Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc

I read Until You the way I read most emotionally dangerous romances. One eye on the page, one eye bracing for impact, coffee going cold because apparently feelings are more urgent than caffeine.

The premise is instantly cruel in the most effective way. A car accident. Memory loss. A man at the bedside who knows every intimate detail of your life and you know absolutely nothing about him. As an author, I immediately clocked how risky this setup is. Amnesia plots can turn gimmicky fast. This one doesn’t. It commits. Hard.

What I appreciated most is that the story doesn’t rush to “fix” Shannon. Her confusion is allowed to exist. Her discomfort is treated as valid. Jack doesn’t become a saintly prop or a manipulative savior. He’s grieving in real time while still standing there, doing the emotional labor of loving someone who cannot emotionally reciprocate yet. That’s a difficult balance to write without slipping into melodrama or martyrdom, and the book largely avoids that trap.

From a craft perspective, the emotional pacing is solid. The tension doesn’t come from artificial misunderstandings or plot gymnastics, but from a single, relentless question: What if love isn’t enough when memory is gone? The story understands that rediscovery is not the same as falling in love the first time. It’s messier. Slower. Sometimes lonelier.

I also liked that this isn’t just romance pretending to be deep. It genuinely leans into women’s fiction territory. Identity, consent, grief, autonomy. Shannon is not treated as a vessel for Jack’s pain. Her struggle to reclaim herself feels central, not secondary. That alone puts this book a notch above many memory-loss romances.

If I had to nitpick, I’d say there are moments where the emotional intensity flirts with repetition. As a reader, I felt the ache. As a writer, I noticed the echoes. But honestly, in a book like this, that’s almost part of the experience. The emotional loop mirrors the characters’ reality. Nothing moves forward cleanly. Everything circles before it settles.

If you enjoy emotionally layered romance that trusts the reader to sit with discomfort, this will land for you. Especially if you’re a fan of the emotional realism found in authors like Tracey Garvis Graves, Renee Carlino, or Colleen Hoover. Expect heartbreak, yes, but also a quiet insistence that love isn’t just about memory. It’s about choice. Over and over again.

This is the kind of book you recommend carefully. Not because it’s fragile, but because it will poke something tender. And sometimes that’s exactly what a good romance is supposed to do.

But what happens when you are ACTUALLY Loving Someone Who Doesn’t Remember You

There’s a very particular kind of grief in loving someone who no longer remembers you. It’s not the clean grief of loss, where the absence is obvious and final. It’s quieter. You’re still there. They’re still there. The history exists, but only one of you can access it. You become the sole keeper of moments that once belonged to two people, and that imbalance is exhausting in a way that’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived it.

What hurts most isn’t just being forgotten. It’s watching someone you love move through the world without the emotional shortcuts you built together. The shared jokes don’t land. The trust isn’t automatic. Affection has to be earned again, carefully, respectfully, without pressure. You’re forced to love without expectation, without recognition, and without the reassurance that the bond you felt so deeply still exists on their side. It’s love stripped of ego, comfort, and certainty.

In many ways, loving someone who doesn’t remember you exposes what love actually is. Not the romantic version we like to sell. Not destiny or inevitability. It becomes a daily choice to show up without being mirrored. To stay gentle when you could insist. To let the other person lead, even when every instinct in you wants to say, But you already chose me once. That kind of love is rare. And it’s brutally honest.

That’s why stories like Until You land so hard. They tap into a fear most of us don’t articulate, but recognize instantly. The fear that love can disappear not because it failed, but because memory did. And the quiet hope that even then, something essential might still find its way back.

*This review is part of an indie author book exchange I joined at the start of the year, built around a simple idea: writers supporting writers without algorithms breathing down our necks. The goal isn’t inflated praise or forced positivity. It’s genuine engagement with stories we might not have picked up otherwise, and honest reflections shared with readers who appreciate nuance. I picked Until You because its themes sit right at the uncomfortable intersection of day to day life, desire, and identity. Those are the stories that tend to linger, and they’re the ones indie fiction often handles best.