Love water memory

Jennie Shortridge writes Women's Fiction with a bit of an edge. She often features characters who are slightly down on their luck, or who make spectacularly bad choices. When I realized that Love Water Memory utilized an amnesia plotline, I feared that she had jumped the shark. Not another “bump on the head turns a bitchy woman into a better person” story, I grumbled.

But fortunately Love Water Memory did not disappoint. True, amnesiac Lucie learns that in her former life she was a driven, shopaholic fashionista who didn't give her neighbors or her fiance Grady's family the time of day. But as she digs into her past, aided in part by her irascible Aunt Helen, the reader realizes that Lucie is dealing with something a lot more traumatic and painful than a simple personality adjustment.

Also, Lucie isn't the only character on a journey. Grady, whose overbearing mother and sisters have both loved and tormented him since his father's death many years ago, has to come to terms with both the new Lucie and the old, prickly Lucie whom he inexplicably loved. Like Lucie, he also has a past tragedy that in many ways he has never left behind. Even elderly Aunt Helen has some epiphanies about her actions and the ways she unintentionally contributed to Lucie's problems.

Lucie and Grady's relationship is engaging and tender, albeit occasionally frustrating, with several instances where they make assumptions about each other that could have been allayed with a little bit of communication. But it's easy to root for the couple, who obviously were meant for each other deep down, even though their relationship was doomed before Lucie's memory loss.

It has been three years since Jennie Shortridge's last release and I was overjoyed to see her back in print. I hope her next book won't take as long to reach my eager hands.