A review by disconightwing
Midnight Bayou by Nora Roberts
5.0
After the travesty that was the last romance novel I picked up, I didn’t have high hopes for Midnight Bayou at all. I’m going through a brain candy phase and I picked it solely because the cover was green and pretty and I like “swamp stories.” Profound, isn’t it?
But this book didn’t let me down and to be completely honest it exceeded every (extremely low) expectation I had for it. It’s really two stories in one, and even though there wasn’t so much of a big reveal, it was still very well written.
Much to the dismay of his parents, Declan Fitzgerald leaves Boston and his law practice for New Orleans and a deserted mansion with a reputation for being haunted. He plans to fix it up to its original splendor and live there, apparently hopefully as a contractor. He’s only been inside the mansion once, when he and his friend broke in while they were drunk one night, but he knows he has to have the house. He goes to meet Remy (the friend) and Effie (his fiancée) at a bar one night and meets its owner, Angelina (Lena), and decides that he’s going to marry her one day. Lena has a different opinion.
Meanwhile, Dec begins having disturbing dreams, sleepwalking, and waking up to noises that he shouldn’t be hearing. A grandfather clock chiming when there isn’t one, a baby crying when he lives in the house alone, doors slamming. He’s dreaming of the Manets, the family who originally owned the house which he’s bought, and a tragedy that happened a hundred years before. The Manets were a wealthy family, and the older of two twin boys married a servant of the house. Shortly after giving birth to the first child, a girl named Marie Rose, the servant-turned-mistress disappears. While her husband’s mother says that she just ran away with her secret lover, the descendants of Marie Rose tell a different story.
This is the first Nora Roberts book I’ve read, so I’m not sure if the technical aspects I enjoyed the most are present in her other books, but I’m definitely willing to find out. Her writing was brilliant, descriptive and simple and I had absolutely no problem visualizing anything at all. Even though I knew what the ‘ghosts’ were trying to convey (the 1900s storyline, while flowing smoothly throughout the book, ‘ends’ in the first few pages), I still wanted to keep reading to see if the main characters would realize it, too.
The characterization was strong; none of the characters had a personality transplant and yet they learned to live with and love each other anyway. Their relationships with each other were fascinating to read about, and Dec’s slow acceptance of who he was and his adjustment of an entirely new way of life flowed smoothly. In the beginning, I thought he was brave to move away from everything he knew, to a city where he only knew one person (Remy). When new characters were introduced, they were unforgettable. Also, when new characters were introduced, the old ones weren’t shoved to the side. His circle grew, it didn’t shift.
Any disappointment I felt was near the end, and it just wasn’t enough to detract from my giving this five stars. I felt like it ended too quickly, was tied up in too much of a neat little bow, and it just… stopped. Conflict resolution and… end. There were ghosts in Manet Hall, and they just vanished and no one gave them a second thought ever again? Then again, this seems like a common theme in horror novels—you can’t drag it out too much, or else the shock vanishes and what are you left with? That creeping doubt that you’ve been reading too much into it all along. So maybe there was no way to continue the story and maybe it would have been too much to keep dragging it out. I know that I would have kept reading, and maybe I would’ve been disappointed because there really isn’t much left to do after this point.
I’d really love to read this again sometime.
But this book didn’t let me down and to be completely honest it exceeded every (extremely low) expectation I had for it. It’s really two stories in one, and even though there wasn’t so much of a big reveal, it was still very well written.
Much to the dismay of his parents, Declan Fitzgerald leaves Boston and his law practice for New Orleans and a deserted mansion with a reputation for being haunted. He plans to fix it up to its original splendor and live there, apparently hopefully as a contractor. He’s only been inside the mansion once, when he and his friend broke in while they were drunk one night, but he knows he has to have the house. He goes to meet Remy (the friend) and Effie (his fiancée) at a bar one night and meets its owner, Angelina (Lena), and decides that he’s going to marry her one day. Lena has a different opinion.
Meanwhile, Dec begins having disturbing dreams, sleepwalking, and waking up to noises that he shouldn’t be hearing. A grandfather clock chiming when there isn’t one, a baby crying when he lives in the house alone, doors slamming. He’s dreaming of the Manets, the family who originally owned the house which he’s bought, and a tragedy that happened a hundred years before. The Manets were a wealthy family, and the older of two twin boys married a servant of the house. Shortly after giving birth to the first child, a girl named Marie Rose, the servant-turned-mistress disappears. While her husband’s mother says that she just ran away with her secret lover, the descendants of Marie Rose tell a different story.
This is the first Nora Roberts book I’ve read, so I’m not sure if the technical aspects I enjoyed the most are present in her other books, but I’m definitely willing to find out. Her writing was brilliant, descriptive and simple and I had absolutely no problem visualizing anything at all. Even though I knew what the ‘ghosts’ were trying to convey (the 1900s storyline, while flowing smoothly throughout the book, ‘ends’ in the first few pages), I still wanted to keep reading to see if the main characters would realize it, too.
The characterization was strong; none of the characters had a personality transplant and yet they learned to live with and love each other anyway. Their relationships with each other were fascinating to read about, and Dec’s slow acceptance of who he was and his adjustment of an entirely new way of life flowed smoothly. In the beginning, I thought he was brave to move away from everything he knew, to a city where he only knew one person (Remy). When new characters were introduced, they were unforgettable. Also, when new characters were introduced, the old ones weren’t shoved to the side. His circle grew, it didn’t shift.
Any disappointment I felt was near the end, and it just wasn’t enough to detract from my giving this five stars. I felt like it ended too quickly, was tied up in too much of a neat little bow, and it just… stopped. Conflict resolution and… end. There were ghosts in Manet Hall, and they just vanished and no one gave them a second thought ever again? Then again, this seems like a common theme in horror novels—you can’t drag it out too much, or else the shock vanishes and what are you left with? That creeping doubt that you’ve been reading too much into it all along. So maybe there was no way to continue the story and maybe it would have been too much to keep dragging it out. I know that I would have kept reading, and maybe I would’ve been disappointed because there really isn’t much left to do after this point.
I’d really love to read this again sometime.