It has been a while since I’ve actually read a book straight through. I’ve got quite a few started, but I always get sidetracked and leave them sitting around with bookmarks waiting for me to return to them. Last weekend I decided to take an easy read with me to Jay’s because I thought that I might have some down time. I am a morning person, and Jay tends to sleep in later than me, so I spent a few hours reading this last weekend. It surprised me that I was able to breeze through 200 pages without any problems.

“Maid to Match” is about an 18 year old parlor maid for the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC. She is up for the position of Lady’s Maid for Mrs. Vanderbilt, which has been her ultimate goal in life. Her mother trained her for this position and she knew that it would be a great opportunity. Tillie, as she is called in the book, wants to travel and see new things that she’s only read about. It’s the late 1800’s and people don’t often travel beyond their own small town. Since this is a romance novel (without any graphic scenes) you know that there’s going to be a monkey wrench tossed into her plans. And it arrives in the form of Mack Danver. I don’t even have to describe him to you because you already know that he’s an Adonis. He is, of course, the most gorgeous guy with a killer body and the perfect combination of stormy moodiness to drive any heroine crazy.

I don’t have to tell you the story because you know very well how it goes. It’s your typical romance. When I had finished reading it I was disgusted because things like that don’t happen in real life. And even if they did, what good does it do me to read it? After all, I’m not a tiny petite gorgeous woman who somehow manages to hide her beauty from almost all men (though she doesn’t realize how pretty she is) until the Man of the Year comes into her life. Most of the time I just get irritated by the leading woman because she does some really dumb things. Tillie wasn’t too bad, though. In fact, she was better than most.

The thing that really struck me about the book was the mindset of the characters. The fact that the mother started training her daughter to be a lady’s maid from an early age really got to me. I realize that back in the 1800’s most women only aspired to be wives and mothers. I suppose that I should be happy that the mother was actually teaching her daughter how to do something in order to make her own way in the world, instead of grooming her daughter to catch a rich husband.

The other thought that hit me while I was reading this was the fact that they considered Mrs. Vanderbilt to be almost like royalty. That thought led me to thinking about princesses and how almost every little girl grows up wanting to be one, and yet this girl was raised with the dream of being a servant for a princess (of sorts). That led me to thinking about those dumb Occupy Wall Street people. They want everybody to live like princesses, but they don’t seem to realize that you can only be a princess if there is somebody below you to treat you in that manner. Otherwise you are all just a bunch of nothings. I hate to tell you this, but in order for there to be various classes that would allow for a rich upper class to look up to, you need some bottom feeders as well. Personally, I feel that the Occupy Wall Street people are the bottom feeders and they are just too lazy to succeed in the time honored American way.

Anyway, I just wanted to review this book. It’s not bad for a romance novel. If you are looking for something intellectually stimulating, then walk away right now. If you’ve been to Biltmore then it’s fun to read the book and know exactly what it looks like as they say which room the characters are in.