Rachel Woodley isn't exactly happy working as a governess, but she appreciates her job and place in life. When her mother dies, she loses her job, her home, and all the things she held dear. When she finds a photograph that shows her father isn't dead like she thought for all these years, she goes on a mission to find him and confront him. Gaining access to an earl won't be easy however, and Rachel will have to figure out how much lying she can take.
THE OTHER DAUGHTER rings with smooth writing and great story telling. Lauren Willig does a masterful job of drawing the reader into the story and creating detailed scenes that capture the historical setting perfectly.
The snappy dialogue between Rachel and Simon is hilarious and sexy. Their banter adds the perfect touch of flirtation to the story. The interactions between Olivia, Cece, and Rachel are also wonderful and packed with emotion, subtle and overt. The mystery Simon and Olivia is especially suspenseful and builds up to a satisfying conclusion. The characters truly stand out in this novel, and the reader will have a hard time forgetting them when the book ends.
As much as I love this story, I did find the relationship between Rachel and her father to be a bit lacking. The premise of the story is so largely tied up with the father, but his appearances in the story are actually fairly brief. All the questions around him are answered in the end, but he still seems to take an odd backseat in the story when the first chapters sets him up so strongly.
THE OTHER DAUGHTER is a powerfully engaging novel historical fiction readers won't want to miss. Lauren Willig's supreme storytelling makes this story shine with complex and lovable characters.
Raised in a poor yet genteel household, Rachel Woodley is working in France as a governess when she receives news that her mother has died, suddenly. Grief-stricken, she returns to the small town in England where she was raised to clear out the cottage...and finds a cutting from a London society magazine, with a photograph of her supposedly deceased father dated all of three month before. He's an earl, respected and influential, and he is standing with another daughter-his legitimate daughter. Which makes Rachel...not legitimate. Everything she thought she knew about herself and her past-even her very name-is a lie.
Still reeling from the death of her mother, and furious at this betrayal, Rachel sets herself up in London under a new identity. There she insinuates herself into the party-going crowd of Bright Young Things, with a steely determination to unveil her father's perfidy and bring his-and her half-sister's-charmed world crashing down. Very soon, however, Rachel faces two unexpected snags: she finds she genuinely likes her half-sister, Olivia, whose situation isn't as simple it appears; and she might just be falling for her sister's fiancé...
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