Stevie‘s review of Clean Slate by Andrea Bramhall
Lesbian contemporary romance published by Bold Strokes 17 Sep 13
Amnesia is a common trope in fiction, and generally the focus is on the imbalance between the character who can’t remember and those around them whose memories are intact. If a mystery is involved, it usually revolves around whether everyone is being truthful about what happened during those missing days, hours, or weeks. But what if the amnesiac had a secret too – one with devastating consequences for those around her? Suddenly the game changes and everyone needs to know what happened in the weeks leading up to the accident that caused the amnesia, before that secret impinges on all their lives. In the case of Morgan Masters, she hasn’t just lost weeks of her memories, she’s lost twenty years, and the secret she was trying to protect everyone from might very well be related to a murder that Morgan witnessed as a student.
Morgan is an art teacher, and three weeks before our story opens she walked out on her wife and children to protect them from the contents of a letter she received three weeks before that. At the end of an evening class, she agrees to go for a drink with one of the models, but the two drinks go straight to her head. Her companion makes a pass at her, Morgan resists, and then suddenly she is attacked by a man who seems to know who they both are. The next thing Morgan knows, she’s in hospital with no memory of the attack.
In fact, Morgan has no memory of anything that happened since she was nineteen. As far as she’s concerned, her mother is still alive, Morgan is yet to come out to her two best friends, and women don’t have legally recognised relationships. Plus John Major is the Prime Minister, Princess Diana is alive, mobile phones are chunky gadgets used exclusively for talking to people… you get the picture. All this is pretty devastating for Morgan, Erin – her partner for fifteen years – their two children, and Morgan’s best friends – who have been together even longer than Morgan and Erin. The book doesn’t shy away from the fact that Morgan has suffered permanent brain damage – she can learn to talk and act like an adult rather than a teenager, but she’ll never get those memories back – and there’s no easy way that she and Erin can discover why she would suddenly walk out of a seemingly happy relationship or why CCTV cameras would catch her moments before she was attacked seemingly in the arms of another woman.
Erin loves Morgan though and Morgan feels that she loves Erin, even if she can’t remember why. So, after a rocky start, the pair decide to make a go of living together. Morgan has to work at regaining the trust of her children as well as Erin, and she starts to think that maybe she’s better off not knowing what happened in the weeks leading up to her being attacked. Just as things seem to be working out, that letter resurfaces when Morgan decides to sort through a bag of clothes. Suddenly her family are in danger again, but the new Morgan is more trusting of those around her. Unfortunately, her enemy has already found a potential way to get at the family.
I love the way that the new Morgan is able to deal with the crisis on top of everything else she has been through, and is eventually able to put her past behind her and work towards finally achieving some of the dreams she’d had as a student – which she’d given up on after that traumatic event in her past. I also love her family – Erin, their two children, and Erin’s brother – not to mention her two best friends, who are there to help Morgan through every crisis, including the fact that at nineteen she’d never had sex with anyone, much less Erin. A super story that’s alternately gripping and heart-warming, although I do feel that the final showdown could have been tightened up a little.
Grade: B
Summary:
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?
Read an excerpt.
