He searches for her in a ball. With single-minded purpose he pursues her and she falls for him. She is Rosalind. An orphan child who was beaten to death as a little girl and cast away. The Sherbrook family have raised her as one of their own.

But, even they can’t explain why the only thing the girl does remember of her life before the Sherbrook’s are the haunting words to a song.

He is Nicholas Vail. Disowned by his father and protected by his senile grandfather, the innocent boy survived and a dangerous man has returned in his place. The outcast eldest son of the centuries old proud line of Vails, Nicholas has come to claim his family title after spending years in exotic foreign lands.

I dream of beauty and sightless night
I dream of strength and fevered might
I dream I’m not alone again
But I know of his death and her grievous sin.

Their whirlwind romance is made interesting by the discovery of a magical book. A tedious fateful account of the Land of Pale by a wizard from earth. Is it a figment of an insane delirious mind or a magical parallel universe? The book is illegible to anyone except Rosalind. Why? And what’s more eerie is that even she is barred from discovering all its mysteries.

There is love and silliness. A ghost that sings bawdy rhymes; who has returned to haunt the house of Nicholas Vail. The ghost has come for a glimpse of the arrival of the debt. Rosalind is she.

The problem with Wizard’s daughter is that it is one of the later books in the Sherbrook series. And I haven’t read the preceding ones. While Wizard’s daughter can be read alone, more often than not I got the feeling that there were subtleties in the plot and links to character traits that I couldn’t quite grasp. Had I been able to connect all the story elements it would have been a more satisfying read, because now the feeling that lingered with me was a vague unease about story threads that lead nowhere or were sprung upon the reader from nowhere. All in all, we are left with loose ends.

With an air of paranormal mystery and regency romance, a few attempts at murder and some unpredictable moments, the book could very well have been an extremely entertaining read. Sadly nothing big happens in the first half, even though there is a rugged dark skinned hero with wind swept hair, rolled up white shirt and a black cape on the book cover.

If you like or would like to try a light paranormal regency romance then curl up to Wizard’s daughter.

The author is the same Catherine Coulter who writes contemporary FBI thrillers.