Lucy Quince is excited.  Her shipment of mares should be arriving soon and she can’t wait to start her breeding program.  When her husband Ambrose tells her that he cancelled the shipment, Lucy is furious.  She is so mad that she can’t see straight and sets out on her horse to calm down.  She doesn’t return home for three years.  Not because she deliberately left but because she was attacked, left for dead, and lost her memory.  The only reason she is returning is to see her children and save her husband from being hanged by the neck for murder. 

Ambrose’s heart has hardened against Lucy.  When she left and didn’t return so long ago, he had to accept the fact that she didn’t love him and left him because she wanted to.  He never realized that she could have been hurt and unable to return to him.  The woman that has returned is so different from the wife Ambrose knew that he is unsure of what to do – one thing is certain though.  He loves her still.

Wow. Talk about an emotional roller coaster ride.  Intimate Strangers is full of emotions and past hurts and scattered feelings.  Lucy’s trauma was so real that I ached for her.  Ambrose’s confusion over why his wife didn’t remember him was tough to swallow. He wanted his wife back, but he wanted the wife that Lucy had become, not the immature spoiled one of so long ago. 

Intimate Strangers grabs you by the heart and reels you in.  Sweating over what was going to happen, I couldn’t put it down.  Congratulations to Gem Sivad.  She definitely has written an excellent and enchanting novel.