Review: The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer

The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'd never read any Georgette Heyer, but I kept running across her name in various contexts. I finally combed through her books at my local library to find one that was unlikely to make me throw it across the room. Turns out I needn't have worried. Heyer wrote her books before modern romance tropes were established. No alpha males here; just fun characters getting up to mischief without ever thinking of anything below the waist.

The Masqueraders tells of a pair of siblings, Prudence and Robin, who are posing as the opposite sex. They're hiding Robin, who backed the wrong cause in a recent conflict. Meanwhile, their father claims to be the rightful heir to a title, while they have to pretend they've never met him before in their lives. Neither believes for a second his claim is true; he's played previous roles too well. But then Robin falls for the petite Letitia, and Prudence for the formidable Lord Anthony Fanshawe. While their roles do let them get closer to the objects of their affections, it makes confessing their feelings a bit more complicated.

I might have appreciated this story more if I'd known more about the political rumblings filling out the background of this story. Heyer seems to assume we all know what the Jacobite Rising is, and why it would be terrible to be found out as a Jacobite after the dust settles. It never takes the time to explain, which is just as well. There's plenty of plot to fill these pages.

Unfortunately, some of the pages are filled with characters explaining things to one another the reader already knows. More than once, a scene we just witnessed is related to a character who wasn't there. While it may be revealing in what the speaker leaves out or how it's presented, it makes the story tedious in places.

The strength of the story lies in its characters. Prudence and Robin and their father are all rogues to their core, and it's impossible not to root for them. Prudence lives up to her name, though her loyalty to her brother holds her to her role. As little respect as the siblings have for their father, it's impossible not to like him. There's something utterly charming in his boldness.

The love interests, too, make for interesting reading. Letitia has a thirst for adventure one can see Robin is more than qualified to fulfill, and Fanshawe shows hidden depths in every page he inhabits. They're both well-matched to our heroes.

The dialogue took me some time to adjust to, but, once I did, I found it light and bantering and witty. Heyer preserves many of the Regency speech patterns and expressions, but it turns out they're not that much different from modern speech. It gives her more room to let her characters show off some wordplay.

This was a refreshing change of pace in my search for a romance novel I wouldn't hate. It turns out that all I had to do was go to a time pre-dating modern romance. All the tropes I hate can't be there if the author didn't know she was supposed to be writing them. This also works as a suggestion for romance readers who skip over the sex scenes; the romance is all above the belt.


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