Never Stay Past Midnight, by Mira Lyn Kelly

TITLE: Never Stay Past Midnight
AUTHOR: Mira Lyn Kelly

COPYRIGHT: 2012
PAGES: 192
PUBLISHER: Harlequin Presents

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Category romance
SERIES: None

"You are so wrong for me."

Levi had to agree—he was. He was leaving Chicago in a few short weeks. He didn't do commitment—ever. But everything about this night, this girl, was so good. So right. Until at 11:59 p.m. she got out of his bed, got dressed and left!

What had he done? Things had hardly started and she was off! Yet he was bored with simpering women he couldn't get rid of. Elise was a breath of fresh air. How was he going to find her…and get her back in his bed—for the whole night this time? It seemed Mr. Levi-and-Leave-Them might have found the one woman to leave him begging for more...

It was never supposed to be more than a one-night stand: an exception for Elise, normal MO for Levi. Anything more would never work: Elise is in the middle of setting up her own business, and just has no time for a relationship, while Levi's career involves setting up nightclubs and selling them on after a few months, after which he moves to another city to start again.

But then the one-night-stand turns into a no-strings-attached affair, in theory only getting together every once in a while, whenever they both fancy it. Except they're soon spending pretty much every evening together, doing plenty of non-sex stuff, like supporting each other in difficult situations and getting to know one another.

I found this one a bit hard to get into, to be honest. The story starts in the middle of things, right after they first get together. I had no idea who these people were, and suddenly I was reading sex scene after sex scene, and that got pretty tedious. Not to mention, I had no idea why they just didn't get together, since they liked each other so much.

So Elise is busy setting up her yoga/pilates studio. Big deal. Levi clearly knows what setting up a business entails, and he's never anything but supportive. So what's the problem? We have no idea. Levi's business requiring him to move cities every few months is a harder problem to solve, but it's a self-imposed rule that this is the way his business works. What's keeping him from just changing it? We have no idea.

It's only much later that we understand why Elise would feel she can't follow her very time-consuming dream and have a proper relationship at the same time, and why Levi is so terrified of commitment and feels the need to uproot his whole life every few months. They're very good reasons. They just came a bit too late in the book for me. Once we understand more and I got a feel for who these two people really were, the book becomes quite good. The feelings felt real and both Levi and Elise had interesting issues.

Unfortunately, for the first half, I struggled to connect with the characters at all. At about a third in, it was touch and go whether I'd finish the book. I'm glad I decided to do so, because I really liked the second half or so (except the diabetic shock-inducing epilogue, sorry), but the characters needed fleshing out much earlier.

MY GRADE: A B-.