Customer Reviews

Dangerous Masquerade - Alabama

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Here we meet glam, wealthy, spoiled LaRaine and the poorer, orphaned cousin Laurie. Overshadowed by LaRaine all her life and made to feel like a burden by her Aunt, Laurie's self esteem is pretty low. While she has plans to break free and become indpendent, she is always railroaded by guilt and ends up doing what LaRaine and her Aunt want.

LaRaine is engaged to handsome, wealthy, autocratic Rian Montgomery. Rian wants La Raine to visit his aunt before the wedding while he is out of the country but LaRaine wants to fulfill a lifelong dream and act in a movie. LaRaine makes weak-willed Laurie pretend to be her and visit the aunt while she films the movie. Laurie decides that this is the very last time she will do something crazy for LaRaine and her family and then she's going out on her own.

Naturally, Rian makes an unexpected appearance at his Aunt's and finds Laurie there. Laurie discovers that Rian and LaRaine's relationship is something of a business arrangement (rather than love) and now he is determined to teach LaRaine and Laurie a lesson by marrying Laurie instead.

Lots of glaring holes in the logic of the plot but with everyone grandly ignoring them, it's almost easy for us to ignore it too. An autocratic, heartless, brooding hero type and a mousy-but-trying-to-be-more-assertive heroine --- I guess it had a sort of, I don't know, Rebecca-duMarier sort of charm (characters, not plot) that kept my attention till the end.

Description from the book back cover:

Can love be built on deception? LaRaine Evans - spoiled, capricious and used to getting her own way - naturally assumes that her cousin Laurie will satisfy her every selfish whim. So she entreats Laurie to masquerade as herself for the benefit of her fiance's aunt. Meanwhile, LaRaine will be off fulfilling her longlong dream of acting in a movie. Reluctantly, Laurie agrees to the scheme, more out of duty to LaRaine's parents than out of loyalty to her flightly cousin. But neither Laurie nor LaRaine expects Rian Montgomery, the fiance in question, to pay an unexpected visit to his aunt, and to find Laurie playing a dangerous masquerade. And certainly neither one of the cousins anticipates Rian's response to the situation!