That's Not My Name

Demented with grief and in denial over his wife's death, Jesse Waite stalks and kidnaps Nola Elidad, convinced that she is his dead wife, Stacey. ""That's not my name!"" becomes Nola's refrain throughout her captivity, but she has unexplained black holes in her memory and begins to believe in this imposed identity. By the time Detective Lucas Conroy tracks her down after three months, Nola's fully convinced that she's Stacey; she's forgotten her husband of three months, Alec, and is pregnant with Jesse's child. Nola's daily musings over her identity crisis take up the bulk of the book (large sections are also devoted to Nola's abusive childhood and Jesse's memories of Stacey's funeral). The plot is tied up in the last 40 pages in an unlikely revelation of past abductions and family secrets. Navarro (Red Shadows) provides romantic subplots about Alec's new love interest and Detective Conroy's budding relationship with a personal trauma cop, but she spends too many pages on Nola and Jesse's daily activities. The plot's intricacies are unsatisfactorily packed into the last part of the book, then quickly resolved in a pat ending. (June)