Sandra Brown: Mirror Image

Mirror Image: A-
Avery Daniels/ Carole Rutledge and Tate Rutledge

A jet crash handed Avery Daniels a golden opportunity. Mistaken for Carole Rutledge, the badly injured Avery has found that plastic surgery has given her Carole's face, the famous senatorial candidate for a husband, and a powerful Texas dynasty for in-laws. She makes the shattering discovery that someone close to the senator plans to assassinate him. Now to save the life of the man she loves, Avery must live another woman's life-and risk her own. (amazon)

Let me start out by saying that I don’t particularly like politicians. I don’t particularly like salesmen or lawyers or any person whose profession is to vie for others’ votes, money, assets, whatever. (Okay, so I guess I can only marry an artist and a hippie piano player…)

A strong part of this book is Tate’s political campaign and his fight to become a Senator. It’s intense. A lot of kissing up, a lot of speech-making. A lot of “looking good in front of others” type deal. However, Tate wasn’t one of those politicians – he was real and down-to-earth, which as a romance hero, he’d better be.

I really enjoyed the premise and plot of this story. Avery is in a plane crash and when she regains consciousness, she finds that she has been mistaken for Tate’s selfish-bitch-of-a-wife. However, due to medical circumstances, she’s unable to tell Tate and the doctors the truth. She gets knocked out from medication and assuming that she is indeed Carole, Tate’s family sends a plastic surgeon and surgery is done on her face.

She awakens to find that she really looks like Carole – her face has been reconstructed to look like her.

Before she can tell anyone the truth, she discovers there is a scheme to kill Tate. As a former journalist, she sniffs a huge story and chooses to stay silent. Also, she finds herself falling in love with Tate more and more everyday.

The thing is, Carole was a manipulative, selfish person – Tate saw the real Carole after they were wed. (Before, he apparently thought with that part of the male anatomy that males usually make decisions with.) Tate can’t believe the change that he sees in “Carole” after the accident – it’s almost as if she’s a different person! (Oh, if he only knew…)

Avery’s struggle to convince Tate of the complete change in character is an interesting journey; so is reading of how they fall in love with each other.

I didn't completely love Ms. Brown's writing style; I felt it was a little choppy and course, but the book itself was published a long time ago (I want to say a good fifteen years? Late 80s/ early 90s), so I'd assume it is one of her earlier works.

Nevertheless, it’s a good, refreshing read – one of Ms. Brown’s better works. (yay!)