Bitter Masquerade

by Margery Hilton

Exotic Bangkok was the setting for love

Virginia had long carried a torch. for Brent, but he had eyes only for her sophisticated sister, Anna.

When Brent was blinded in an accident and Anna jilted him, Virginia couldn't resist the chance to express her love.

Letting Brent believe she was Anna, she went to Thailand and married him. But from her wedding night onward, Virginia was forced to realize that she was trapped by her own deception...

Genres: Harlequin, Romance, Harlequin Romance, Book Club

Paperback

First published June 1, 1970

About the author

Margery Hilton and her husband worked in the theater and in wasn't until she had to retire from her job due to a back injury, which also prevented her from doing any housework. So she had time to settle down to serious writing.

Reviews

[Verity · Rating 4 out of 5]

The prose is a bit flowery, but the thing that stood out the most was the repetitiveness of certain words. In this case, no fewer than 3 :

~ Bitter = 33 X. Bitterness / embittered / bitterly / bitter-faced.

~ Gay = 11 X. Gay world / although gay and... / former gay, brittle self / gay, teasing friendliness / and with a gay, "You'll want to wash..." / below her gay surface candor / gay prattle / Brent looked almost gay / her smile was gay / "I thought this was a gay city" / his smile delighted, and warmth and gay...

~ Eurasian girl = 12 X.

It's a bit distracting. Dear Editor, where art thou, Editor ?

Other than her fondness for bludgeoning reader w/ her fav words, this was a good, angsty, unrequited luv romance featuring a blind, brooding, tropical doc hero. For her young age, heroine seems to be way more mature in her thought process. She's been carrying the torch for her sista's BF / fiancé since 15 y/o. Although there's a fade-to-black marital rape, the hero is not intentionally cruel most of the time, he doesnt use heroine as his emo punching bag. I liked that we got to see how an accidental blindness re-shapes hero's life. I felt the frustration & vulnerability. The part I coulda done w/out was the merciful shooting of heroine's rabid dog. For HQN, it's weird to plop that 1 to propel the plot towards the ending. I've only read 2 books by this author & found a similar pattern after marital rape in both books. In The Dark Side Of Marriage, heroine in a state of daze, runs away, almost turns into a roadkill, gets hospitalized. In this book, heroine walks a long distance, walks back home, lights out upon hearing the off-screen gunshot sound when doggie gets his 1 way ticket to heaven, gets afflicted w/ fever. The Eurasian girl aka viperish villainess should be stripped of her credentials but all ends well. Hero realizes on wedding nite which sista he's bangin cuz hymen restoration was not the trend back then. Oh yeah the setting was supposed to be Bangkok, but why was the shady chef named Ah Foon = Chinese & the hotel receptionist is Chinese ? And too much of a coincidence that the fat, good Samaritan uncle Charlie shows up in the beginning & the end of the book, as if he's assigned as heroine's random guardian angel. Weird but hey, stranger things have happened in HQNlandia.

[willaful · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a decent read in its flowery, old-fashioned way -- you know you’re reading an old Harlequin when you get to a rape scene so poetical and oblique you’d miss it if you blinked -- but I found it so divorced from anything resembling probability or realistic characterization as to almost seem like science fiction. And the odd thing is that it’s almost a believable story. It’s as as the two main characters are in two different books: Virginia’s is crazy town and Brent’s is the one that makes sense. But because this is a romance, Virginia’s story wins.

We have here a heroine who marries a newly blinded man, who believes her to be the woman he was in love with. (Even though they're sisters, their first names are both Ann -- how convenient!) The marriages goes badly wrong, and it never once occurs to her that perhaps this is because she is not actually the woman he’s in love with. She seriously, I’m not making this up, wonders if there was a problem with Brent and Anna before this all happened and that’s why he doesn’t love Anna--i.e. her -- anymore!

Moreover, there’s nothing particularly lovable about Virginia: she comes off as a pitying, overly solicitous, overly protective type who would drive any person dealing with a new disability up the freakin’ wall, even if they already loved them. And that’s what seems to be happening to Brent, and it could’ve been a fascinating story if it had. Instead, we get a Mary Sue who feels entitled to the hero's love -- and gets it, for no obvious reason other than that she’s the heroine.

On the plus side, the “does he know or doesn’t he know” story was compelling and ended better than I anticipated. I liked that Brent notes the differences between the sisters without much negativity against Anna. Since the book is set in Thailand, there is some casual racism to squirm over, but even though I went in pretty much expecting that Brent would eventually be cured of his blindness, as is typical of books of this era, overall it was not really dated or offensive in its treatment of disabilities. (Unlike, say, The Caged Tiger.) Even though it made me kind of crazy, I did enjoy it.

