TEST
There’s one thing you have to realize about me … I love Jude Deveraux’s books. Her books helped introduce me to the romance genre. Knight in Shining Armor remains one of my all time favorite books. That’s why this is a difficult review for me to write. I didn’t hate Remembrance, but I can’t say I liked it very much either. It did have good points, but the bad points drag the story down for me. The book never quite gelled for me as a whole.
Hayden Lane, the heroine, is a successful but unhappy romance writer. On the night of her engagement she wakes up obsessed with a character. As she writes and researches, becoming more obsessed, she loses her fiancé and her touch with reality. A wedding invitation from her ex-fiancé wakes her up and she eventually finds herself sitting across from a psychic who tells her she can’t be happy in this life because of what happened in her past lives.
Hayden is not content to sit around and wait for a couple of lives until she can be with her true love . . . she plans to do something about it. What she does, is get herself hypnotized and transported into the body of one of her past lives, Catherine, Lady De Grey. It seems Catherine and her husband love each other but their marriage is cursed. Hayden is determined to find out why before time runs out for Catherine and Tavey, which is what is about to happen. Once again, she gets herself hypnotized and seems to dream of a different past life/relationship, that of Callie and Talis.
Callie and Talis were purposely switched at birth. Callie’s real mother, Alida, knows she cannot present her husband with yet another daughter, so when the woman she is giving birth next to dies, Alida seizes the opportunity, and the woman’s son as her own. Only the servants know, and Alida knows they won’t tell. Callie and Talis become childhood friends, then grow eventually to love each. But, due to outside interference, it is not to be, and it all ends tragically. They curse each other’s love for all eternity. Callie’s curse is that Talis will always love her and want her, and yet never have her. Talis’s curse is that Callie will always love him, and no other.
Too much? That’s what I thought when I finished the book. Too much story, too many main characters and really, too much whining. This whole book just seemed to whine at me. I liked Lady De Grey and her Tavey quite a bit. Hayden whined too much and frankly, I never warmed to Callie and Talis either. They seemed a shadow image of Catherine and Heathcliff to me. Also, I had a real problem with the fact that Hayden meets her Mr. Right, Tariz (we never learn the rest of his name, but obviously this is enough to convince Hayden, he’s Tavey/Talis), so late in the book. Their relationship seems very contrived. Beside the fact Tariz’s comment to Hayden, “You aren’t one of those American women is tied to her company and can’t move are you?” really annoyed me. Convenient for all that she’s a writer, heh?
Yeah, I believe in love at first site, and I suppose you have to have suspension of disbelief, but none of this ever never rang true to me. I think that is my main issue with the book was nothing ever really connected for me. It didn’t gel as a story, Talis and Callie felt very far removed, and I got no sense of her as Hayden or Lady De Grey. Theirs felt like too much of a separate story. I would rather have had much more of Lady De Grey and Tavey. I thought they were one interesting couple.
I didn’t hate this book so much as I was left disappointed by it, something I had never experienced before with a Jude Deveraux book.
I did rather like the monkey though.
Grade: C
Book Type: Time Travel Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 08/09/98
Publication Date: 1997
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Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.