Feature book: One Night with Her Forgotten Husband

One Night with Her Forgotten Husband by Annie West

Subgenre: contemporary romance
Release date: 13 Apr 2022
Publisher: ‎Mills & Boon Modern
Format: ebook and print
Length: 223 pages
RRP: $5.99 (ebook); $8.99 (print)

I love a good amnesia book! It’s such a fabulous romance trope and it’s been a while between amnesias …

Angelo Ricci is appalled when he discovers a woman’s body, washed up on the sand of his private beach. His property on the isolated Italian island is usually his bolt-hole. Stumbling across bodies, even in bad weather, is not the norm!

To his relief the woman is alive, but his heart sinks like a stone when he realises she’s his ex-wife, Alexa. The last person he—or his staff—want or expect to see. It’s been five years since they parted, and their relationship wasn’t pretty at the end.

How Alexa was marooned on the beach is a complete mystery. There’s no boat out to sea, and nothing to indicate where she might have been—or where he can contact anyone regarding her.

The weather is shocking, and no-one can access the island to expedite her back to the mainland. Angelo really has no choice. He reluctantly takes Alexa back to his villa.

Alexa keeps insisting he call her ‘Ally’, but she appears to have lost her memory and apart from her name remembers nothing. She’s different from the Alexa he learnt not to trust.

She’s still stunningly beautiful, yes, but he has bad memories of her grasping, shallow personality, only seeking fame and fortune and milking him for what he can give her. Adjectives such as liar, opportunist, self-obsessed and conniving keep popping up—with good reason, we discover, as Angelo gradually discloses their past history. Alexa is not a nice woman.

As she recovers, however, Ally seems different from the Alexa of the past. She’s thankful and humble. Easy to get along with and nice to the staff, to everyone’s surprise. What’s changed?

To Ally, Angelo is a complete stranger and her past is shrouded in a white fog of mystery. It’s an utter surprise to learn she’s his ex-wife. She sounds like she was a shallow, vain woman and this sits badly with her, especially the hurt she gave Angelo. She’s stunned to realise she’s beginning to care for him, and how much she’s enjoying time on Angelo’s island as she heals from her injuries.

They’re both surprised when the initial attraction that must have led to their marriage re-surfaces, white-hot and increasing. But, and it’s a huge ‘but’, should they act on it after all this time? Will things end badly, as they did before? What about the puzzle of Ally washing ashore?

The amnesia and the mystery of the past is fabulous in this book, and I was pretty sure things were going to be super-complicated when Ally got her memory back. (Yes, they were.) Thanks Annie West for another stunning romance, a page-turner with super high stakes!

Reviewed by Malvina

A review copy of this book was provided by the author.