Book Review: The Other Daughter by Lauren Willig

Description:

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...

From Lauren Willig, author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Ashford Affair, comes The Other Daughter, a page-turner full of deceit, passion, and revenge. 

Thoughts:

Lauren Willig has been on my radar since her Pink Carnation series but I never got around to reading her books. The Other Daughter was my first Lauren Willig book and my first book of 2018. Rachel immediately struck me as a likable character. She's an only child, her father is deceased and without her mother she's all alone. When she picks up a newspaper article with a photograph of a man who looks like her deceased father, she's determined to find out if he's alive. Did her father leave them because he's an Earl? Rachel decides to infiltrate his world and figure out what happened.


The book itself was very fun to read, it kept my attention and flowed very well. I thought Rachel's storyline was very well layed out and intricate.  She loved her father, and thought his was a great man. How could he just step away from them? The story unravels with some twists and turns. This main storyline kept me glued to the pages. 

I will say, the romance at the end of the book was weak. I would have liked to see it build throughout the story, it kind of felt rushed and flat. A rushed ending, that didn't sit very well with me. I thought the romance had alot of potential but wasn't explored enough. This isn't just a romance story, and for that reason I do recommend the book. 

I'm interested in picking up the Pink Carnation series. I'm pretty sure I own some of them on my ereader. This cover is absolutely gorgeous and fits the story well. Have you read this book? or any of her other books? Which one would you recommend?

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