The Unknown Daughter
Anna DeStefano
Harlequin SuperRomance, Oct 2004, $5.50, 296 pp.
ISBN: 0373712340

Though her memories are bad, Carrinne Wilmington must return to Oakwood, Georgia, to learn the identity of her father because she needs him for the transplant. Her plan is to avoid her grandfather and the man she loves, Eric Rivers, who both rejected her and drove her from town. Besides not wanting to see the two gentlemen who rebuffed her, she wants to hide her teenage daughter Maggie from the duo, especially Sheriff Rivers, the father.

Carrinne's effort to sneak in without detection fails from her first effort to get in and out as she is caught by a silent alarm and Eric. Worse, someone wants the secret identity of her father left secret and is willing to kill the nosy Carrinne to accomplish this deed. Carrinne must give up on her quest, take her chance on surviving a killer, or rely on Eric to keep her safe, although she does not trust the man she disappointingly still loves.

This entertaining contemporary romance is a five-tissue-box tale filled with angst and perhaps too much tear jerking, yet fans will want even more. The cast keeps the tale from going over the edge into soap opera city as Eric sees a second chance, Carrinne and her grandfather have an opportunity, and then there is magnificent Maggie, perhaps older than her teen years suggest. Readers will appreciate Anna DeStefano's debut, except perhaps tree lovers, as an awful lot of tissues will be used.

Harriet Klausner