BREWED AWAKENING

A coffeehouse manager awakens on a park bench minus much of her memory.

Clare Cosi wakes up stiff and cold in Washington Square Park. Though there are lots of things she doesn’t remember, she does know that she’ll be safe at the Village Blend coffeehouse, where she’s greeted with joy and told that she’s been missing for four days. When her ex-husband, Matteo Allegro, and his mother, Madame Blanche Allegro Dubois, the coffee shop's owner, arrive on the scene, they realize she’s forgotten the last 15 years of her life and thinks she’s living in New Jersey with her young daughter, Joy. Hospitalized, she fails to recognize both Joy, now a grown-up, and her current fiance, Detective Mike Quinn. Celebrity psychiatrist Dr. Dominic Lorca takes over Clare’s care and insists she be moved to an upstate facility. Despite pulling every string available, Mike can’t free her from Lorca even though she’s a witness in the case of missing heiress Annette Brewster. Clare, no shrinking violet, pretends to take her drugs but is dying for a cup of coffee. Madame Blanche, Matteo, and Tucker Burton, the Village Blend’s assistant manager, hatch a plan to bust Clare free and find a place where she can be relaxed and open to stimuli that will help revive her memory. But Clare is loath to go with Matteo, who cheated on her repeatedly, even though their current relationship is good. Talking with her friends evokes memories of her past detective work (Shot in the Dark, 2018, etc.), and she struggles to relive her most recent days, some of which she spent with Annette, who’d arranged a private tasting of wedding cakes in the hotel she owns. Clare, Mike, and Matteo end up hiding out in the Hamptons from the police and a killer who’s stalking her.

An unsettling, often scary account of how memory loss affects a strong woman’s life.