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Nineteenth-century servant girl Bet follows the classic cross-dressing adventure, disguising herself as a boy so she can attend school in a tale more Yentl than Mulan. Will is a 16-year-old upper-crust rapscallion, and Bet is the servant and companion who’s been raised side-by-side with him all her life. Will has been expelled from yet one more school when Bet proposes her cunning plan: Bet will take Will’s place, and Will can enter the military as he’s always dreamed. The plan goes off without a hitch. It’s too bad that Will’s current school, the Betterman Academy, is a dreadful place reserved for unredeemable boys. Luckily for Bet, her roommate, James, is a darling. This slim volume steps through all the required moments in the girl-disguised-as-a-boy genre, though one hopes the predictable moments of gay panic and safely heterosexual resolution will ring false to modern readers. This brief historical, solidly 20th century in feel, offers a perfectly pleasant romantic interlude for readers looking for bookish but light fare. (Historical fiction. 11-13)
