Book Reviews

Book Blurb

After a vicious attack, Morgan Masters wakes up to find that nothing is how she remembers it. John Major isn’t the prime minister anymore, the Millennium has been and gone, and it’s been a very long time since she was in college.

When Erin’s worst fears become reality and her world crumbles around her, she has to pick up the pieces and start all over again.

Can losing everything actually be the best thing that ever happened to Morgan? Can Erin learn to forgive the sins of the past and let her heart lead her head for a change?

Or is happiness beyond their reach?

 

Book Review

The inclusion of marriage, children, and a distinctive quality tension in this drama mixed with an inventive variation on a victim of amnesia, made this a very different and engaging book. There is a weak yet critical series of events that left an uncomfortable taste and feeling for me several hours after I finished reading this. However, this did not diminish my complete captivation of the married women and their children. Additionally, there is a brother/brother-in-law who gets lots of gold stars!  

Morgan Masters is an artist and teacher. She is also assaulted with big-time fears and worries for her family. She chooses to separate herself from her heart’s base for their safety, but for everyone’s diminishment. She is soon thereafter the victim of a vicious physical attack orchestrated in a rather amateurish manner that precipitates her belief that she is nineteen years old again…loosing more than twenty years of her life. It was easy for me to be sympathetic to Morgan as an assault victim, but initially I wanted to beat her to a pulp myself for what she did to her wife and children even if she believed it was in everyone’s best interest.

Erin Masters is an intelligent, very loving parent, and an extremely hurt woman. She hardly has time to process her own abandonment, since her children are devastated. They need her and she puts them first. She has an amazing brother who is very supportive and a lovely bright light within these dark times. Seeing Morgan through Erin’s, their children’s, and even Erin’s brother’s eyes, it is really difficult to be charitable toward Morgan. I would like to have kicked the author in her butt for creating such a contrary character, but I am fairly sure this was exactly what she was shooting for.

This story is based near Manchester, Great Britain. The location has a minor role to play, but being a bit of an anglophile, I liked this feature. My only disappointment is the difficult to believe scenario near the end of the story that pulls the couple’s son completely out of character and catapults everyone, including me, into a chaotic, but necessary denouement. Not being an author, I have no idea how things could have been wrapped up, but I wasn’t really happy with how it happened here. That still in no way diminished my love of all the folks within, the amazing series of events everyone went through, and my complete desire to read more of Andrea Bramhall’s work…or my sincere suggestion that this book should not be missed.

 

 

 

 

DISCLAIMER: Books reviewed on this site were usually provided at no cost by the publisher or author. This book has been provided by Bold Strokes Books for the purpose of a review.

Additional Information

Format	ebook and print
Length	Novel, 312 pages
Heat Level
Publication Date	01-September-2013
Price	$9.99 ebook, $16.95 paperback
Buy Link	http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com/products.php?product=Clean-Slate-%252d-by-Andrea-Bramhall-eBook#