Scan barcode
conniejoy529's review
2.0
got this for free for Kindle. This is a story novella set in Georgian England. Lily Gifford and her 5 children find themselves with no money and no place to go luckily they are picked up from the side road and offered a place to stay for the night by kind Sir Benjamin Brook. Born with a jaw defect that makes people uncomfortable Sir Benjamin rarely makes public appearances and invites people into his home even less often so his staff are quite taken aback with the arrival of 6 new people into the household.
Lily immediately begins plotting how she can turn this temporary stay into a secure and permanent home for her family. The most obvious way is to get Sir Brook to marry her. soon to her surprise Lily finds herself falling in love, but can she marry Brook while still keeping the secret of tragic end of her first marriage, as well as her notorious true identity?
I rather disliked this book. I kept wondering how long Lily would let the charade go on. When it became obviously that she was willing to keep up with it forever, as well as include her children in her lies, I began to lose respect for her character. Also I never could quite tell I'd she was supposed. to be the victim or not. In the end she attempted to justify her misdeed, but through out the story she actually took responsibility for her actions.
It was confusing for me in that I felt the book moved both too fast and too slow at times. I would have liked to know more about Brooks. I would have liked to actually see them develop feelings for each other. And more than anything I would have liked to see Lily be a woman and tell the truth herself. There was very little drama in this book which was very strange considering the wildly dramatic back story. There was a lot of tedium, discussions of cleaning and carrying trays, laundry and chamber pots when the characters themselves were lacking depth and emotion. that extra effort should have been given to them.
Lily immediately begins plotting how she can turn this temporary stay into a secure and permanent home for her family. The most obvious way is to get Sir Brook to marry her. soon to her surprise Lily finds herself falling in love, but can she marry Brook while still keeping the secret of tragic end of her first marriage, as well as her notorious true identity?
I rather disliked this book. I kept wondering how long Lily would let the charade go on. When it became obviously that she was willing to keep up with it forever, as well as include her children in her lies, I began to lose respect for her character. Also I never could quite tell I'd she was supposed. to be the victim or not. In the end she attempted to justify her misdeed, but through out the story she actually took responsibility for her actions.
It was confusing for me in that I felt the book moved both too fast and too slow at times. I would have liked to know more about Brooks. I would have liked to actually see them develop feelings for each other. And more than anything I would have liked to see Lily be a woman and tell the truth herself. There was very little drama in this book which was very strange considering the wildly dramatic back story. There was a lot of tedium, discussions of cleaning and carrying trays, laundry and chamber pots when the characters themselves were lacking depth and emotion. that extra effort should have been given to them.
justabean_reads's review
4.0
Could probably have better been titled, "Lily Gets What She Wants," but I suppose "Dare to Kiss" is more romancey. You know going in that it's going to be short, but I could have used about five more pages of Lily and Ben interacting that underlined that they fell in love, and didn't just end up together because she was desperate and he was lonely. However, I loved Lily to bits. Heroines who know the system and work it for all they can get are my favourites, and the book made how high the stakes were very clear. We didn't get to know Ben as well, but he seemed nice enough, and this really was Lily's story. Rather classic Beverley move to hold the plot twist over our heads and then use it the way she did, but it made sense for all the characters.
Haven't read Beverley in ages, and clearly need to get back to her.
Haven't read Beverley in ages, and clearly need to get back to her.
More...