Un beso inolvidable (A Kiss to Remember) Book

Memory loss is one of the biggest plot clichés - the more so because it never really seems to happen in real life. One hears about people losing their memory of an accident or a mugging, but only very rarely do they lose memory of everything. But in fiction?

Bring on the amnesia!

Over the years, as memory-less men and women pile up on the paperback shores, it's become more and more difficult to write this plot well. But Teresa Medeiros does it brilliantly, and her A Kiss to Remember is probably my all-time favorite amnesiac plot. Sterling Harlow, Duke of Devonbrooke and a notorious rake, wakes up to find a lovely girl hanging over him. Since he doesn't know his own name, she tells him that he's Nicholas Radcliffe, her long-lost fiancé.

The truth is that Laura Fairleigh needs a husband, because if she's not married pronto, she and her siblings will lose the roof over their head…to a duke. Yes, the Duke of Devonbrooke. Medeiros gleefully piles unlikely event on unlikely event - but what carries the readers straight through this page-turner is the utterly charming love story between Laura and Sterling. Told that he's a well-mannered, honorable man, the rakish Nicholas conforms. He doesn't like it when Laura arranges for him to be the new rector of the parish, but he doesn't explode. He saves his rage for the moment when his memory comes back.

This is one of Medeiros's most charming and most unput-downable novels, the perfect rainy afternoon read.