{Release Day Review} Down Comes the Night by Allison Saft (@AllisonhSaft @WednesdayBooks)

He saw the darkness in her magic. She saw the magic in his darkness.

Wren Southerland’s reckless use of magic has cost her everything: she’s been dismissed from the Queen’s Guard and separated from her best friend—the girl she loves. So when a letter arrives from a reclusive lord, asking Wren to come to his estate, Colwick Hall, to cure his servant from a mysterious illness, she seizes her chance to redeem herself.

The mansion is crumbling, icy winds haunt the caved-in halls, and her eccentric host forbids her from leaving her room after dark. Worse, Wren’s patient isn’t a servant at all but Hal Cavendish, the infamous Reaper of Vesria and her kingdom’s sworn enemy. Hal also came to Colwick Hall for redemption, but the secrets in the estate may lead to both of their deaths.

With sinister forces at work, Wren and Hal realize they’ll have to join together if they have any hope of saving their kingdoms. But as Wren circles closer to the nefarious truth behind Hal’s illness, they realize they have no escape from the monsters within the mansion. All they have is each other, and a startling desire that could be their downfall.

Allison Saft’s Down Comes the Night is a snow-drenched romantic fantasy that keeps you racing through the pages long into the night.

Love makes monsters of us all.

​Wren Southerland always felt more like a healer than a soldier. It’s a talent passed down for generations in her family and it’s one of the only things that gives her life any meaning – her magic and her best friend, Una.  She longs for a place where she can be more than just the Queen’s poor little orphan niece. A place safe from war.  A place free of death.
 
So when a single act of mercy during a mission threatens to take away all that she holds so dear, Wren will do anything – no matter how treasonous it may seem, to find her way home.

Most nights, Wren still jerked awake drenched in sweat and gasping. Her dreams were lit by raging fire, the stench of burning flesh coating her skin and screams ringing in her ears. But did someone steeped in so much death even feel the weight of it anymore?

​Hal Cavendish is best known as the “Reaper of Vesria”. His magic is almost as legendary as his thirst for his enemy’s blood.  Wren can hardly believe that it’s actually him that is teetering so close to death in Colwick Hall. 
 
Regardless of her patient’s past sins, Wren plans to live up to her part of the bargain she made with the inscrutable Lord Alistair Lowry.  Heal the boy and win the forgiveness of the Queen.  
 
But the more that Hal reveals of himself, the more she feels her world beginning to shift.  If they can work together to solve the mystery that lurks in the long dark hallways of the near deserted mansion, they can stop a coming war. But if they’re not very careful, they could lose their lives as well as their hearts.  

Were they really so different? Two weeks ago, Wren had thought she knew herself. A medic in the Queen’s Guard. Reckless, yes, but good-hearted at her core. But with the weight of Hal’s life and a war in her hands, she wasn’t so sure anymore. Nothing was as simple as she wanted it to be.

​Down Comes the Night is everything that a gothic romance should be! Allison Saft immerses her reader in a world that is both dangerously seductive and bravely hopeful at the same time. Seething with a suspense that never surrenders, I couldn’t look away for an instant.  From the sophisticated characters to the multi-sensory landscape, this is a story that will quicken even the blackest of hearts.  
​And what could be more thrilling than that?