Midnight Waters 

           by Rosie Wylor-Owen

One is born, one will die

 On the island of Dusk two families of witches had a long history of hatred for each other the Arrowoods and the Everharts.  A hatred so malevolent that one member of each family would commit murder, one using the Tree of Life and the other a dryad as an instrument of death. Now generations later these two families still pay the price for their ancestors’ act of vengeance.  A curse that brings death. Each time a new child is born or adopted into the families of the Arrowoods or Everharts a member of their family dies.

 

Maeve Arrowood had been driven away from Dusk after high school.  Growing up with the threats of death, in the middle of the deadly feud with the animosity between the families, she’d only wanted some peace. Her affinity for water made her the ideal person to work with Nexus, a department of law enforcement in London retrieving bodies from watery graves. Now she was home again because a child was soon to be born. If it was her time to die, she wanted to be on the island. If it was her father’s, she wanted to spend what little time was left together. Both survived this birth, but her uncle didn’t. News spread quickly in Dusk. Maeve ran into two Everhart sons, Ben and Adrian, on the street shortly after. Adrian immediately started taunting her and cheering over the death. This is why she had stayed away for so long.

 Her uncle wasn’t the only death on Dusk it seemed. A body had been found on the rocks within the boundaries of the merfolk. Since there had been problems with tourists the merfolk had closed their waters to all. As a former employee of Nexus, the police chief in Dusk asked for Maeve’s assistance to bring the body to land. In the past Maeve had been friends with the merfolk. So, requesting permission to retrieve the body from their waters was left up to her. Told by Janeria, the queen of the merfolk, that some had seen Tyler, the young man, pushed off the cliff onto the rocks. However, since the distance had been too far to see the murderer Janeria wanted her people left out of this situation. For this reason, Maeve couldn’t tell the Chief, what had been seen, Tyler’s death was ruled and accident. Maeve couldn’t let it go; Tyler had been a friend from school. Unfortunately, he had been an even closer friend to Ben Everhart, who was now out for blood, refusing to believe it an accident.

 Ben Everhart would reluctantly team up with Maeve to find the murderer and the reasons behind Tyler’s death. If either of their families saw them together there would be the devil to pay. If this had been their only contact with each other, they might have gotten away with it. Until they both ended up at a dating agency whose unique introductions used magical masks that hid their identities for the first three dates. It seemed that Ben Everhart and Maeve Arrowood were an almost perfect match. Let the adventures begin.

 The unique story plot had me swimming in very deep waters watching for something to come up and pull me down. Maeve’s closest friends are a delight, one a fairy, the other a dryad, while sharing their unsolicited advice and help. The families on both sides come off as strongly opinionated, at times unreasonable, unwilling to even consider a means of ending the curse but also had strong loving ties. Both families live as many families did eons ago, supporting each other living in one huge dwelling. Adrain’s anger is right up there like a volcano ready to explode and not easily controlled.

  The animosity is palpable and at times felt like an extra character that walked beside them. But the pull between Ben and Maeve during their time together on their dates before they realized who they were was equally strong. There is the mystery of Tyler’s murder but by the end of the tale I was rooting for Ben and Maeve to find a solution to end the curse or at least break away from their family’s cruel disregard for their growing feelings. Shades of Romeo and Juliet that lead us into the next part of this trilogy. If I had any discord, it would be that at times by their dialogue and actions, Maeve and Ben seemed to me more older teens than young twenty somethings. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the stories and I can recommend this title. I believe some older teens would enjoy it as well but there is encounter between Ben and Maeve that becomes heated.