What do you think?
Rate this book
Mirror Image
He'd discovered the real woman--but did he love her?
Rural New Hampshire seemed as remote as the Andes compared to life in Boston, but insurance investigator Frances Hudson had a job to do. Though her designer wardrobe and flashy car seemed out of place in the small town, she knew image was everything. No one would ever dream that behind her polished exterior lay a poor kid from the streets.
Yet, somehow the brilliant blue eyes of country veterinarian Ethan Alexander were able to pierce her disguise. His kisses threatened to shatter the wall Frances had erected, to reveal a caring, carefree woman underneath . . . but would Ethan still be there to pick up the pieces?
Rural New Hampshire seemed as remote as the Andes compared to life in Boston, but insurance investigator Frances Hudson had a job to do. Though her designer wardrobe and flashy car seemed out of place in the small town, she knew image was everything. No one would ever dream that behind her polished exterior lay a poor kid from the streets.
Yet, somehow the brilliant blue eyes of country veterinarian Ethan Alexander were able to pierce her disguise. His kisses threatened to shatter the wall Frances had erected, to reveal a caring, carefree woman underneath . . . but would Ethan still be there to pick up the pieces?
288 pages, Hardcover
Published July 1, 1992
23 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 13, 2017
Re Mirror Image - Melinda Cross ventures on her last HP outing with an h who is a big city insurance investigator and an H who is a small town vet.
It is now March of 1993 in HPlandia, and the real world is definitely a changin'. The world economy was in recession, England had seen a series of riots throughout the country in poorer areas the year before, the English Queen and the British Royals were being introduced to the complexity of Great Britain's Inland Revenue for the first time ever and Bill Clinton - the US president, was in his first 90 days in office after succeeding the elder George Bush. Globalizaton was being touted as a new political reality and with the previous fall of the USSR and the Eastern Communist block, the world was bigger than ever before.
The very first picture on the internets was posted in July of 1992 and it is in these next few years that we will see the rise of the World Wide Web. The US had it's share of riots as well and it seemed in many ways that people were waking up with a really bad hangover after a decade of excessive partying.
HPlandia is following along through the writings of it's contributors and where the eighties had been popularly called the decade of Excess, it looked as if the nineties would be the decade of Simplicity. Big Hair was out, streamline straight locks were in and neon colors went the way of the Dodo. It is in this period that we see the seeds of so many social and cultural and economic issues that we are still dealing with even today.
But for now, the first few books of HPlandia in March of 1993 deal with values. Materialism vs Simplicity, Extravagant Wealth and Image vs Inner Peace and Meaning and as always, HP writers are forging a cultural path through the conflicting viewpoints.
Melinda Cross takes a very conservative traditional view of Simplicity and Meaning with Mirror Image. As she is an American Midwest writer, it is very easy to see where her ideas come from. But when you compare the first two offerings of March in 1993 of HPlandia, (this book and Emma Darcy's An Impossible Dream,) you will get a very good idea of how vastly different similar points of view can be interpreted and just how varied and yet culturally relevant HPlandia can actually be.
So without further notes on real world history, it is on to to the spoilerization.
The h comes from a very poor background and has spent a long time working her way up the big time insurance investigator ladder and now makes the big bucks. Her widowed East Boston mother doesn't understand why she doesn't stop competing with the male investigators for the chief investigator position and marry one of them and start making babies instead instead.
The h gets sent to investigate a barn fire in a small town in New Hampshire, she is the stereotypical over-dressed designer city woman and meets the stereotypical, chauvinistic small town veterinarian H who escaped from his extremely Boston Brahmin wealthy family and now lives a life of simplicity and neighborliness.
The two dance around each other and the matchmaking townspeople and fall in love and save a Highland Cow that got caught in the fire - but unfortunately there were a bunch of others that died and eventually the saved calf dies too and never even gets a name. (I wasn't happy about this, cause Highland cows are really cute and I don't believe in animal deaths (besides goldfishes with cute plot moppet funerals that get revived by a tot of whiskey) in HPlandia.)
The h and H appear to have conflicting values, in fact the H repeatedly tells the h that her struggle for advancement and material goods is totally wrong, and the entire message of the book is that working hard at a white collar career, big city living and buying Aubusson carpets or a nice car is bad and small town simplicity with a better moral class of people in gingham dresses is good. Eventually the h makes the choice to drop her career, despite making it to the top investigator job including a big promotion with a Paris trip, and get rid of her 'materialism', her designer suits and her nice antiques and revert to a small town vet's wife to have lots of babies, making her mother happy.