[boogenhagen · Rating 2 out of 5]

They shot the puppy! Granted he had rabies but still - PUPPIES died during the course of this story!

[Dianna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Virginia gets stung by a wasp on a family picnic. She’s so scared of bugs! Her sister’s doctor boyfriend, Brent, looks after her. Virginia is 15 and in full crush mode. Her sister Anna is only three years her senior. Anna and Virginia’s parents die, Anna becomes a model. They live with their Grandmother Ann in London until she marries an apple grower and moves to Western Australia. Anna and Brent get engaged, and Brent jets off to Bangkok. His specialisation is tropical medicine. Anna models and sets up a business with some other guy, Virginia gets an office typing job, and then Brent is blinded in a car accident. Will Anna rush to her beloved’s side?

Nope.

Anna’s now hooking up with her business partner, and before the blinding, had already decided she’d be breaking off the engagement. Virginia thinks this is awful bad behaviour. Oh Virginia. You have no idea. Anna’s not even that keen on the idea of marriage any more, she thinks she’d rather like a career and some lovers, the hussy. She also doesn’t really want to break up with Brent over the phone. Since Virginia’s headed to Australia, would she be a dear and swing by Thailand to drop off the ring and an apology. Oh sure, Virginia would just LOVE to do that. She is totally not forming a plan too …

Masquerade as her sister and marry Brent. Sure, never crossed her mind, she’s just a little mouse girl running on the wheel of fate, and can’t be expected to reveal that she isn’t Anna, when Brent hears her voice and is emotionally overcome by the sudden arrival of his beloved. Instead, she’ll go along with it all, and hope that when and if Brent does recover his sight, he’ll be so in love with her by that stage that he won’t mind a wee bit of insanely hurtful deception.

There’s this whole backstory about how both Virginia and Anna were christened Anne, which seems largely to be there so that technically, Virginia hasn’t lied about her name, but whatever. There is nothing likeable about Virginia. She rescued a puppy and I still couldn’t work up any kinder feelings for her.

Puppy alert! Perhaps check another review if you have puppy concerns.

I can summon up a little empathy for Virginia, if I try really hard. She’s 18 and she’s got a massive crush on Brent, and she’s succumbed to temptation. I also get that flawed protagonists are more interesting, but there’s no real follow through. She does one insanely bad thing, and then retreats into passivity. She finally gets around to understanding that she has a lot of growing up to do, but all the usual tricks of making her sweet and innocent really just serve to underline what a dull little thing she is.

The real heroine doesn’t show up until almost the end of the book, and she’s quite naturally furious. She’s awesome. Shalini is a doctor and Brent’s assistant. She’s a WOC, her mother is Anglo and her father Indian. She’s from a wealthy background and is beautiful and brilliant. The whole Brent being blinded and his fiancée showing up and them getting married happened while she was on leave. This is a lesson for all working women in love with their bosses: never go on leave! It’s so frustrating, because Brent liked her! Sure, he was still in love with his fiancée, but he hadn’t seen her in 12 months, and they weren’t in close contact. And Brent understood her challenges around not fitting into any world, and he encouraged her to express her heritage, and he respected her as a work colleague. How could she not be in love with him? But now he’s gone and married a blonde nothing, with her pale skin and cut glass accent, and her lack of any education, or brains. What does he see in her? It’s ridiculous.

This was so unfair. I mean, Hilton introduces a character with a diverse background, one who is making a career for herself, and relegates her to the role of villain so that the boring little girl can win her doctor prize. Why would you do that? Why create this character and relegate her to the role of mean girl? It’s so unfair. It just highlighted how useless just about everyone else was. I just couldn’t understand it – was Hilton being subversive?

And Virginia is awful about it. In her head, Shalini is ‘the Eurasian girl.’ It’s all ‘the Eurasian girl’ this and ‘the Eurasian girl’ that. The other doctor’s wife Virginia meets is also pretty acid about her, so we also get this whole depressing overtone of jealous women assuming that a good looking sexy working woman must be after their men.

The whole tone of the book is very much of its time, and there are further outrages. All the white characters act a bit ex-pat colonial, which is extremely rude since Thailand was never a colony. There’s appreciation of the beauty and distinctness of Thailand, although this is a bit swallowed up by the ‘exotic East’ vibe. Shalini delivers a monologue about the East, and I couldn’t help thinking: really?? Mostly because it was what I thought you would say to a tiny ignorant white woman while internally gnashing your teeth over how, by lumping a whole mass of cultures and peoples and countries together, you were just pandering to her stupid view of how the world worked.

