Review: Could have used more depth
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 21, 2012
Even though the premise of this story is one that has been written before, the author did a decent job of creating her story.  The beginning of the book set the stage as Mark, our hero, is discussing his made up fiance, whom he gave the awful name of Annabelle, with his friend Roger.  Roger sees a problem where Mark doesn't seem to see one.  Mark has created his fake engagement to keep his endearing aunts Emmy and Claire, who like to play matchmaker, from parading ill-suited women before him.Enter the problem.  "Annabelle" has a wreck not far from Little Brook, the home of Mark's aunts, that has left her with amnesia.  The aunts take her in and find the initials AC on her luggage.  They assume she must be Mark's fiance.  With not much memory to go on, Anna allows this to happen.  The problem develops when Mark visits and realizes that instead of the invented person, he now has a flesh and blood fiance to deal with.  He suspects she is trying to manipulate him for her own gain as she must have found out his plan.  This Annabelle even plays piano which is a major coincidence since the fiance he invented is a concert pianist who is supposed to be away on tour, the reason he gave for her not being able to meet his aunts.Mark and Annabelle get to know each other over the course of a few chapters.  Anna has vague recollections of her past, not enough to give her actual clues, but enough to make her feel they had to be sinister.  The clues come from the sheet music she has with her in her luggage.  Then the H/h are invited to a party where she gets to show her talents as a pianist much to Mark's surprise.  His female friends play catty games trying to make Annabelle look bad but Mark sticks up for her even though he doesn't know why.The author does show Mark and Annabelle slowly building a relationship at first, but then the aunts are conveniently called away to an ailing relative and the H/h have the house to themselves.  They quickly have a sexual encounter that you didn't realize even happened until the talk of "afterwards" began.  Then they have another one shortly after that.  It just didn't feel right having this happen at the time due to the suspicions and unresolved issues in the story between the two characters.  It made Mark less worthy of Anna in my eyes.Anna and Mark are invited to another party.  One of Mark's female friends, Serena, who clearly dislikes Annabelle has found out about Annabelle's past.  Serena confronts Annabelle at this party and gives her just enough information to jog memories she had forgotten.  Annabelle runs off and begins fretting over Mark's deception.All was fine up to this point in the story.  This was when I felt the story fell flat and could have been written better.  Everything blew up in the face of the H/h, relationship revealed as a sham, feelings of distrust, "you used me,"  "what game were you playing," yada, yada, yada, but the heroine still needs the hero.The H/h travel to her home town and all the things she had  forgotten she suddenly remembered, confronted and laid to rest in the space of maybe half a chapter.  It was too neatly done.  Nothing was shown of the confrontation between Anna and the evil guy she was running away from even when Mark suddenly shows up during the big meeting.  The confrontation was shown in one sentence and over in the next with nothing really happening. It was a deflated letdown. Maybe if the author had put one more chapter into the book before quickly moving to the HEA epilogue the book might have been able to eke one more star out of my review.  Not a bad read though.