★★★★ 
When catastrophe struck young lovers Alana and Christian, there remained nobody who could look after them but themselves. Christian, an immortal, always feared his strange world of magic and the unknown would hurt his mortal lover, and together they decide it’s finally time they left behind their troubles for the open sea. But their troubles are far from over, as the seas hide even greater troubles than they have faced so far.
Evening Star is the third book of the Moonless Night series by Floriminda Edar Reid, and the direct sequel to Elusive Dreams. The series follows teen-come-young-adult Alana as she meets immortal beauty Christian, and their subsequent relationship through many different supernatural and social perils. Over the course of these events, Alana has rounded out significantly, from a relatively naïve and insecure teenage girl, to a young woman grown cold from adversity, to an overall more mature and thoughtful person.
Christian, meanwhile, changes only slowly, in line with his immortal blood. The dynamic between the two during these metamorphoses and how they react to the world around them is a main point of the series, and the latest chapter is no disappointment in bringing new tests to the table, making this a more mature installment overall, in line with Alana’s own maturation as a character.
Despite a change of scenery and its many shake-ups along the way, Evening Star does follow a similar path to its predecessors: namely adhering fairly closely to the major habits of the supernatural romance genre, while not entirely carving its own path. As with previous installments, this is not entirely a criticism, as it is a solid book of its own, and there is some comfort in familiarity. All told, Evening Star is a strong entry in the series. The book displays the trappings of the genre well and does plenty with them to stand out, and manages to do something unique from the previous entries while remaining cohesive in terms of world-building and character development.
The disappointment, once again, is in the delivery, as the third book in the series has still yet to shake off the overwritten, uncanny writing style that marred the former installments. There is a stilted fluidity to the writing that peppers the read with flecks of purple descriptors and unnecessary details, together with a return of glaring grammatical errors that trip up the read far too often. On the plus side, there is a new poetic slant to this installment: as Alana has matured as a person, so has the scope of the prose, in the tradition of great series of the past. Overall, however, the prose is too often inscrutable, which takes away from an otherwise engaging and creative story.
On the whole, Evening Star is a worthy continuation of the Moonless Night series, developing the series in a logical and interesting way. Fans of the series, and fans of supernatural romance in general, will find a lot to like here. There’s a great story underneath some of the series’ overall problems, as Reid has created an inventive universe peopled with strong characters easy to become invested in, and a dream-like world that is uniquely compelling.
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