Book Review: A Lady in the Making by Susan Page Davis
Millie Evans has changed, choosing to leave rather than join an outlaw gang with her brother. Hoping for a new future, she boards a stagecoach but runs into her past and David Stone—a man she and her brother once tried to swindle. As she tries to convince David she’s changed, her brother’s gang holds up the stagecoach. Fighting beside David goes a long way to softening his heart, but he’s still not convinced. Millie must trust God to show David the truth, but will he see before it’s too late?
I read book 1 and was fairly disappointed with the ending until I realized there were more books coming. I was almost certain I’d seen book 3 as a review copy already and was fortunate enough to find books 2 and 3 available! Yay!
FYI – there may be spoilers for books 1 and 2 in here!
Book 2, Lady Anne’s Quest, gave more closure but left a few questions dangling. Like who was really after Uncle David. They got the bad guy, but just before he died, he told them he wasn’t hired by who they thought. So the bad guy behind the bad guy is still out there and doesn’t seem likely to give up.
But it’s been over a year and things are going well. Anne and Dan are set up helping run David’s stage line and it’s now time for David to head for England to claim his title and inheritance – or decide if he’d rather stay in America and let it fall to his cousin.
When he gets in the stagecoach, he’s met by one of the people he’d rather never see again – Millie.
Millie had, albeit sort of unwillingly, been part of the reason he’d been shot and nearly killed in the first place [see Lady Anne’s Quest]. She was after him, but for his money and had no idea there was a would-be assassin after him.
Since then she’s gone straight, working honest work and saving as much as she can to be respectable. But things with her half-brother [Sam, who had impersonated David to Anne in the last book] take a turn for the worse and she heads east where there’s more opportunities for a woman alone – without being unsavory.
When I first read the back cover copy, I couldn’t believe Millie could be redeemed, but Ms. Davis did an excellent job showing the change in her character – and the change in David as he forgives her for what she’d been a part of and realizes that people can change.
There is, once again, much more closure than in book 2, but I do find myself hoping for a book 4 [or at least an online epilogue ;)] to tie up the few loose ends still left out there [okay – one really, but sometimes that’s the way life is… and I’m really okay with not knowing what happens with that one thread].
I will miss these characters and wish to know more about David and Millie over the next few years. Do they make their life – permanently or temporarily – in England or Oregon? I’d love to see Anne and Dan [and Elise and Eb from the first book] some more.
Overall rating: 8.5 out of 10