{"id":3019,"date":"2020-11-13T15:33:28","date_gmt":"2020-11-13T15:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/?p=3019"},"modified":"2020-11-13T15:33:28","modified_gmt":"2020-11-13T15:33:28","slug":"review-beth-and-the-mistaken-identity-by-alicia-cameron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/2020\/11\/13\/review-beth-and-the-mistaken-identity-by-alicia-cameron\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Beth and the Mistaken Identity by Alicia Cameron"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I find this a really difficult book to review. On the one hand, it\u2019s well-written, with few errors and a pretty good portrayal of the Regency. On the other hand, it depends on a couple of huge misunderstandings at the very start (obviously; it\u2019s in the title) which the heroine deliberately continues, a massive coincidence towards the end and a frankly unbelievable resolution. I also found the relationships between the characters wildly confusing. I felt as if I\u2019d missed a chapter or two early on which explained everything, and I never really worked out who some of them were.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the premise: Beth Culpepper is a lady\u2019s maid who\u2019s been turned off without a character for helping her headstrong young mistress on her clandestine adventures. She hopes to find work at an inn, but soon realises that there are some pretty dodgy customers there. While she\u2019s wondering what to do, she\u2019s spotted by a kindly marquis, who assumes from her clothes (her mistress\u2019s castoffs) that she\u2019s gently born, and has run away from school. His sister (who\u2019s a princess!) coincidentally recognises her from one of those clandestine outings to Vauxhall Gardens, and thinks she\u2019s her mistress, Sophy Ludgate. Feeling sorry for Beth, they sweep her up and carry her off to London to stay at their house there, and await the return of\u2026 well, someone (some of those hazily-connected characters I mentioned). Beth feels unable to confess the truth and manages to play the part of a lady well enough to convince them.<\/p>\n

So already there\u2019s plenty of plot-fudging going on, and it continues for most of the book, with Beth\u2019s reasons for not revealing herself and the marquis\u2019s for keeping her under their roof falling into the plot-convenience category. I never believed for one minute that a maid, no matter how good an actress, could pretend to be a lady for a whole week without arousing suspicions. I was also somewhat suspicious of Beth\u2019s predilection for books. That she could read, I accept, but to spend her days curled up in the library reading up on Greek mythology seemed a stretch too far, although to be fair, the author shows her struggling with the pronunciation.<\/p>\n

Having said all that, the slowly developing romance is delightful. The marquis is an unusual character for a Regency hero, being a thoroughly nice chap, who just needs to lighten up a little. The teasing banter between the three principals is charming, and often very funny. He\u2019s so used to being the target of ambitious young ladies with a yen to become a marchioness that he falls instantly under the spell of Beth, who has no expectations at all in that direction and so treats him a bit like an older brother.<\/p>\n

Beth is an even more unusual heroine, and I liked that the author addressed the issue of Beth\u2019s lowly status head on. Having been a servant herself, she \u2018sees\u2019 the servants in the marquis\u2019s house in ways that the marquis and his sister never do. They don\u2019t even know the names of half of them. The sister seems uninterested, but the marquis, to his credit, is very willing to have his eyes opened, and Beth\u2019s gentle but sure-handed reorganisation of the whole household is one of the delights of the book.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one other unusual feature of this book. Most Regencies focus fairly closely on the hero and heroine, and everything is seen through their eyes. Here, though, we get to see the cause of Beth\u2019s difficulties, in the shape of Miss Sophy Ludgate. Sophy\u2019s a fascinating character, who continually gets herself into trouble in the most exuberant way, and somehow always manages to make it seem like the most reasonable thing in the world. She\u2019s not wicked, just rather thoughtless and self-absorbed (but she\u2019s not alone in that), but she is very, very plausible and it\u2019s easy to see how Beth was drawn in to helping her. There\u2019s a neat resolution to her problems that I very much liked.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the resolution of the romance wasn\u2019t quite so successful, to my mind. There was always going to be a clash of epic proportions when the marquis discovered that the love of his life is a humble maid, and although it\u2019s obvious that there will be a happy ending, I didn\u2019t find it particularly plausible. Some rank disparities are just too great to be bridged, no matter how ingeniously they\u2019re covered up.<\/p>\n

However, that\u2019s just me, and for those who can suspend disbelief a bit more than I can, this is a well-written and charming story. I can\u2019t give this one more than three stars, but I\u2019m impressed enough with the author to want to try another of her books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I find this a really difficult book to review. On the one hand, it\u2019s well-written, with few errors and a pretty good portrayal of the Regency. On the other hand, it depends on a couple of huge misunderstandings at the very start (obviously; it\u2019s in the title) which the heroine deliberately continues, a massive coincidence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[177],"class_list":["post-3019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-cameron"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3023,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3019\/revisions\/3023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}