Return Engagement is a terrific light contemporary romance, a nice big read for anyone who’s been missing this type of book. There’s no suspense plot and no misery and angst, just 400 plus pages packed with story and teeming with characters. There’s so much happening that not even a few standard issue plot elements, namely memory loss and the possibility of a secret child, can take away from the fun.

Lindsay West and Noah Patrick spent six years playing teenage sweethearts on the TV show Betwixt and Be Teen during the 1980s. They never got along much because Lindsay was under the thumb of her controlling stage mother/manager and Noah was cocky and obnoxious – until the night of Lindsay’s eighteenth birthday. Their one night together led to heartbreak when Lindsay came to Noah’s house the next day and found him sleeping with another woman. Fed up with it all, Lindsay quit the show and returned to her Missouri hometown to marry her childhood sweetheart. That was roughly sixteen years ago.

The years since haven’t been kind to Noah, whose alcohol abuse and lousy reputation on and off the set cost him everything. When Lindsay’s mother finds him, he’s literally washed up after an aborted suicide attempt in the ocean. Vivienne Varner makes him an offer that Noah, broke, homeless and struggling to stay sober after two years, can’t refuse. In order to reignite her own career that’s been damaged by burning too many bridges over the years, she wants to stage a reunion between him and Lindsay by having them star in a play together that’s bound to attract a mountain of publicity.

A busy single mother of a fifteen-year-old boy, Lindsay isn’t interested in returning to the limelight. But when her sister Jolie asks her to star in the play she’s written, Lindsay can’t turn her down. She’s always been protective of her sister, who still bears the scars of being left behind when Vivienne took Lindsay to Hollywood without a backwards glance. Ignoring the warnings offered by family members who tell her Jolie only looks after herself, Lindsay doesn’t think to suspect Jolie might have something up her sleeve. So she’s blindsided when Noah arrives in Belle Coeur, Missouri to star as her love interest in the play.

Return Engagement is truly one of those books to dive into and wallow in the characters and their world for a few hours. It’s a big book for a romance, and not only in terms of page length. It has that kind of richness, bursting at the seams with humor, emotion, quirky characters, and terrific moments. The reader really gets a chance to know these people and their lives as the author paints a picture of this town and the complex relationships between its residents. The celebrity aspect of Lindsay and Noah’s reunion gives the story a nice extra element. It’s not really a comedy, but Michaels’ sense of humor pops up at unexpected moments and there are some laugh out loud lines.

Noah is a strong hero, and there are some killer scenes, particularly between him and Jolie, that are a blast. Lindsay can be frustrating in her refusal to see Jolie for who she really is, but she more then makes up for it with some great moments of her own. Lindsay’s son Trey is a likable, believable teen character. While Jolie and Vivienne are pretty hateful antagonists, Michaels gives them enough shading so that they aren’t mere one-dimensional villainesses. It was a pleasant surprise when the author offered a few hints that Vivienne wasn’t just a selfish woman for leaving her husband – she had hurts of her own. There are some of the usual quirky small town types, but for the most part, there’s a little more to them that help them rise above cartoons.

Even the suggestion of secret children or amnesia is usually a major turnoff for me, but Return Engagement is a good example of why it’s not the plot devices themselves, but the execution. Noah’s memory loss isn’t total and is perfectly fitting with someone who drank as long and as hard as he did. It’s no wonder he’s fuzzy on more than a few things, since he was drunk for most of them. The author handles the paternity issue particularly well; seldom have I read this device pulled off as deftly as it is here. Several key scenes are exceptionally well done.

My grade was going to be a straight B, I really liked the book but quite didn’t love it, but the last few chapters were so good and the book ends on such a high note it earned an upgrade. The way everything is resolved and the antagonists are dealt with, particularly Noah’s handling of Vivienne, couldn’t be better. Some of his lines in this part of the book are hilarious.

Return Engagement didn’t quite reach keeper status for me, but it remains easily one of the best contemporary romances of the year.