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imme_van_gorp 's review for:
A Proper Charade
by Esther Hatch
This was so darn cute. It follows Lady Patience and Mr. Woodsworth in their unconventional journey towards love, and it really put a smile on my face the whole way through.
It’s a story of hidden identity, as these two meet when Lady Patience arrives at Mr. Woodsworth’s home under the guise of looking for work as a maid. She has always been a happy and carefree kind of woman, but after having been berated by her older brother for not understanding the hardships of life, she decides she will leave her titles behind for a month and pretend to be a regular woman of unnoble birth who no one will have any qualms about putting to some hard work. She believes this is what will make her understand what real life is like.
However, Patience soon realises that the most important task in that house should be to bring joy and laughter to the serious, stoic, and generally unhappy Mr. Woodsworth. He is a gentle and kind employer to her from the beginning who she believes is truly deserving of her help at finding love, and they come up with a hairbrained scheme that will involve Patience having to pretend to be a Lady (oh, the irony) to achieve that.
During all of this scheming they, of course, spend a lot of time together, but the bulk of it is spend during Patience’s tasks as a maid in which Mr. Woodsworth is nothing but patient and kind in explaining everything to her. She is entirely ignorant, yet this man does not berate her for it even once, even though he knows nothing of her noble birth and you would certainly expect a maid to know how to start a fire or properly clean a table.
It doesn’t take long for these two to form a tentative but beautiful friendship that slowly turns into more. Yet, both remain in denail about this for a while due to neither of them thinking that a romance between them could ever work, as both believe their stations to be insurmountably disparaging… Which is what leaves them to answer these questions for themselves: Can Lady Patience somehow set aside her duty to marry a Lord if it means marrying the man she loves instead? And can Mr. Woodsworth let his passion take over from his sense (for once) and let himself pursue a woman he thinks is only a maid if it means he would finally be able to find happiness in life?
I think the reason this novel worked so very well for me was because of how supremely likable both main characters were. Although you could somewhat describe their dynamic to resemble that of grumpy/sunshine, I wouldn’t want to go that far because of how gentle and sweet he is to her from the very beginning. He was extremely serious, but not necessarily grumpy. Honestly, he was just such a good guy, and she was such a charming and shining girl; which meant that all of their scenes together were just lovely and so fun to read about.
It’s a story of hidden identity, as these two meet when Lady Patience arrives at Mr. Woodsworth’s home under the guise of looking for work as a maid. She has always been a happy and carefree kind of woman, but after having been berated by her older brother for not understanding the hardships of life, she decides she will leave her titles behind for a month and pretend to be a regular woman of unnoble birth who no one will have any qualms about putting to some hard work. She believes this is what will make her understand what real life is like.
However, Patience soon realises that the most important task in that house should be to bring joy and laughter to the serious, stoic, and generally unhappy Mr. Woodsworth. He is a gentle and kind employer to her from the beginning who she believes is truly deserving of her help at finding love, and they come up with a hairbrained scheme that will involve Patience having to pretend to be a Lady (oh, the irony) to achieve that.
During all of this scheming they, of course, spend a lot of time together, but the bulk of it is spend during Patience’s tasks as a maid in which Mr. Woodsworth is nothing but patient and kind in explaining everything to her. She is entirely ignorant, yet this man does not berate her for it even once, even though he knows nothing of her noble birth and you would certainly expect a maid to know how to start a fire or properly clean a table.
It doesn’t take long for these two to form a tentative but beautiful friendship that slowly turns into more. Yet, both remain in denail about this for a while due to neither of them thinking that a romance between them could ever work, as both believe their stations to be insurmountably disparaging… Which is what leaves them to answer these questions for themselves: Can Lady Patience somehow set aside her duty to marry a Lord if it means marrying the man she loves instead? And can Mr. Woodsworth let his passion take over from his sense (for once) and let himself pursue a woman he thinks is only a maid if it means he would finally be able to find happiness in life?
I think the reason this novel worked so very well for me was because of how supremely likable both main characters were. Although you could somewhat describe their dynamic to resemble that of grumpy/sunshine, I wouldn’t want to go that far because of how gentle and sweet he is to her from the very beginning. He was extremely serious, but not necessarily grumpy. Honestly, he was just such a good guy, and she was such a charming and shining girl; which meant that all of their scenes together were just lovely and so fun to read about.