Mostly Married by Lisa Manuel

Some readers find certain romance conventions - like amnesia - too unrealistic. Even though I know bonking someone on the head probably doesn't take away someone's memory (selectively!), I grew up on soap operas, and I'm willing to go with an unrealistic plot point, as long as it takes me somewhere interesting. I'd rather read a book with an amnesia plot that has something interesting to say, than a book that gets everything right down to the last street name and weather pattern, and features dull, cardboard characters that don't do or say anything worth reading about. (But I'm glad the author didn't cheat on the succession issue.)

Mostly Married by Lisa Manuel
(2004, Regency Historical) 4/13/08
Grade: 4

Lucas wakes up on a farm in Scotland, next to a wife he can’t remember. A year earlier, he’d been washed up on shore after a shipwreck, with no memory, and fell in love with and married Charity. But now his memory has returned, and he must return to his family back in England and his responsibilities as Duke of Wakefield. But what about love?

An interesting and thoughtful book, that was great in the first half and merely good in the second half (but that’s still not bad). Amnesia is a romance cliche, but Manuel uses it as a reason to explore an interesting subject - what happens to a Duke, raised and trained from birth to fulfill his duty, when duty and responsibility are taken away? And what happens to him once they come back, and he has to learn to live with them again? Unfortunately, once the author gets to a certain point in the story, she sort of runs out of steam, and the latter part of the book seems to repeat itself for a while, and then peter out with a suspense plotline that, although well done, is kind of a distraction. And it didn’t have the emotional intensity of someone like Balogh, for example. But overall, it was nice to read a book that was thoughtful and mature, without relying on sex or external plots to fill the pages.

In some ways, this book reminded me of The Temporary Wife by Mary Balogh - it didn't have the angst of that one, but it had a similar kind of "family trying to deal with the aftermath" feeling.