Betsy Phillimore has been lying to her parents. They
believe she works as a successful management consultant
when actually, she manages an upscale shoe boutique.
After Betsy's mother dies, her father admits that the
family business is in trouble. Enrollment at London's
Phillimore Academy for Young Ladies has been decreasing
steadily. Lord Phillimore invites Betsy to take a look
around in a professional capacity and try to save the
school. When Betsy discovers that the curriculum has
remained unchanged since the school opened in 1880, and
that the only students are four atrociously spoiled brats,
she is tempted to tell her father the truth and head back
to the selling shoes. Remembering her mother's words of
wisdom over the years, Betsy tries to modernize the
courses, offering Image Management (for posing for the
paparazzi) and Budgets for Beginners (who have always had
unlimited cash from their parents). Betsy relies on her
friends to teach the new courses, including her longtime
crush, the sexy and suave Jamie O'Hare.
Betsy has an ulterior motive for spending more time at
Phillimore Academy. She's always known she was adopted,
left on the doorstep of the Academy as an infant. She
suspects her birth mother was a former student and she
hopes to snoop around to learn more. Although Betsy never
attended Phillimore Academy, this experience will help put
THE FINISHING TOUCHES on the woman she has become.
Hester Browne won many readers' hearts with her
Little Lady series, and this new novel is sure to please.
Betsy's friends are first-rate fun, and since they're in
their late 20s, everyone is still unpolished enough to
benefit from Phillimore Academy wisdom. Witty dialogue and
warm humor run throughout this delightful story. I loved
the dozens of useful tips and tricks for modern life, and I
wish I could sign up for some of the new Academy courses.
The secrets of being a finished, polished and put-together
woman are best shared between friends, and you will be glad
to make the acquaintance of Betsy Phillimore in this
fabulous novel.
In New York Times bestselling author Hester
Browne's delightful new novel, a fading English finishing
school is about to get a twenty-first-century makeover. Out
with white gloves and flower arranging, in with managing
mortgagesand do-it-yourself manicures! Behind this
remarkable transformation is business-savvy Betsy
Phillimore, with her own unique connection to London's
esteemed Phillimore Academy for Young
Ladies....
Twenty-seven years ago, an infant turned
up on the Academy's doorstep, with a note tacked to her
blanket by an elegant golden brooch -- Please take care
of my baby. I want her to grow up to be a proper lady.
Loved by Lady Frances Phillimore and her kindhearted staff,
Betsy grew up aspiring to be an Academy girl. But when
Franny and her husband, Lord Phillimore, advise Betsy to
instead hone her considerable math skills at college, she
brokenheartedly leaves behind the only family she's
known.
Now, on the sad occasion of Lady Frances's
memorial service, Betsy comes back to find the school in
disrepair, the enrollment down, and Lord P. desperate to
save his legacy. Enter Betsy, the numbers genius, and her
business plan -- to replace dusty protocol with the
essentials girls need today: cell phone etiquette,
eating sushi properly, handling credit cards, choosing the
perfect little black dress, negotiating a pre-nup, and
other lessons in independent living.
But Betsy may have
bitten off more than she can chew. Can she win over the
school's snobby headmistress and its handsome but risk-
averse treasurer? Returning to London also means facing her
own unfinished business, as she crosses paths with her sexy
girlhood crush...and blowing the dust off clues to a
lifelong mystery: who were her parents, and why did they
abandon her? If knowledge is power, Betsy is on the brink
of truly becoming her own woman, and embracing the one
thing she's wanted all along: a place to call home.
A
bittersweet journey of laughter and tears, The Finishing
Touches will have you gleefully turning pages through
dinner with elbows on the table -- bad manners, perhaps,
but excusable for one utterly irresistible read.
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