Huh??

Masquerade by Nancy Moser

This book kept me interested right up to the last line. That being said, however, I can’t really say I liked the book when all is said and done. It just isn’t believable in so many places in the story and also the references to God and prayer seem contrived and maybe even salted in after the fact.
The story revolves around a titled English girl, Lottie, and her ladies maid, Dora, who grew up together and were friends. When the Lottie’s parents arrange a marriage for her with a rich gentleman in the States, she and Dora are sent to New York to meet him and his family. Once they leave the ancestral home they travel as friends rather than as lady and lady’s maid. Along the journey Lottie comes up with the brilliant idea to switch places so she can go out into the world on her own and find true love and Dora can improve her station in life by pretending to be Lottie and marrying Lottie’s intended husband. That’s all good but Dora falls in love with a handsome doctor on the boat. As they each go through crisis after crisis after arriving in New York, they each finally find their true love. The trouble is, I couldn’t really figure out how they got to that point. When the doctor locates Dora in New York and finds out what she is up to he doesn’t seem too impressed with her at that point. The author never explains how Dora suddenly knows that he loves her and is the only one for her blah, blah, blah. By the same token, Lottie, who has seemingly only know Sven for 3 or 4 days and most of that time thought he was married to someone else and didn’t even really give him much consideration suddenly realizes he is her one true love and they get engaged. Huh?? It was like the author got tired of writing the book and decided to bring everything to a happy conclusion all of a sudden and jumped from point A to point C, totally skipping point B. It took what could have been a great story and made it truly silly. The aloof hostile mother-in-law to be suddenly turns into a down to earth person for no apparent reason toward the end and the sister-in-law to be turns from the wicked witch of the west to the wonderful friend and sister and then for no apparent reason back to the wicked witch. Huh?? I really wanted to like this book but I’m still going over it in my mind wondering how something with so much promise turned dud in the last couple of chapters. Bethany House sent me a copy of this book to review and I was glad for opportunity. It is very rare that one of their books disappoints.