MC softens it up a bit by having the H willing to move to Boston to be with the h after the big values conflict, but it was clear by the entire tone of story, where small town was good and big city was bad, that wasn't going to happen.
This one is sweet, but really I am in HPlandia for Charming Italian Billionaires and Wealthy Bullying Greek Tycoons with Private Islands and Yachts. I want big multi-nation fashion capital shopping sprees and exotic trips and all day pricey spa makeovers with gold facials. I don't consider myself a materialist, but I like to have my little daydreams and where better to go experience them than Hplandia?
So small town vets and judgments against big city life, when really there is nothing wrong with either big cities or small towns, it just depends on what you want and like, just aren't going to provide me with the requisite satisfaction of a good HP outing. Especially if they have cute Scottish Highland cows that don't get names and get killed off for plot points. Sadly I was just not feeling it for this non-HP HP adventure and MC's last hurrah in HPlandia.
It is now March of 1993 in HPlandia, and the real world is definitely a changin'. The world economy was in recession, England had seen a series of riots throughout the country in poorer areas the year before, the English Queen and the British Royals were being introduced to the complexity of Great Britain's Inland Revenue for the first time ever and Bill Clinton - the US president, was in his first 90 days in office after succeeding the elder George Bush. Globalizaton was being touted as a new political reality and with the previous fall of the USSR and the Eastern Communist block, the world was bigger than ever before.
The very first picture on the internets was posted in July of 1992 and it is in these next few years that we will see the rise of the World Wide Web. The US had it's share of riots as well and it seemed in many ways that people were waking up with a really bad hangover after a decade of excessive partying.
HPlandia is following along through the writings of it's contributors and where the eighties had been popularly called the decade of Excess, it looked as if the nineties would be the decade of Simplicity. Big Hair was out, streamline straight locks were in and neon colors went the way of the Dodo. It is in this period that we see the seeds of so many social and cultural and economic issues that we are still dealing with even today.
But for now, the first few books of HPlandia in March of 1993 deal with values. Materialism vs Simplicity, Extravagant Wealth and Image vs Inner Peace and Meaning and as always, HP writers are forging a cultural path through the conflicting viewpoints.
Melinda Cross takes a very conservative traditional view of Simplicity and Meaning with Mirror Image. As she is an American Midwest writer, it is very easy to see where her ideas come from. But when you compare the first two offerings of March in 1993 of HPlandia, (this book and Emma Darcy's An Impossible Dream,) you will get a very good idea of how vastly different similar points of view can be interpreted and just how varied and yet culturally relevant HPlandia can actually be.
So without further notes on real world history, it is on to to the spoilerization.
The h comes from a very poor background and has spent a long time working her way up the big time insurance investigator ladder and now makes the big bucks. Her widowed East Boston mother doesn't understand why she doesn't stop competing with the male investigators for the chief investigator position and marry one of them and start making babies instead instead.
The h gets sent to investigate a barn fire in a small town in New Hampshire, she is the stereotypical over-dressed designer city woman and meets the stereotypical, chauvinistic small town veterinarian H who escaped from his extremely Boston Brahmin wealthy family and now lives a life of simplicity and neighborliness.
The two dance around each other and the matchmaking townspeople and fall in love and save a Highland Cow that got caught in the fire - but unfortunately there were a bunch of others that died and eventually the saved calf dies too and never even gets a name. (I wasn't happy about this, cause Highland cows are really cute and I don't believe in animal deaths (besides goldfishes with cute plot moppet funerals that get revived by a tot of whiskey) in HPlandia.)
The h and H appear to have conflicting values, in fact the H repeatedly tells the h that her struggle for advancement and material goods is totally wrong, and the entire message of the book is that working hard at a white collar career, big city living and buying Aubusson carpets or a nice car is bad and small town simplicity with a better moral class of people in gingham dresses is good. Eventually the h makes the choice to drop her career, despite making it to the top investigator job including a big promotion with a Paris trip, and get rid of her 'materialism', her designer suits and her nice antiques and revert to a small town vet's wife to have lots of babies, making her mother happy.
MC softens it up a bit by having the H willing to move to Boston to be with the h after the big values conflict, but it was clear by the entire tone of story, where small town was good and big city was bad, that wasn't going to happen.
