Amanda Miranda -- Richard Peck
Oh, Amanda Miranda. I should have re-read you long before now.
I assume that it was re-released this year to coincide with the Titanic anniversary, though it's funny that that's the angle they're pushing*, as, all things considered, it's not a huge part of the story. Twenty pages, maybe? Also, I think it's funny that those girls on the cover don't look at all alike, something that the entire plot hinges on. Anyway.
For pretty much her entire life—eighteen years—Mary Cooke has been trained for service by her mother, who, two decades later, is still bitter about leaving her position to marry the farmer who knocked her up. So, as the narrator puts it, when Mary is employed as a maid by the Whitwell family, it's really just an "opportunity to exchange one bondage for another".
Before she even gets there, though, she has a run-in with a local Wisewoman who tells her what her future will be: that she'll marry twice, and that she'll die and live again "beyond a mountain of ice". That strange encounter is all but forgotten when she arrives at Whitwell Hall and is promptly re-named 'Miranda' by Amanda, the rebellious young lady of the house... who, except for a small scar, looks exactly like Mary.
Sadly, Amanda doesn't share Mary's sweet nature, and immediately starts plotting to take advantage of her new-found double... whether Mary likes it or not.
A funny thing about this book: it's often (or, at least, in every library I've ever found it) shelved with the chapter books rather than YA, even though, as I said, the main character is eighteen, and the storyline includes multiple pregnancies (at least three out of wedlock—shocking!), infidelity, and attempted murder. (Not that any of it is remotely graphic, or even that attempted murder is particularly unusual in the chapter book section... but certainly the perspective and concerns of the characters suggest that it'd be better appreciated by a teen audience.)
The book starts out with an omniscient narrator, but around the midway point, Miranda starts to take on more and more of the narration, and Amanda herself pipes up for at least one chapter. While it's got moments of Gothic flavor, a leetle bit of Wuthering Heights, and definitely some of the fun Downton Abbey/Upstairs Downstairs action, it's more like a YA Daphne du Maurier than anything else. Recommended if you like atmospheric, slow-moving-in-a-good-way historicals that deal with gossip and class and social maneuvering.
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*And always have, to some extent—the Titanic appears on the old cover as well.
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Amazon | Indiebound.
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Book source: ILLed through my library.