Brent is a good man. He wanted to do good in the world, and he was empathetic toward Shalini. He was doing an amazing job of coping with his sudden blindness, and working out the adjustments he would need to make, and how he would continue with his dream job. It felt awful to observe him from Virginia’s perspective, because she saw his anger and frustration and remoteness as a reflection on their relationship, because Virginia is a child and so caught up in her own deal she couldn’t really focus on anyone else’s. He didn’t deserve to be the target of Virginia’s deception. He had to go through this whole life-changing experience and also cope with a woman he thought he was in love with who was no longer anything like he remembered.

And yet, he’s not all good. After a big argument, there’s a veiled reference to a sex scene between them where consent is rather shadily ambiguous. They have nothing in common. It’s only possible for me to think he might have some tender feelings for Virginia if I remind myself that romance heroes have a tendency to prefer bland teenagers as their life partners. For their romance to work at all there has to be some ret-con around his feelings for Anna, but this plot is so very tenuous.

Virginia is lucky that, until Shalini arrives, no one asks her any questions about her background. When put on the spot, Virginia clearly has no idea how to talk about her sister’s life.

Such an annoying book. I can’t believe I finished it.

[Booklover · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Virginia's older sister Anna dumps her fiancee after a long correspondence for over a year it is Virginia who travels overseas to break the news to him personally. However on arrival she finds that Brent has been in an accident and is blind unwilling to add to the trauma and the eventual hope of a recovery she agrees to marry him when he mistakes her for her sister Anna. However even a blind man has more than one way of seeing. A rival for Brents affections makes Virginia leave Brent before his operation by threatening to tell him that Virginia is an imposter.

An engaging romance,good read,half way through the story really felt Virginia was too good which caused her more pain-hurt-humiliation,her biggest mistake was making her love her weakness,Brent was sweet but some times made me angry,liked the twist in the end

Recommend it

[Mareli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, a really oldie! It was heart-wreaking from the very start, with this little girl in love with her sister's fiancèe who decides to marry him after he goes blind without revealing herself, making him believe he's marrying her former fiancèe instead of her little sister.

I liked him very much. He was sweet even if he had a some bad moments. But being blind can make someone act strangely sometimes! At some time he decided to go on with marriage vows but I didn't feel him forcing her to have sex... She was really a sweetie but I felt her so young, I really had trouble to understand her acting sometimes. But maybe it was just because she really was very young (she began working at 16 or something like this!). I hated the relationship between her and her sister, a heartless b*tch!

The story was a bit outdated for me. I remember reading about her sister going away with a man and not wanting anybody to know it because of her reputation, now it seems so normal going away with a man without being married.

And I didn't want to talk about communications! Did we really live without cellulars? LOL

[Bubu · Rating 2 out of 5]

i didnt like this one. This wasnt a romance. Maybe the author got confused about what she was writing.. idk..
Nothing good happened. H/h lived in two world that rarely collided and H wasnt even mean( i know.. lol .. i might developed a condition named hplanditis) and the h was tstl but after all she was just 18 years old.

[Nightwitch · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was just awful. Our heroine is eighteen, and when her snarky fashion model independent older sister's long-distance fiance goes blind, Virginia decides to go to Thailand to tell him that said sister is breaking off the engagement. Somehow she ends up married to him instead. Later in their marriage of convenience they have an argument so he rapes her. There's an Other Woman - Brent's assistant, who is obsessed with and wants to marry him - and she's half-Indian and described in incredibly racialized and demeaning terms. I mean, even the heroine's late parents named their two daughters Ann Virginia and Anne Jennifer. Like, there is no one to root for here. Also, a pet dog contracts rabies and has to be put down. Basically, you probably don't want to bother.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not very good at writing reviews, but I really liked this book. I love the story line of mistaken identity, stepping in someone's place because they secretly love that person themselves.

[Lynn Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was part of my mum's mills and boon books and so one of my earliest reads.

[Reading with Cats · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this book and everyone in it with the passion of ten thousand fiery suns.

[Karen-Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Virginia's sister's fiance Brent is blinded and her sister had already written to break the engagement. Virginia sends a telegram intercepting the letter and goes to Thailand as her sister and marries the man she has loved for three years. The usual misunderstandings and pain and again a too quick resolution wiping all the pain under the rug with a few words and the kiss that ends most harlequins.