This one is sweet, but really I am in HPlandia for Charming Italian Billionaires and Wealthy Bullying Greek Tycoons with Private Islands and Yachts. I want big multi-nation fashion capital shopping sprees and exotic trips and all day pricey spa makeovers with gold facials. I don't consider myself a materialist, but I like to have my little daydreams and where better to go experience them than Hplandia?
So small town vets and judgments against big city life, when really there is nothing wrong with either big cities or small towns, it just depends on what you want and like, just aren't going to provide me with the requisite satisfaction of a good HP outing. Especially if they have cute Scottish Highland cows that don't get names and get killed off for plot points. Sadly I was just not feeling it for this non-HP HP adventure and MC's last hurrah in HPlandia.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 11, 2013
So, so sweet! The heroine came from poverty and has spent the last eight years proving that she has made it, so the fancy car, fancy clothes, fancy apartment are her symbols of success and then she is sent to the country to look into an insurance claim for her company and from the start everything changes instead of antiques she finds a burnt barn and animals and the hero Ethan, a vet who calls her Frannie, makes her fall in love with a calf and before she knows it she has ditched her designer clothes for the normal one's, has let her hair down, is a part of the town and Ethan is asking her to marry him.
This of course comes crashing down because she hasn't yet reconciled herself to who she is. It was funny that Ethan came from wealth and ran away from it while the heroine ran towards it. I loved it when the hero told her that he was in love with Frannie, the girl the heroine tried to suppress. Overall the book was just so sweet and cute and aww worthy!
This of course comes crashing down because she hasn't yet reconciled herself to who she is. It was funny that Ethan came from wealth and ran away from it while the heroine ran towards it. I loved it when the hero told her that he was in love with Frannie, the girl the heroine tried to suppress. Overall the book was just so sweet and cute and aww worthy!
January 29, 2018
"Mirror Image" is the story of Frannie and Ethan.
Frannie, now known as Francis has endured poverty as a child and works hard to be where she is in life now- a successful arson investigator- and works hard to keep her lifestyle and herself cool and sophisticated. When an investigation leads her to the rural New Hampshire, her calm demeanor is shattered by Ethan, who is a vet there as soon as attraction strikes.
Soon their opposite natures crash, and Ethan starts unveiling the real woman hidden under Francis, while she tries to keep up with her own expectations.
It was a beautiful story. I completely felt for Frannie and understood why she was what she was- but then again Ethan was the perfect Yang to her Ying to show her what she was missing in life. I absolutely adored their scenes together, and the ending was very apt.
Very sweet.
Safe
4/5
Frannie, now known as Francis has endured poverty as a child and works hard to be where she is in life now- a successful arson investigator- and works hard to keep her lifestyle and herself cool and sophisticated. When an investigation leads her to the rural New Hampshire, her calm demeanor is shattered by Ethan, who is a vet there as soon as attraction strikes.
Soon their opposite natures crash, and Ethan starts unveiling the real woman hidden under Francis, while she tries to keep up with her own expectations.
It was a beautiful story. I completely felt for Frannie and understood why she was what she was- but then again Ethan was the perfect Yang to her Ying to show her what she was missing in life. I absolutely adored their scenes together, and the ending was very apt.
Very sweet.
Safe
4/5
August 31, 2013
I've come to expect sweetness from Melinda Cross. She did not disappoint.
abrierto-to-read-hr-other
July 8, 2022He'd discovered the real woman--but did he love her?
Rural New Hampshire seemed as remote as the Andes compared to life in Boston, but insurance investigator Frances Hudson had a job to do. Though her designer wardrobe and flashy car seemed out of place in the small town, she knew image was everything. No one would ever dream that behind her polished exterior lay a poor kid from the streets.
Yet, somehow the brilliant blue eyes of country veterinarian Ethan Alexander were able to pierce her disguise. His kisses threatened to shatter the wall Frances had erected, to reveal a caring, carefree woman underneath . . . but would Ethan still be there to pick up the pieces?
Rural New Hampshire seemed as remote as the Andes compared to life in Boston, but insurance investigator Frances Hudson had a job to do. Though her designer wardrobe and flashy car seemed out of place in the small town, she knew image was everything. No one would ever dream that behind her polished exterior lay a poor kid from the streets.
Yet, somehow the brilliant blue eyes of country veterinarian Ethan Alexander were able to pierce her disguise. His kisses threatened to shatter the wall Frances had erected, to reveal a caring, carefree woman underneath . . . but would Ethan still be there to pick up the pieces?
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews