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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