Fifteen-year-old Eve Lockhart studied and planned for a long time before she performed the Winter Rose spell that would give her a glimpse of her one true love. But everything went wrong. She never saw her true love and that night a fire in the house for which she blamed herself and magic, killed her parents. After that, she vowed to live a normal life, never again acknowledging her magical birthright.

But when Eve, now a journalist, catches sight of an hourglass pendant at an auction that she must own, she uses magic to ensure the handsome man bidding against her will finally back down. It turns out, according to her grandmother, the hourglass is a long-lost, and very powerful, family heirloom.

Eve may have purchased the pendant, but others covet it including the tall and sexy Gabriel Cohen, to whom it represents the ability to overturn a 200-year-old curse. An evil mage also seeks the talisman for his own nefarious purposes. Eve offers to help Gabriel but entangles herself in more than one simple spell-working in which she'll have to decide if using her magic is worth his life and perhaps her own.

Patricia Coughlin has penned an enchanting tale with this tale of romantic fantasy. With well-developed characters the reader wants to root for and a swiftly moving plot, you might find yourself reading late into the night to see what happens next. While the story pits good versus evil, which we've seen before, Coughlin puts enough unique touches in this story for it to stand out from the pack. Her secondary characters have strong depth, especially her grandmother. Coughlin includes some steamy sex scenes with Even and Gabriel that will make you want to have a partner near by if you have one. Eve learns some important lessons: Magic may have caused harm in her life, but she can use it to benefit others as well. I look forward to reading more of Coughlin's work.