Lawson’s review of The Trouble with Moonlight by Donna MacMeans
Historical romance released by Berkley Sensation 3 Jun 08

This book has an interesting premise, though one usually attached to some other type of paranormal storyline. Instead of vampires or werewolves, there are a strange group of people who can become invisible. What follows, of course, is the idea that if you could be invisible, what would you do? How would the world treat you if you were different in the way that you disappeared in the moonlight? Or at least I think that’s where MacMeans was going with this one. Sometimes it was hard to tell. The cover to the books is rather striking though.

James Locke is a safe cracker and all around master spy, but when he’s searching for a list of British agents that have fallen into the wrong hands he witnesses something unusual. Though he sees no one enter the study he’s searching, out of the safe he just opened floats a ruby necklace that leaves the house and enters a carriage. He follows the carriage to a house which ends up being that of Lusinda Havershaw.

He quickly is able to trap and capture the invisible being, which he soon discovers is Lusinda. He convinces her to use her talents for the crown, but quickly becomes dependent on not only her skills but also on her presence in his life. Lusinda doesn’t like being blackmailed, but she’s afraid of her family secret getting out and so she goes along with things.

Underneath his calculating and strategizing exterior, Lusinda sees James as a lonely man and someone who seems to appreciate her for who she is. He doesn’t run from her when she’s invisible, in fact he still talks to her as if he can see her. When the spying life pops up to possibly destroy their fragile relationship and expose Lusinda’s secret, they do everything they can to preserve it. While not telling each other how they feel, of course.

One of the major things missing in the book was an explanation. Why is it that it’s moonlight that makes Lusinda invisible? How did her people start to be that way? No back story or reasons why she is the way she is other than her mother was the same way. Not only that, but there’s no explanation of Lusinda’s childhood other than she’s used to moving a lot. There’s plenty of back story for James, he’s an orphan (his last name Locke coming from the fact he’d bust out of rooms he was locked into), he joined the army, he was in India and got caught up in the Spy game, and he was thrown in a prison where he was whipped, though his life was saved by his best friend Marus Ramsden.

Because of the lack of history to Lusinda there was no cause for her actions, which for the most part where just clueless. She had no sense, whatsoever. Willingly paraded herself around London, in the nude (invisible, but still in the nude) and then she talks about going into brothels and other bawdy places to see what goes on there. Then she’s offended when James thinks she’s experienced due to the fact that she’s used to walking around naked (even though no one can see her). Barefoot in Victorian London would not be my choice. Think of the nastiness in the streets. Ick.

James, with his intellegence and wounded heart (because it seems that everyone leaves him so why form attachments) just makes one want to give him a big hug. Unfortunately, the villain of the piece devolves into a comic book villain, complete with a manical laugh and it takes away from the espionage storyline. He gave good balance to the story with his trials and tribulations that helped buoy Lusinda’s cluelessness.

If there had been more sense on the part of Lusinda and more back story this could have been a more enjoyable read, but it was a mesh of different things, because the story couldn’t stay one thing. Humorous, mystery, paranormal, sweet romance, steamy romance, spy tale. . .just all over the place and no real direction it was going in. If there was another story that helped to explain the Nevidimi (the invisible people), I think that could have helped things a lot.

Grade: C-

In the midst of a moonlit safe-cracking mission, British spy James Locke witnesses a ruby necklace spirited away as if by conjurer’s trick. Following the jewels leads him to Lusinda Havershaw, who’s inherited the talent of turning invisible in the moonlight–at least, the parts of her that are unclothed. Locke trains Lusinda in espionage, even while he finds her close proximity bewitchingly distracting. And as their mission to track Russian spies grows treacherous, they’ll find that the heart behaves even more mysteriously than Lusinda in the moonlight.