Can you even have a continuity series without an amnesia story? Amnesia has been a romance staple for some time, and every time we run across it, we know we’ll have to suspend our disbelief. The question is not if we will have to suspend it, but how much. In this case, the answer (at least for me) was too much. When you combine the amnesia element with the “I’m a city girl, but everything’s great now that I’m with a small town sheriff” factor, then essentially you have cliché overload.

Bridget Elliott is billed as the edgy gadfly of the Elliot family. Like most of her cousins, she works for one of the company magazines (in her case, it’s Charisma, a fashion mag). But unlike the rest of her family, she is deeply resentful of her grandfather’s challenge. If you’ve been following the series, then you know that the patriarch of the family announced that the editor of the most successful Elliott family publication (in terms of growth) would become his successor. Bridget sees this ploy as just another manipulative game, and she is in the midst of writing a tell-all novel about the family. A hot tip on the identity of her Aunt Finola’s child (whom she was forced to give up for adoption) has Bridget heading on a plane to Colorado. When she arrives, though, she is the victim of a hit and run accident. When she awakens, she remembers nothing about herself, including her name.

Sheriff Mac Riggs finds Bridget unconscious by the side of the road, with no luggage or identification. After a doctor diagnoses amnesia, Mac agrees to take Bridget (whom he calls Jane, as in Jane Doe) to his home while she tries to get her memory back. It’s an uncharacteristic move for Mac, who typically avoids women and relationships. He lives alone with his sister, who also avoids relationships. Anyway, Mac is immediately drawn to “Jane,” but he feels that any sort of involvement with her would be completely unethical, especially since she doesn’t know who she is, or even whether she is single.

Bridget/Jane is just as attracted to Mac, and she has fewer qualms about acting on her feelings. Initially, she has no job to occupy her time, so she thinks about Mac a lot. She eventually gets a job at a used bookstore, and finds that she really enjoys the work. Meanwhile, Mac is supposed to be finding out who she is. He runs her fingerprints without much luck, and posts her picture in the local paper – with similar non-results. Why he thinks that would be effective when he is from a small town where everyone knows everyone else is beyond me, but whatever. He half-heartedly follows a lead about Bridget’s expensive boots, but even that peters out. By this time, Bridget hardly cares who she is, because she’s deeply in love with Mac and doesn’t want to leave small town Colorado. When inevitably, someone comes for her, she has some tough choices to make. Is she really Bridget, rich heiress/city girl, or is she the homey Jane, happy in small town Colorado?

First off, the vast majority of the book features the clueless Jane persona. This is okay…up to a point. Jane/Bridget is not unlikable, and she and Mac have a cute relationship. There are some romantic scenes as the noble Mac fights his romantic urges. The problem is that we all know this can’t last, and it frankly lasts way too long to be believable. The problems are manifold, but probably the biggest is that we live in an Internet age, and Bridget’s family owns a publishing empire. Granted, Mac doesn’t know that. What he does know from looking at Bridget’s expensive attire is that she has money. Surely while he is hunting files for her fingerprints he could put her picture online, or at least check for missing persons reports elsewhere. Since no one knows her in town, she is obviously from somewhere else.

Further complicating matters is that Bridget suffers from an amazing lack of curiosity about herself. She cries when they can’t find her real identity from fingerprint files, but she never really does anything on her own to determine her identity. The fact that she suddenly remembers her boots are from a small designer in Italy should have given her a brain wave and inspired her to look for familiar things or places. Since she obviously wasn’t from Colorado, why didn’t she drive to Target, buy an atlas, and start looking at state maps until something rang a bell? I just couldn’t believe she would be so directionless.

In the end, she remembers her identity, but then the book descends into hopeless cliché. Of course she chooses small town life over the fast-paced city, but I wasn’t sure I bought the transformation. Whether you will probably depends on your reaction to the following exchange:

Mac: “Are you sure you’re willing to give up trips to Europe, designer clothes, and a lifestyle most women only dream about?”

Bridget: “For a chance at a lifetime of Pike’s Peak burgers, rides out at your ranch on Daisy Mae and waking up every morning with you, Sheriff Riggs? You bet.”

I have to admit, this made me wince all the way to my urban-girl core. But if this sounds like a dream come true to you – and you can get past the whole amnesia thing – this book might work better for you.