I have to give Lisa Kleypas credit — usually when an established mainstream genre romance author takes a stab at something paranormal, the result is painful. That was not the case here. Justine is a hereditary witch, born with magic and raised in pagan traditions drawn from real-world religions such as Wicca. The world building was smooth, consistent, and believable.
Justine was cursed at birth so that she would never love a man. The reason — when a witch loves a man, he is doomed to die. Hey, the universe demands a price for magic. It doesn’t come free. Justine isn’t aware of that fact when she learns of the curse’s existence and promptly breaks it.
The next thing she knows, she’s tumbling head over heals in love with Jason — a man without a soul. Now don’t get me wrong — he’s a perfectly good man. There just isn’t anything in him that will live past the death of his body. When he dies, that will be it.
He knows he doesn’t have a soul. He wants to steal Justine’s grymoire to see what he can do about that problem.
The romantic tension was good. Chemistry was good. The romance was a bit whirlwind and didn’t have as much of a firm footing as I like, but under the circumstances it was probably better that way.
The ending was surprisingly satisfying. (That’s all I can say without spoilers. 🙂 )
I would recommend this novel to both romance readers AND to fantasy readers who think they’d like to try some romance. It’s a good cross-over book, and that’s hard to find!
Rating 4/5
Title: Crystal Cove
Author: Lisa Kleypas
ISBN: 0749953934
Published February 2013