{"id":1702,"date":"2015-06-26T12:54:45","date_gmt":"2015-06-26T19:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1702"},"modified":"2015-06-26T12:55:30","modified_gmt":"2015-06-26T19:55:30","slug":"lauren-willig-the-other-daughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/lauren-willig-the-other-daughter\/","title":{"rendered":"Lauren Willig: The Other Daughter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The-Other-Daughter\"<\/a>This isn\u2019t really a mystery but it has a secret at its core, and any reader who enjoys writers like Tasha Alexander and Anna Lee Huber, who include romance in their novels, will enjoy this one. Willig writes what I would call romantic adventure stories – stories, no matter what the category, that are impossible to put down or forget.<\/p>\n

Unlike, I think, any of Willig\u2019s other books, this book is set entirely in the past, without an accompanying present day story line. She\u2019s chosen the 1920’s, and she\u2019s created a character who absolutely lives and breathes; you\u2019ll be rooting for her, you\u2019ll be heartbroken for her; you\u2019re with her every step of the way. I think I\u2019ve just described Willig\u2019s two most salient attributes as a writer: she tells a great story, and she creates unforgettable characters.<\/p>\n

Rachel Woodley, the \u201cOther Daughter\u201d of the title (or is she?), has grown up poor and as the book opens, she\u2019s working as a governess for a wealthy family in France. She\u2019s very attached to her charges but when she gets a letter that her mother is ill and she\u2019d better come quick, she can\u2019t get out the door fast enough, especially when she discovers that the letter has been delayed in getting to her by other members of the household staff.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not really a surprise that despite her best efforts, at the end of her long journey, her mother is no longer living. What Rachel does for the rest of the novel is pretty much governed by grief, as she discovers a photograph of her father among her mother\u2019s things. She\u2019d long thought her father was dead as well, but in the recent newspaper clipping, he\u2019s alive, titled, and escorting a daughter to a debutante party. She\u2019s lost her mother, and she\u2019s discovered her life as she\u2019s known it is based on a lie.<\/p>\n

As she moves forward after talking to the family lawyer, she meets a young man who offers her the revenge she\u2019s now looking for. He offers to create an identity for her, lend an apartment filled with clothes, and take her to parties. In return, she\u2019ll be fodder for the gossip column he writes. Rachel\u2019s one goal is to get invited to her father\u2019s country estate and confront him in person.<\/p>\n

As she discovers, there are rules to interacting with the very wealthy, and Willig paints an excellent picture of the giddiness of the parties and the Bright Young Things who attend them but also of the emptiness Rachel eventually feels after night after night of dressing up, dining, drinking and dancing with the same people.<\/p>\n

Rachel\u2019s revenge quest is complicated when she encounters her half sister, Olivia, who on the surface couldn\u2019t seem more perfect. While Willig isn\u2019t a mystery writer, she\u2019s adept at creating and solving mysteries of character: why do people behave in the sometimes peculiar ways that they do? What deeper motives do they have? That\u2019s usually the mysterious secret at the heart of her novels, and this one is no different.<\/p>\n

The peeling back of the layers of Rachel\u2019s character, of her encounters with her sister, and of her revenge quest is the heart of this novel and I couldn\u2019t stop reading it once I started. There\u2019s really nothing that can beat a good story, well told. This is another gem from Lauren Willig.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This isn\u2019t really a mystery but it has a secret at its core, and any reader who enjoys writers like Tasha Alexander and Anna Lee Huber, who include romance in their novels, will enjoy this one. Willig writes what I would call romantic adventure stories – stories, no matter what the category, that are impossible … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-1702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1702"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1704,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions\/1704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}