit of a loony, especially with all the tarot and psychic stuff.

I wasn't particularly keen on the tarot side of the book - it's not something that I am interested in or particularly keen to read about - but as the book wore on and it appeared there were more concrete reasons for some of Phoebe's experiences, I found myself more gripped. There's a lot to this book and it's slow-build, and there are some interesting exploration of the spiritual world and how Phoebe's links with that world might help, but it's still a pretty good thriller in the `normal' physical world.

The previous book I've read by Holly Lisle, Talyn, is a fantasy book and I preferred the setting of that book and the freedoms of a make-believe world. But this book was still well-written and it was easy to get caught up in Phoebe's story - I found myself rooting for her throughout.

This is the third book by Lisle that I've read, and the one that I've liked the least. It wasn't bad, exactly. I just had some issues with various aspects of the book.

For one, I didn't think the writing style was as smooth and readable as in the other two books. I just thought at times her wording was awkward and cyclical. And sometimes too simplistic. There just wasn't all that great a flow. But it wasn't awful, only average. Her other books were better written.

But there were two issues that really bothered me about the book. One was, I guess you could call it, Phoebe's emotional scars...or lack thereof, to a certain degree. Her ex-husband was a sexual sadist...or so it seemed. The wording on that was rather vague in the book and you were only given veiled hints as to what the ex did to her. It didn't sound pretty. Yet, it didn't seem like Phoebe had any lingering scars from the sexual sadism. One would have thought she'd be extremely wary of sex - considering he'd been her only lover - or hate certain things, or just be more conscious of what he'd done to her. And I just didn't get that feeling. For a large part of the book, you only get the impression that her ex had physically abused her, not sexually as well. And then when she was intimate with Alan, she wasn't bothered by the frantic pace, or other actions. Basically, I just felt there was a lack of realism with Phoebe because it didn't seem like she dealt at all with being sexually abused, only physically.

The second issue was the lack of a resolution regarding a major "fight" between Alan and Phoebe. He said some really nasty things to her and she was crushed. Then he finds out the truth, but they never talk about it, never resolve what had happened. It was like "oh, oops, I was wrong..la, la, la, la, laaaaa....let's go have sex." Sorry, no, that doesn't work. It just really bothered me. This was a major obstacle between them and it was shoved aside with the flick of a finger.

Aside from those two things, the over all storyline was interesting. The suspense plot and the romance kept me reading. Lisle has a knack for creating interesting suspense plots. I would have liked an epilogue to wrap up all the issues, but *sigh* it seems like a lot of authors hate to do that. Anyway, decent enough book. Worth reading, despite it's issues.

Definitely a page-turner. This is more of a typical romance than Lisle usually writes (although her work often has a romantic element). The paranormal elements are very well handled, as is the tension--it isn't dragged on too long, bits and pieces come out as you go--a very satisfying read.

I had no intention of reading this book! I read detective fiction, and was so taken by Lisle's "Last Girl Dancing" I thought I should check this one out. But I put it off. I don't read paranormal, or 'that kind of stuff' (Meaning romance, of course.) But when I finally took a moment to read the first page or so... I realized I was 30 pages in and I was going to be SERIOUSLY late for work! This book grabs you.

Finishing 'Midnight Rain' I realized Lisle writes better than almost any contemporary author I've read in the last 10 years.
She creates people, not 'characters.' They live, and love, and hurt. If you like well written books that make you care about the people and what happens to them, this is your kind of book. Even if you think you don't read 'that stuff.'

Midnight Rain kept my butt in the chair reading until I'd finished. Holly Lisle has a real gift for suspense and creating almost unbearable tension.

Phoebe Rain is a reluctant heroine at best. Everything she's done in her life has been the result of trying to live up to someone else's ideals of what she should do with her life. From her early years, though, she's been torn between science and the lure of telling fortunes with Tarot cards. Then she met and married Michael, a rich and powerful attorney who proceeded to make her life a living hell. She barely escaped with her life. Later, after Michael tracked her down, he ended up killing two kids at a school where Phoebe taught before she was able to wrest the gun away and shoot him. She barely survived injuries that crippled her. Even with Michael in a psychiatric hospital, a mental and physical vegetable, Phoebe hasn't felt safe. She's kept her life small, giving up teaching to make a threadbare existence as a fortune teller over a telephone hotline. Then, one night, Michael calls and tells her he's coming for her. Next door to Phoebe, Dr. Alan McKerrie is struggling to get over the loss of his young daughter. He's cut himself off from the world, just putting in one day after another, seeking desperately for a reason to keep trying. One day, the ghost of his daughter appears to him and Phoebe. Chick, the daughter, wants Phoebe to tell Alan to get on with his life, but to do that, Alan must help save Phoebe from Michael. Are help and murderous intent reaching from beyond the grave?

Holly Lisle is a noted fantasy author who has since crossed over to romantic suspense. This is the first of two novels so far. While she continues to work in the fantasy field, she's obviously taking great strides in the romantic suspense market.

The book delivers nail-biting intensity as the storyline weaves delicately back and forth between Phoebe and Alan. Each has strengths and weaknesses that alternately make them complement each other, then give them every reason to stay apart. The reasons Phoebe and Alan find to do what each of them does are suspenseful as well as realistic. This is what Dean Koontz delivered in his early years.

Although the novel reads quickly, especially toward the end, some of the middle parts will need patience. But the investment of time is well worth the effort.

Holly Lisle is going to be a romantic suspense author to read and watch. She's already made a definite mark in fantasy, but with MIDNIGHT RAIN, she's striking gold in her newly chosen venue. Equal parts thriller, supernatural, and romance, MIDNIGHT RAIN is a great beach or weekend read where the whole book can be simply consumed.