Once, Again, Always is an engaging slow burn romance with an original amnesia plot and a thoughtful conversation around wealth inequality. 

It’s such a great idea: Molly Graham ‘wakes up’ in hospital after a couple of mini strokes and is seemingly married to the awful (awful!) guy that bullied her in high school. She’s scared, and understandably horrified. The medical interactions make the amnesia feel plausible – lots of scans and teeth-sucking by the doctors, and Molly experiences intermittent headaches. Her husband, Aster Bishop, is at a loss, he loves his wife and now she’s had some kind of catastrophic medical emergency and she won’t go near him. Sooooooooo much yearning 🙂

Molly and Aster have to learn to be together with Molly as she is now – without her remembering their six years of shared experiences and growing love. 

Structured with flashbacks to their school days before their relationship begins, the hostility from Aster toward Molly is, honestly, hard to read. He’s lashing out and desperately unhappy, but an immature Molly can only see his fury, not his pain. 

As well as Molly and Aster, the friendship group is terrific and show Molly how far they have all come over the six years. Their friends are a mix of scholarship kids from school, and the wealthy blue bloods. These secondary characters are all so well drawn and I loved Justine, and the push and pull with Eli is terrific fun.

There is a serious throughline about wealth inequality, and the corrosive impact of unlimited wealth is well explored. For all these young people, their lives have turned out to be so different to their expectations in high school. This is neatly woven around the romance and provides the background to how Molly and Aster got together. 

Molly is interesting: I can’t imagine being in her position so it’s not always easy to relate to her. Aster is clearly all in, but he is keeping secrets. Molly struggles to trust him – not surprisingly, and she has to accept all these new friendships, get back into her job as well as navigate her marriage. No wonder she’s a little clueless!

How they went from enemies to lovers at college happens off page and I’d have loved to see a bit more of this. Apart from that, it’s a terrific and original amnesia romance.

Thank you to Amanda Gayle, Harper Collins Australia and Avon for the ARC. Opinions are my own.

Laura Black is a romance editor, reader and reviewer based in Queensland, Australia. You can visit me on Instagram @laura_black_reads