Who Is Deborah?

by Elise Title

The face in her mirror . . . It was her face. It had to be. But it looked unfamiliar as this morning's headlines, as frightening in its strangeness as the bogeyman who'd haunted her childhood dreams. The man in her bed was Nicholas Steele, and it seemed likely that he was her husband. Though his touch was unfamiliar, she was unable to escape his power to stir her passion. She might indeed be Deborah, a woman who had taken her husband's love and twisted it into something foul and frightening. That would be bad enough. Because if she wasn't Deborah, then Nicholas had murdered his wife - and she was in love with a man who had blood on his hands.

Genres: Romance, Harlequin, Gothic

Mass Market Paperback

First published February 1, 1993

About the author

aka Alison Tyler

Romance author Elise Title started writing romances as an escape from her job as a psychotherapist in men's and women's prisons. Though her romances are largely lighthearted and funny, she also writes dark thrillers as a way of dealing with her past job. She also published under the pseudonym Alison Tyler.

Reviews

[Lynda]

I really enjoy this romantic suspense book. It reminded me a lot of gothics I used to read in the 70s. The writing was good and the characters were engaging.

[ANGELIA]

A better title for this would have been "Who is the Psycho", because at one point it seemed everyone might be, including the H an h! I'm happy to say that I guessed who the real psycho was and talk about twisted, vindictive and demented, not to mention EVIL! There used to be an old perfume ad that said, "Between love and madness lies Obsession", and that was sure true here!

The is in the first person, so you only have the h's POV, and there are times when you wonder about her emotional state (though with everything she went through it's understandable) as she gets overwhelmed by her conflicting feelings for the H, one minute loving him, the next hating him, trusting him, then frightened of him. His enigmatic personality sure doesn't help, neither does his habit of not directly answering her questions as she tries to regain her memory and identity back. It doesn't help to hear about the person she supposedly was, wealthy, spoiled and selfish, with a tendency to drink too much and lead other men on. One of those men was the H's former friend, the OM in the story, who takes the White Knight role a bit too strongly.

Then there's the "OW", the H's cousin who is clearly not playing with a full deck and makes no effort to hide her hostility for the h and resentment that she returned.

There are quite a few flaws here. The h was badly beaten in a mugging, which caused her memory loss and required emergency surgery to fix her face, so she looks like Deborah yet doesn't look like her. At the time this book was written there were DNA tests (not to mention blood and fingerprint ones), yet no one does anything. If the H had doubts, he should have said so and not slept with her, because if she was someone else, she could have been married or had someone special in her life, and let's not forget family that might have been looking for her.

Also, once the truth come out, everything is wrapped up too quickly and it feels too rushed. The epilogue should have been part of the main story and gone into with more depth.

What the author does well is keep you in suspense as to who did what, as there are slashed paintings (the h was an artist), drugged drinks, brakes tampered with, clothes destroyed, and other things to make it clear someone is out to get the h, but who? The OM thinks it's the H, the H thinks it's his cousin, the cousin hints that it might be the H or maybe her, and the h doesn't know what to think! It keeps you turning pages, just trying to figure it all out.

I recommend it, despite its faults.

[Janet]

Silhouette Shadows # 2 = 3.5 stars
.
After reading a few amnesia stories, and while I know that it is fiction and most assuredly not close to reality, why do they always release someone to people claiming to know who the other is. And that is with only possibly a picture and a nice, possibly made up, story. Surely at the very least the hospital (if that is the case) should vet that the purported found identity matches (at least a little) with some kind of official documentation. It makes a nice story without this, but still having a little more authenticity in there couldn't hurt.

[Victoria Smith]

I am not a fan of romance stories. I read this, as it was given to me by a friend.

[Jenn Dysart]

Very Alfred Hitchcock.

[Andrea Guy]

Elise Title's Who Is Deborah is a great modern day gothic novel complete with an amnesiac heroine, a dark and brooding hero, and two twisted secondary characters that keep you on your toes wondering who did or, or who is going to do it throughout the whole 241 pages of the book.

Deborah was attacked in NYC and a private detective friend of her husbands has located her in the hospital to bring her home, but when she gets there things are not what they seem. Her husband is a horror writer who lives with his cousin, who is just a little bit crazy. Oh and Deborah is finding out that the person she's supposed to be wasn't very nice, which isn't how she really is. That gets people wondering.

There are several attempts on her life while she's at Raven's Cove, but her memory is slow to return and she doesn't know who she can trust.

The best part about the book is the suspense surrounding Deborah's return. The reader is left wondering when she's going to remember, and you know she's got to remember her past life at some point.

[WhatShouldIRead]

I tried TWICE to get through the first section of this book and failed. This is one of those early stories where the man knows what is best for the woman - oh, please! - and it didn't come off well.

And it just plain moved too slow.

So, who is Deborah? Don't know and don't care!