Tracy’s review of Remembering Love by Nadine Christian

When her beloved foster parents pass away, Holly discovers a past both shocking and heartbreaking: the murder/suicide of her biological parents on the South Pacific island of Pitcairn, famous for the HMAV Bounty mutineers. Traveling to a home she does not remember, Holly reconnects with long-lost childhood friend Jack. An old friendship quickly becomes more…until a dark secret is uncovered.

Will joyous love remembered become heartbreak? Can she find out the truth before someone else is hurt?

As long as Holly can remember she lived in a foster home with loving foster parents. They never told her about her past before the age of 5 but when they both pass on and she helps clean up their possessions she finds out the truth. She is actually the child of a couple who lived on remote Pitcairn Island and she became an orphan because of her parents’ murder/suicide. She is shocked at the info but also confused as she can’t remember anything. She is also curious as to what happened with her parents and what would cause their deaths. Holly travels to Pitcairn and moves into the house that she lived in as a child. She is greeted with enthusiasm by her neighbor Jack who was a great friend of hers at one time but she can’t remember him either.

Jack is a Pitcairn native but had moved off the island for a time. He came back to live permanently and ended up moving in with his father who had Alzheimer’s. His father, James, was lucid part of the time but when he first meets Holly he believes that she is Holly’s mother Celeste. He lets on what great friends that he and Celeste were but Holly can’t get all the info from him without upsetting him.

Jack soon realizes that he has more than friendship feelings for Holly and tries to move quickly with her feeling that she is his soul mate. Holly tries to slow things down but she feels just as Jack does. They almost end up sleeping together until the evil Masie spews her nastiness and says they could be half-siblings because of the rumors that James and Celeste had an affair way back when. Holly is understandably upset but it doesn’t stop her from trying to get to the bottom of things.

This was a good story overall. I really liked Holly and her persistence. The thought of moving from all you know to a very, very, very remote island takes some guts, that’s for sure. I admired her determination to not let anything stand in her way and she did it with a kind heart and didn’t stomp all over everyone to get what she wanted.

I also liked Jack a lot after about half the book. When we first meet him as an adult he seemed strange to me. Yes, he was happy to see Holly after all those years but it was almost a creepy giddiness that I didn’t care for. Actually Holly acted a bit that was too but not quite as much as Jack. He seemed much more mature and definitely not creepy as the book wore on, that’s for sure.

The rumors that had flown around Pitcairn all those years ago about James and Celeste were started by Masie who had a tendre for James. She was an spiteful, evil woman who opened her mouth and the devil flew out of it. She constantly called both Celeste and Holly whores and was just not a nicer person. Holly was much nicer to the woman than I would have been that’s for sure. There were a couple of others in the town that treated Holly with disdain as well and I couldn’t quite figure that out and we were never told why that was.

The relationship with Jack and Holly was quick but nice. It was a slightly disturbing to thing that they might be related yet were making out but in the back of my mind I didn’t really think they were so I didn’t mind all that much.

In the end it was an interesting read. I liked reading about Pitcairn as it sounds like a lovely island (although with a very strange language, imho) and the romance was nice.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

You can read more from Tracy at Tracy’s Place
This book is available from Eternal Press. You can buy it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher for an honest review.