Once, Again, Always

This week, Amanda Gayle released her debut novel, Once, Again, Always. What would you do if you woke up with no memories of the past six years? And you’re apparently married to the snobby boarding school rival you hated? That’s Molly’s reality after having a couple of strokes in her sleep one night. She can’t believe she’s married to Aster Bishop, of all people, or that she has so many new friends. How can she find her way forward with her (loathsome?!) husband and get her life back on track?

Side note: I will preface this review by saying I felt a bit #triggered towards the beginning of the book. Like Molly, I also had a stroke. Unlike Molly, my stroke caused no amnesia and no brain damage. Just a lot of doctor appointments that ultimately found nothing wrong with me and no reason for the stroke. That was three years ago. So the first chapter or two of this were hard for me, but after that I was able to fall into the story, and I enjoyed it so much!

What I Liked:

• Amnesia. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a full novel in which the main character has significant amnesia, and certainly not within a contemporary romance. It provides a unique point of conflict here, in which Molly has woken up with six years missing… and she’s somehow married to her boarding school rival. How did they ever surmount their whole history and fall in love? Can this version of Molly accept the life she has apparently made for herself over the past six years?
• Falling in love all over again. Molly may never get those six years of memories back. She’ll never get to relive dating and getting engaged and getting married. But she can make new memories, and learn to love Aster as he is now. I liked seeing Aster work hard to win Molly’s heart again, and how they both navigate an uneven playing field in terms of memory and shared history.
• Wider friend group. This is mainly a romance, but it has a healthy dose of adult friendship. Molly has some friends from “before,” but she also has Aster’s friend group now. This whole friend group has no boundaries whatsoever, but they’re a lovable bunch who want to help Molly reintegrate into her life.

Audiobook:

Once, Again, Always comes with duet narration. Most of the book is told from Molly’s perspective, voiced by Lauren Fortgang. The male characters’ dialogue is voiced by Will Damron. It’s a different format than most audiobooks I’ve heard, and it took me a bit of getting used to, but ultimately I enjoyed this audiobook. Both narrators did a great job of capturing their characters.

Final Thoughts

Once, Again, Always is an emotional and thoughtful novel of finding love where you least expect it. With a dual timeline and a gradual pace in the present, it’s a slow-burn that will appeal to readers who like a healthy dose of women’s fiction in their romance. This is a remarkable debut, and I look forward to more from Amanda Gayle.

Special thanks to Avon and Harper Voyager, HarperAudio Adult, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy Once, Again, Always here – it’s available as a paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

Once, Again, Always by Amanda Gayle
Audiobook Narrators	Lauren Fortgang and Will Damron
Audience	Adult
Genre	Contemporary Romance; Women’s Fiction
Setting	Connecticut
Number of Pages	384
Format I Read	Audiobook & Ebook (NetGalley ARCs)
Original Publication Date	October 6, 2026
Publisher	Avon

Official Summary

“Filled to the brim with tenderness, yearning, and heart….Five effervescent stars!” -Brigitte Knightley, New York Times bestselling author

A second-chance romance following a young woman who wakes up in the hospital with no memory of the past six years, only to find that she apparently married the one man she can’t stand—her arrogant and infuriating former boarding school rival.

Molly Graham’s day can’t possibly get any worse after she wakes up in a hospital bed with a head injury and amnesia. But then Aster Bishop—the Aster Bishop who made her life hell at boarding school—storms into her room calling her his wife.

To Molly’s shock, in the six years she no longer recalls, she somehow fell in love with a man she once despised. Persuaded by her lifelong friends to give her new reality a chance, she reluctantly returns to the home she and Aster share to try and piece together her life.

So much has changed, not least the considerate and devastatingly handsome man who spends every night sleeping on the sofa to avoid making her uncomfortable. This Aster is nothing like the entitled boy she once knew. Their chemistry is undeniable-but he’s distant with her, infuriatingly so. It’s clear he has secrets, and Molly can’t stand it. Especially knowing that she might never regain her memories.

That she fell in love with Aster Bishop once is hard enough to believe. But to fall in love again? To promise a future, always, when she can’t remember her past? It feels impossible when faced with a man she hardly knows and isn’t sure she can trust.

And yet…

Tropes
• Rivals to lovers
• Forced proximity
• Slow burn
• Yearning (so much yearning)
• Found family
• Second-chance romance
• Memory loss
• There’s only one bed and he takes the sofa like a boring, sensible man