A Ph.D. candidate with a background in religious studies, Sophie Aubrey has been exchanging messages and emails with a like-minded Olivier for quite sometime. When he asks her to meet up at a local bar, her curiosity leads her to a meeting. Initially intrigued by Olivier, Sophie soon finds herself with the need to distance herself from him. Olivier, believing that Sophie is his truelove from a thousand years ago, tracks her down but in her attempt to get away from him, Sophie breaks her neck. In order to save her, Olivier turns her into a vampire.

Surprisingly forgiving for making her an immortal and a bloodsucker, Sophie quickly embraces the vampire ways and without asking Olivier for all the details about being a vampire, she returns to her apartment to turn her roommates into vampires. She manages to turn Norah but Suki has disappeared and the only clue they have is a cryptic message she left on the answering machine warning Sophie not to talk to any strangers.

When Norah, with some help from Sophie and Olivier's friend Lucien, sets out to enthrall Paul, a colleague at work who caused her to loose out on a promotion, they manage to unleash an evil fairy that has a very old grudge against Sophie. Sophie knows that they must re-capture the fairy because not only will she and Olivier not get another chance at love if they don't, Sophie also knows that the world she knows won't be the same if the fairy is left free.

In THE MIDNIGHT WORK, Kassandra Sims has taken an old story line and creates her own path to it but at times, it's a bit hard to follow. The heroine is not your typical hide in your room, wait for the hero to come and save you type. But at the same time, I didn't find her to be all that likable either. I found her quick acceptance at gorging on humans for blood and going on killing sprees a bit hard to take. Olivier is a submissive hero and I found I didn't connect with his character anymore than I did with Sophie's. The story was disjointed at times but I found that it did keep me interested enough to want to know how it would all end. Though not a book to fill you with romance and good cheer, Sims creates an imaginative debut novel with a distinct style and voice that holds promise for the future.

Book Summary

Christmas is a time of forgiveness -- so when Sophie Aubrey's date, a sexy and mysterious artist named Olivier, turns her into a vampire, she decides to forgive him. Especially since being a vampire is just as cool as she always thought it would be. But there are a few drawbacks she never expected, like zombies, sleazy French alchemists, inexplicable and contradictory fairies -- and her roommates: one has abandoned Chicago and her cat for the Fairy Lands, and the other reacted to vampirism by embracing it with both hands (and fangs) and gorging herself on human blood. Ick-o-rama. Plus, Olivier seems to believe that Sophie is his true love from a thousand years ago. Sophie can forgive that too, because when Olivier touches her, the whole world falls away -- but what she can't forgive is that he didn't tell her the whole story, like how a crazy death fairy has a vendetta against her. This has Sophie vacillating between entertainment at the fairy's pretensions and being scared out of her mind that someone who calls himself the God of Death has got it in for her soul. With the help of Olivier -- and the sleazy French alchemist, who turns out to be a vampire's best friend -- Sophie thinks she can defeat the death fairy. And if she can't, not only will she and Olivier have no future, she's pretty sure that the whole world is doomed.