Confession: I have never watched the Disney version of Anastasia. It came out when I was very busy doing career things instead of fun things, which I now realize was a mistake. I must not have known that John Cusack was voicing Dimitri the con man love interest, because criminal John Cusack is my favorite of all the John Cusacks (see The Grifters or Grosse Pointe Blank). So the Anastasia connection wasn’t what prompted me to request The Gilded Heiress. I’ve been wanting to pick up Joanna Shupe’s Gilded Age set historical romances, and when this came up on NetGalley, I took the opportunity. I enjoyed it enough that I’ve got three more of her books on hold at the library now.
Leo is a con man supporting his mother and 5 sisters in Boston. He’s trying to hustle tourists but he can’t keep their attention because Josie is singing. While observing her, he realizes she looks a lot like Mrs. Pendleton. He has a grudge against the Pendletons because they fired his father, which threw his family into poverty. The Pendleton’s daughter was kidnapped from their house as a baby, and there is a long-standing, large reward for the return of the now adult Josephine Pendleton. If Leo can convince the Pendletons that Josie is their long-lost daughter, he can get the reward and get revenge. It’s going to require cons on top of cons, because he also has to convince Josie to take him on as her manager and get her to New York City.
Josie has had to be her own person, so while she’s not a jaded woman of the world, she’s not an innocent either. She has no intention of letting Leo take advantage of her, until she decides she is ready for Leo to take advantage of her. Leo has a more dramatic emotional arc going from con man to trusted ally and lover, and Shupe makes it work by making Josie smart and ambitious. There aren’t a lot of surprises here, but I was on the ride for the emotional journey more than wondering how everything was going to work out. I wish we had been able to linger a little more with some of the relationships, but I enjoyed it overall.
I received this as an advance reader copy from Avon Books and NetGalley. My opinions are my own, freely and honestly given.