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3.0 out of 5 stars
play pretend, Dec 15 2002
I regard Janet Dailey's Americana series as modern-historical comic books. No insult intended. There are many of them (one for each state) in this series of somewhat short novels which reflect the good old non pc days --- interesting for a change, sometimes.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.
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