Lord Ciar returns from war, victorious and anxious to claim his mate, but no one even knows who she is, let alone where she is. He finally ends up in the forest where he finds a ramshackle hut barely fit to live in. The last person he expects to find inside is his beloved Sabine who recoils in horror when he tries to touch her. She eventually tells him about the curse her mother had a witch put on her, making everyone forget her - especially those who touch her. She warns Ciar that he'll forget her just by being with her, but he insists on going with her to find another witch to break the curse - and inevitably, his memories start to fail.
This is a short novella, seemingly made shorter by the amount of things that happen - many good - and number of characters that I'm not sure mattered to the story being introduced. They may end up in future books though and I'll end up eating my words.
I loved the relationship between Sabine and Ciar. Within just a handful of pages, even without reading about it specifically, I had the feeling that they had a history and were deeply in love. Sabine was a beautiful blend of strength, sadness and hope - the first part of the novella was mostly given from her perspective, so it was easy to read her feelings for Ciar. As the story continued, there was a gradual shift to Ciar as his memories of her left him.
Because this is a novella, there are some sacrifices made for things that I think improved the story. Rather than spending a lot of time on extended dialogue while they reconnect, it's done in a sort of shorthand, telling way, assuming that as a reader we've already come to believe in the couple's love - and I definitely had by then. It left space for time spent inside the heads of Ciar and Sabine, further cementing their personalities and love for each other. There also was time for a longer love scene which was typical Rogers - super steamy and tender at once. There was an interesting twist to the way Ciar was able to remember Sabine after they were together - I think it brought the theme of the series into the story nicely.
A question was posed on a blog about the rating of novellas. My answer was that I always assume there's going to be a limited amount of space for character and plot development, but after that I have three criteria - do I care about the characters, is the plot engaging and something I'd want to read in a longer-length form and is the writing good? This had characters I really liked and believed in, the quality of writing that I always expect from Moira Rogers (meaning excellent) and a plot that had some minor issues but was something I'd be interested in reading in category length. For a quick romantic fairytale, this worked.
