What people are saying about Tangled Memories

TANGLED MEMORIES - Jan Scarbrough
A Perfect 10
The Wild Rose Press - www.thewildrosepress.com
ISBN: 1-60154-270-4
August 2008
Reincarnation Romance

England in 1327, and Present Day Kentucky

Mary Adams met Dr. Alexander Dominican eight years ago. He was her doctor’s partner and was on call the night that she miscarried. After her unhappy marriage ends with her husband’s death, Mary learns that he has left her with his vast gambling debt. Alexander makes her a deal: he’ll pay her debts if she’ll agree to raise his infant daughter.

But Alex doesn’t want just a nanny for his three-month-old daughter, Elizabeth, he wants a mother. Despite her best friend Gail’s warnings, Mary agrees to the ‘business’ marriage. She’ll be Alexander’s wife in name only and adopt Elizabeth. It is only minutes after she accepts the vows of marriage that she begins to have strange dreams and visions of another Mary and another marriage.

Mary Adams flashes back to the life of Mary de Mandeville during fourteenth-century England. The teenage girl is forced to wed a 35-year-old man, Lord Alexander Mountjoy, who is in desperate need of an heir. The fourteenth-century Mary falls in love with her husband but doesn’t believe that he’ll want her as a woman, only a broodmare. Mary Adams can sense that something terrible is going to happen in the young girl’s life and begins to wonder if she was that fourteenth century girl, and if she is doomed to experience the girl’s fate.

TANGLED MEMORIES is a fantastic story that explores the possibilities of reincarnation and past lives. The story is told in first person from Mary Adams’s point of view, but the flashbacks are written in third person. This makes the book very clear and helps to keep the multiple characters straight. Mary is not the only person who has a past life. Most of the characters exist in the present and the past, but their names are not always the same as they are with Mary and Alexander. Much of the plot revolves around Mary’s struggle to identify characters in the past with their present day counterparts. She must put the puzzle pieces together in time to save herself and correct a terrible mistake made in the fourteenth century.

Alexander is a troubled man who has just lost his wife to cancer. She developed cancer while she was pregnant, and dies immediately after her daughter is born. Alexander never loved his wife, but he is troubled that he couldn’t save her life. He feels guilty that he didn’t pay more attention to her. He worries that his daughter will grow up without a mother, and he literally sets out to buy a wife and mother. Mrs. Garrity is the housekeeper who has been caring for Elizabeth since she was born. The housekeeper makes no effort to hide her contempt for her new mistress, Mary. Other present day characters include Rufus, who is a strange little man who plays nurse to Alexander’s father, Guy, who is supposedly an invalid.

The characters, setting, and plot make TANGLED MEMORIES an intriguing read. Jan Scarbrough does a great job of balancing the past and the present. She demonstrates exceptional literary skills in her ability to create dynamic characters. For an extraordinary read, I award TANGLED MEMORIES a Perfect 10.

Mel Mason
Romance Reviews Today

Tangled Memories is a book you will enjoy.
Writers and Readers of Distinctive Fiction Review
Between the Lines Blog

Tangled tale of romance, fantasy
Jan Scarbrough's Tangled Memories isn't just your typical romance novel. On the surface exists the love story, which satisfies readers despite being a bit formulaic. Kindergarten teacher Mary, once scorned by love, weds the brooding Alex in a marriage of convenience. Of course, the two ultimately find true love. However, Scarbrough pleasantly surprises readers with an unexpected plot twist full of fantasy, intrigue, and time travel. Scarbrough pulls readers from the present to the past and back again swiftly as Mary's newfound love with Alex connects her with a soul mate from her past life.

Although her flashbacks are a bit trite (the room spins and Mary is engulfed by darkness more than once), the novel's originality speaks volumes for Scarbrough's talents. Tangled Memories blends the best of contemporary romance with elements of the Gothic style, creating a piece that entertains and surprises all the way to the end.

Elly Gilbert
Kentucky Monthly
March 2002

Harriet Klausner review
Mary Adams was a widow for only a short time when she married Dr. Alexander Dominican so she could act as a mother to his child. His wife died recently as well from cancer but before her death they saved the child's life by doing a cesarean section. In return for marrying Alex, he would pay off the fifty thousand in debts her late husband left behind when he died.

Mary moves into Marchbrook Manor, a medieval house in the heart of Kentucky. Once she steps through the door, strange things begin happening to her. She has visions of a medieval woman and her husband, a great lord in England of 1327. In addition to her visions someone in the house is trying to drive Mary away by playing cruel and malicious tricks on her. When she tells Alex about the incidents he doesn't believe her, which hurts Mary a great deal because she has come to love him.

TANGLED MEMORIES is a wonderful gothic romance complete with a foreboding castle, a helpful housekeeper, strange visions, and an insane antagonist. Told in the first person from Mary's point of view, readers feel the same fears that the heroine experiences. Jan Scarbrough has written a modern day gothic that will delight fans of this growing sub genre.

Romantic Times Review
4 STARS
I am thrilled to see a revival of the gothic romance. Not only does it have effective gothic elements but also flashbacks to the earlier time made it seem as if I were reading two different stories that paralleled each other. Kathy Boswell

What other authors say:

Jane Toombs:
"Not only gothic lovers will find this a marvelous and rewarding read - any reader who enjoys suspense mixed with romance won't be able to put this book down."

Patricia Kay:
"Lush, vivid writing. Tone, style and voice are all original and quite wonderful. The mood is nicely maintained, with just enough brooding suspense and Gothic overtones. Reminiscent of Mary Stewart."

Teresa Medeiros:
"Jan Scarbrough gives romantic suspense a fresh twist in her compelling first novel Tangled Memories. Her strong, provocative voice is one I look forward to reading more of in the future."