Review: Forgiven But Not Forgotten? by Abby Green

   He’d spent five years haunted by her. He had to have her—had to have this closure once and for all. And he despised himself for his weakness.

   She was stunned again at Andreas’s world now, and stunned anew to see him in his open-shirted tuxedo and realise that only hours before Andreas Xenakis had still been firmly in her shameful guilt-ridden past, not her tumultuous present.

 High stakes. Satisfying payback.

Forgiven But Not Forgotten by Abby Green is the first romance I ever read from the author and it's one of those rare, evocative finds. 

The emotional underpinnings of this romance wrung tears so much that Hubby caught me sniffling at a critical moment. He was alarmed, thinking I had bad news from home. When he learned why I was bawling, he shook his head and left me alone in our room, probably disgusted heh.

First lines

Forgiven But Not Forgotten comes with a Prologue, giving us an insight into the "why" of Siena's choices. Her luxurious lifestyle isn't all that it seemed.

Siena DePiero held her older sister’s hand tightly as they left their palazzo. Even though she was twelve and Serena was fourteen they still instinctively sought each other for support. Their father was in an even more mercurial mood than usual today. Their car was waiting by the kerb, a uniformed driver standing by the open door. Siena knew that her father’s bodyguards were nearby.

I like me some nice, intriguing intros to my romance reads. Gives me a frame to my reading experience.

The first lines of Chapter One plunge us right into the conflict, too...

Andreas Xenakis didn’t like the strength of the thrill of triumph that moved through him. It signified that this moment held more importance for him than he’d care to admit. Bitterly, he had to concede that perhaps it did. After all, practically within touching distance now was the woman who had all but cried rape for her own amusement, to protect her untarnished image in her father’s eyes. She’d merited him a savage beating, losing his job, being blacklisted from every hotel in Europe and having to start over again on the other side of the world. Far away from anyone he’d known or who had known him.