2.5 stars ( )

Don't invite him in

That's what they told you to do when you met a vampire. But Jessica Adams was powerless to resist him. His voice enveloped her like a lover's embrace, his eyes pierced her very soul.

She told herself it was just a dream. A nightmare she'd had every midnight since she started filming Midnight Kiss. Maybe it was the accidents on the set. Or because Matthew Griffon's writing was so seductive, his vampire so real.

From the moment she met the reclusive Griffon, Jessica was powerfully drawn to him. His ebony eyes, the way he hid from the public light, the dark secrets he concealed... they all seemed oddly familiar.

Just who was this Matthew Griffon -- creator of a character, or her midnight lover in the flesh? ( )

This is another early Rebecca York, from the 43 Light Street series.

Film director Jessica Adams is embarked on the project of a lifetime: she's put her reputation and her savings on the line to make a movie of reclusive author Matthew Griffon's bestselling vampire horror novel Midnight Kiss.

Almost from the start, the project has been plagued by problems--her production manager falls down broken steps in the spooky old mansion where they'll be filming, and Jessica has heard a vampire calling her. She chalks it up to nightmares until a dead body is found in her car--exsanguinated--and they move the cast and crew out to the mansion, where they discover that she's not the only one hearing things... then the bridge floods, the phones go out, and they're all trapped like they're in an Agatha Christie mystery, with everyone a suspect.

Also from the start, Jessica and Matthew have been drawn to each other. But Matthew has demons of his own and is determined not to get close to anyone.

I docked this one half a star because some of the characters were a little too credulous to be believable, but other than that, it's a wonderfully gothic romantic suspense. The tension builds through the story, each event in both the mystery plot and the romance plot adding to it.

We learn about both Jessica's and Matthew's pasts gradually and naturally, and the unfolding of their histories gives the reader insight into their motivations and serves to add to the increase of tension.

Even the secondary characters are interesting and believable. One small detail that really added to their believability and the general setting is that the film people related things to movies fairly often, rather than a more general mix of pop culture references from movies, books, TV, etc.

I've been collecting Rebecca York's backlist. I still have quite a few to go (she's written over 100 books!), and I'm looking forward to them--she's one of my guaranteed good reads. ( )