Overview
Bestselling romance writer Hayden Lane has never been so obsessed with one of her fictional heroes before so entranced that she barely notices when her fiancé breaks their engagement. Desperate to discover more about him, she visits a psychic who tells har that in a past life, Hayden was Lady de Grey, a promiscuous woman of Edwardian England whose ghost is said to haunt her husband's home. Warned not to investigate further, Hayden is more intrigued than ever and can't resist being subject to a hypnotist's magic. But the trick goes wrong, and instead of merely remembering her past as Lady de Grey, Hayden is living it right down to her too-tight corset. Now, Hayden will discover quite a different story about a woman history considered a trollop, a spectacular, brooding man, and the rapturous love that would be hers if she dared open her heart to the most mysterious adventure of all....
A young woman sees a hypnotist and finds herself whisked back in time--and engaged in a rapturous love affair.
Synopsis
Bestselling romance writer Hayden Lane has just lost the "perfect" man, but what real man could compete with the dark intriguing character she writes about. But when a psychic tells her that Hayden has had a past life, she yearns to know more, and despite the psychic's warnings, Hayden cannot let this go.
In an effort to learn about her past, Hayden is hypnotized, but instead of merely remembering, she awakens in Edwardian England and immediately faints. But when she wakes up again, she will embark on an adventure beyond her wildest dreams -- and will have the chance at a love so rapturous that it defies the boundaries of time...
Suffused with Jude Deveraux's trademark warmth, humor, and tender sensuality, Remembrance is an unforgettable tale of a remarkable woman and the one man who was her destiny.
Publishers Weekly
Every cause has its champion. Now past-life therapy-the practice of curing neuroses through hypnotic regression into previous lifetimes-has its own in bestselling romance writer Deveraux, whose latest concerns a similarly bestselling romance writer whose problems stretch back centuries. Hayden Lane becomes so obsessed with her fictional hero, James Tavistock, that she loses her fianc, her editor's favor and, increasingly, her sense of reality. After a visit to a psychic convinces Hayden that her troubles are due to past-life tragedies, she consults a hypnotist who transports her back to Edwardian England, when Hayden was Catherine Tavistock, Lady de Grey, and married to Adam Tavistock (the embodiment of the fictional James). Adam is about to divorce Catherine for alleged rampant infidelity, but in fact Catherine is still a virgin, with Adam unable to consummate their marriage. To get to the bottom of this problem, Catherine, whose body now contains Hadley's consciousness as well as her own, allows herself to be hypnotized back to Elizabethan times, where the tale unfolds of how earlier incarnations of Catherine/Hayden and Adam/James loved one another but betrayed that love. It is the curse of lost love and dashed happiness ensuing from these 16th-century events that Hayden/Catherine must now break in Catherine's era, changing history and allowing Hayden to find happiness and her real hero. The novel gets off to a shaky start as the author has her alter ego rattle on about the virtues of romance writers and the vices of the reviewers who fail to praise them, but once Hayden discovers her past lives, this is standard Deveraux-that is, a smart and savvy swoon of a yarn. Doubleday Book Club main selection. (Dec.)