Book Review: Upon the Midnight Clear - by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Synopsis: The novella Upon the Midnight Clear is part 20 in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunter saga of romances. Our hero is a human for a change this time. Aidan O'Conner is an extremely jaded world-famous movie star who has been betrayed by everyone he ever loved, even his family. Fed up with being stabbed in the back by his friends and family, he retires to the snowy backwoods of Tennessee to live out the rest of his days in isolation where no one can hurt him. His evil brother Donnie, however, can't let it go. He hates his famous little brother so much that he summons an ancient god (Dolor) to kill Aidan. Leta is a Dream-Hunter who has spent most of her life fighting Dolor. She seeks out his next victim, Aidan, to try to save him from the evil god. She has her work cut out for her, though, because Aidan isn't interested in seeing, talking to, or being saved by anyone - much less a strange woman who shows up at his door in the middle of a snowstorm claiming to be a dream goddess out to protect him from the mythological god of pain.

I liked the hero and heroine in this book all right, but felt that their romance developed much too abruptly. It is not quite a full-length novel, so there is a limitation on time, but I still felt that the two characters decided they loved one another and were willing to sacrifice everything for one another WAY too quickly after meeting for the first time. Aidan is a pretty vulnerable guy who has erected a lot of barriers to protect himself from being hurt again. Leta works pretty hard to show him that he can trust her, but she's still somewhat underdeveloped as a character. The story was interesting though and you learn a bit more about the different players in the Dream-Hunter world.

*Note: This book contains a short story (more of a series of short vignettes) at the end entitled "Holiday Gatherings" where you get to see little snippets of all the different characters from the previous books in the series and how they were celebrating the holidays. Interestingly, this was my favorite part of this entire book.

I rated this one 3 stars in my LibraryThing catalog.