You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!
This HaBO comes from Omphale, who is looking for the first Harlequin they ever read:
this is the first HQ I ever read (I am pretty sure I picked it up in the Walgreens/CVS) sometime in the mid-90s.
Hero has amnesia and wanders to heroine’s small hometown of “Haven” somewhere in the English countryside. Hero kicked heroine out when she got pregnant and refused to terminate and so she retreated to hometown (where maybe she lives with her grandfather?). Hero was a real estate developer and at some point renames his company from something like “Kwikbuild” to “Greenfield Estates” as a result of heroine’s influence, all to his brother’s dismay.
I don’t remember liking this book very much, but it was my gateway to the quick hit that was HQ short-categories, and I would be fascinated to see if anyone in the Bitchery remembers it too.
There better be a good grovel!
Forgotten Fiancee
by
Lucy Gordon
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Could it be Forgotten Fiancee by Lucy Gordon?
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6287448-forgotten-fiancee
The GR description mentions a town called Haven, heroine being abandoned when she gets pregnant, and hero showing up with no memory. Also, published in 1997.
@Elham Yes, this is it! (I almost mentioned the mullet but I figured that wouldn’t help narrow things down.)
The Bitchery comes through!
Please tell me I am not the only one who saw “Amnesia in Haven” and read it as “Amnesia in Heaven?” LOL
I have no idea what the title or the author maybe, but when a guy dips his wick and has his fun, then he is responsible when a pregnancy results. This “hero” is clearly a jerk and, I agree, he has many many many many many amends to make.
@Gloriamarie I seem to recall she was his ‘mistress’ in that very Mills and Boon sense. In the real world, I do wish more men who know they don’t want to be parents were proactive about their fertility (a vasectomy is not that hard to get, y’all, and does not affect your libido, unlike tubal ligation or most hormonal birth control).
But in romance world, I do think that natalism can muddy the waters somewhat. There’s often a presumption that a person who doesn’t want children is inherently a bad person because of that fact. (Also, it would be nice if EBC and ‘shmashmortion’ were mentioned as an option for bc failures, even if they don’t work/aren’t pursued.)
I 100% have a weakness for pregnant heroines and the non-sperm donors who love them (I blame reading Morning Glory by Lavyrle Spencer at an impressionable age), but sometimes my pro-choice self just kind of would like more of an explanation for how a heroine ends up, for example, pregnant and homeless. There’s key character work that often gets left on the table when you hand wave over that stuff.
@omphale, “she was his ‘mistress’ in that very Mills and Boon sense. In the real world,” If so all the more reason for some responsibility about birth control. Good gosh, there are som many available forms of it all easily enough acquired.
But of course, for the purposes of telling a story, an unplanned baby makes for wonderful conflict. I forget when we readers began to insist that romance writers start being responsible about birth control, but I remember reading books and wondering what sort of world the authors lived in that seemed to be without unplanned pregnancies and STDs.
Please tell me I am not the only one who saw “Amnesia in Haven” and read it as “Amnesia in Heaven?”
Gloriamarie, you are not the only one.
Thank you, Randall M. Although I can only wonder …could one have amnesia in Heaven??? Inquiring minds…