Title: Tangled Memories

Author: Jan Scarbrough

Published in July 2008 by The Wild Rose Press

Genre: Fantasy paranormal FaeryRose Spicy

Page Length: 240 pages

ISBN: 1-60154-270-4

Review:

 
It was a wedding, beautiful but quick, a strange compromise for a woman who had lost almost everything in one fell swoop.  Her husband died, leaving her with a mountain of debts he accrued with his gambling habits.  It was not that Mary didn’t love him, she did, she was blindsided by the problem he was in, then left to clean it up.  The proposition made to her by Dr. Alexander Dominican was more than fair, a marriage of convenience, one that cleared her debts in exchange for her lifetime services as a nanny.  Mary Adams would be mother and nanny to the child, a beautiful little girl abandoned by the death of her mother, and loved by her father so much that he didn’t want just anyone raising her.  He wanted Mary to be her mother, and that had to be good enough.  Mary knew she wasn’t in this for love, but the visions she began having after she said her “I Do” to Alex have more to do with her, and love, than she knows.

He was attracted to her, but he was not looking for an attachment. Love and thoughts of love followed his wife to her early grave, and left him with a young daughter to raise.  His housekeeper, Mrs. Garrity, was devoted to the child, just as she was to his wife before she passed away.  She was not the child’s mother, nor could she be.  Dr. Alexander Dominican wanted a wife to care for the child, one who would be there when she needed her, one who would love her with a mother’s love, not a servant’s devotion.  He wanted a woman who would discipline her when needed, and hug away the hurts.  In Mary Adams, Alex saw such a woman, and determined to have her for his daughter.  Attraction aside, it was a marriage of convenience, only when things began to happen, and Mary’s life was endangered, Alex was forced to admit the feelings he had hidden deep inside.  In an unconventional marriage, was love possible?

 
Jan Scarbrough brings together two people who have loved in a past life in Tangled Memories, and now, through the visions and dreams they are set up to find each other again.  With the wedding over, the vision or “spell” passes, and Mary is not certain what she sees.  The problem is that Alex reminds her a lot of the man in her dreams, or are they visions of the past?  To have him is fast becoming an obsession, yet she understands the term “marriage of convenience” is just that and only that…a convenience.  Between the strange household she now finds herself in with the jealous housekeeper, the odd father, and the even more strange little man she keeps bumping into makes her jumpy, and Alex seem like even more of a stranger.  When Alex becomes aware of her odd hallucinations, and worries, he becomes aware of the other menacing circumstance in his home.  He wonders why Mary did not question him on these things before, and yet feels drawn to her silence and strength.  Will they make things work and will happiness follow?  Tangled Memories is a book you will enjoy.  I must warn those of you who are like me, because it is written in the first person, and was difficult for me to get into. However, the plotting is sound, and the sequences back in time well written.  Only at the Wild Rose Press can you find out how this story ends.

Yours in good reading,

Rose!~