A Gift to Remember | Melissa Hill | Book Review

A Gift to RememberPLOT: 3.5/5
CHARACTERS: 3.5/5
WRITING STYLE: 4/5
CLIMAX: 3.5/5
ENTERTAINMENT QUOTIENT: 4/5

In the mood for good romance fiction, I indulgently and expectantly sat down with Melissa Hill’s A Gift to Remember.

Hailed as the queen of modern fairy-tale, Melissa Hill’s reputation precedes her words. So to uncover the truth behind all that “queen of modern fairy-tale” façade, I most religiously started reading the book.

To say I liked the book, would be a major understatement, for all that I discovered, the statement was anything but a façade and the book surely lived up to its expectation of a modern-day fairy-tale.

The book is absolutely charming and reading it almost felt like watching an old Bollywood romance; so simple, so smooth and yet so innocently beautiful. It was like listening to the ‘Pehla Nasha Pehla Khumar’ for the first time all over again.

Darcy Archer is a smart independent woman working as a manager in Chaucer’s, an independent bookstore in New York City.

It is just before Christmas that Darcy while riding her bike on the snow-clad streets of New York, slips and hits a handsome young man Aidan Harris. As fate would have it, this strikingly gorgeous and seemingly rich man loses his memory and is unable to recall anything about his life, family or work.

In a quest to regain his memory and to not be left alone on Christmas, Aidan seeks Darcy’s help, who is more than happy to oblige and who willingly offers to go out of bounds to make amends and help Aidan get his life back.

Slowly, as she starts fitting all random pieces of information she has gathered about him so far, she discovers that the end story is completely different from what she had thought it to be.

Thus, a confused and disappointed Darcy (from uncovering the truth of Aidan being married), moves back into her own routine life.

But just as when she thought it was all over for her and her fairy-tale-like ending, things change and Darcy finally finds her “and they lived happily ever after” ending.

A Gift to Remember, by and large, is a great romance. Barring a few editing errors which occasionally surfaced every now and then, I didn’t have a single moment of disappointment while navigating my way off those fine quality pages.

But that being said, the copy I got was a review copy, and there is probably a hundred per cent chance that the editing mistakes have all been rectified in the regular prints.

I liked the character of Darcy, what with her sweet, innocent and plain Jane appeal, she is bound to win your hearts. For those of you who are ardent fans of Jane Austen’s, there is surely enough things to like about in this book and you would be anything but disappointed by reading this book.

The plot too is coherent and well planned in a very effortless way. The climax is at least, unpredictable and goes well with the fairytale theme.

Finally, A Gift to Remember also has an inspiringly beautiful cover and I believe it is an ideal gift to brighten up someone’s Christmas.

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