Laura Bradley Rede

4.5/5
Elizabeth Hunter recommended Laura Bradley Rede on her Facebook, and as a rule what she recommends I enjoy reading. Kissing Midnight was no exception.

Th plot is deceptively simple but the characters are unexpectedly not one dimensional, and their decisions kept surprising me right until the end. I read this book in December, and in many ways it was a true Christmas story.

Saintly is a 17-year old who lost her twin brother and spent a year in psychiatric hospital because she kept seeing him and other weird things everywhere. Now she is in college with her flighty best friend and determined to prove to her mother and doctors monitoring her that she can be independent.

Deveraux Renard is a malevolent entity who long ago sold his soul for a price - each year he has to make a girl fall in love with him and steal her life force at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve. Something went wrong this year when his intended victim died in an accident and left him stranded just under two weeks before the deadline.

Enter Saintly, whom he sees as a lovely challenge to spice things up a bit. A shy girl, recovering from a tragic loss, she doesn't have anything in common with Renard, and something keeps pulling her back from his romantic advances. Maybe it's her connection to the other side through which ghosts can send her warning messages, and maybe it's her new friend - Jesse. A girl whom only Saintly can see, a lonely ghost determined to keep her new friend safe.


The pace of this book is pretty brisk. The story is rich, dark and Gothic, the ending, - a complete surprise. I just loved that I couldn't predict the characters' behaviour, and that Miss Rede stayed away from banalities and cliches. This was lovely, and I recommend it with no reservations.… (más)