scioscribe

Despite the title, there is, disappointingly enough, no amnesia in this book. It's a childhood acquaintance-to-lovers story, a first-time-with-a-woman story, and a we-will-break-up-for-whatever-reason-is-currently-dictated-by-the-plot story. As you can tell by that last bit, I wasn't wild about it.

Samantha is a successful art dealer who spends her days traveling and her nights having casual sex with a string of good-looking men she mostly doesn't become attached to; one morning, she wakes up hungover, pleasantly sore, and realizes that her partner last night was a woman. Whom she doesn't remember. Mystery woman bows out but later resurfaces, and Sam finally remembers her name: Mia. She's the little sister of Sam's first high school boyfriend. She had an enormous crush on Sam when she was twelve and she never forgot about it.

Despite still thinking of herself as straight and despite having spent the opening of the novel telling us that she's not the settling down type, Sam is almost instantly intrigued by Mia. She changes her flight to stay another night with her--and then blows it by panicking and running away when Mia asks if Sam is going to break her heart. Which is understandable, because it's a weird thing to ask someone on what's basically a first date. The two of them later reconnect. And break up, this time with bonus family issues. Then get back together, very dramatically. Then talk about breaking up again. Then decide to get married. You could get whiplash from the way their decisions are made, and their character traits ultimately feel shaped by the length of the novella, more than anything else: oh, not quite at the end yet? Better throw in another breakup, but this time, let's sort of make it Mia's fault, for variety!

And the weird thing is that the book is perfectly set up for a good, slow-burn conflict already. Sam has an image of herself that's not compatible with her relationship with Mia; there's a promising emotional lopsidedness in the way Mia remembers their first encounter but Sam doesn't and the way Mia has been holding onto this crush all the while. You could do things with both of those. But instead, Samantha's cut-and-run habits surface at random--at other times, she's considering dropping New York and all its galleries to move to Atlanta to live with Mia and freely and immediately professing her love for her. Though at least Sam is kind of a character, with messy insecurities and a detailed history, which is more than you can say about Mia, whose past is relevant only as it intersects with Sam's. This is Spencer's first novella, and I think it shows, though there's ultimately enough here that's promising that I think her later books could still be interesting, once she gets a better handle on her material.

Bonus awkwardness: Sam makes an out-of-nowhere late-story confession about a "terrible" thing she did in her thirties, which is that she had an abortion without consulting the nice man she was involved with at the time. This has basically nothing to do with anything and is odd to read about, especially since Sam's guilt feels totally inorganic for her character. Mia's response at least seems more reasonable for hers--she maintains that Sam had the right to have it without talking to anybody else about it but admits that if they'd been together and Sam had done the same thing, she'd be upset. This seems like it's supposed to sort of serve as a catalyst for them deciding to have a child together, but it's weird and unnecessary.