The Other Daughter by Lauren Willig

The Other Daughter by Lauren Willig
My Rating: ★★★★

Rachel Woodley is content being a governess in France until her mother suddenly dies. Shattered, she returns to England where she is forced to clear out her childhood home in record speed when Rachel discovers a photo of her father hiding under her mother’s pillow. Why is there a picture of her late father under her mother’s pillow, and how was it taken recently? Shocked to the core, Rachel learns that not only is her father very much alive, but also a well-respected earl with another family. Furious, she’s determined to meet her father and take revenge on him and his other family.

In this juicy book, we follow Rachel Woodley as she goes from governess to pretending to be a rich party girl named Vera so she can get closer to the sister she never knew and take her revenge. I thoroughly enjoyed this book from beginning to end. It was interesting to watch Rachel go from a governess and relying on her meager savings until she finds a new job to pretending to be a rich party girl staying in a lavish home. It was interesting to watch her slowly truly become Vera only to realize that this new persona isn’t who she really is, and the life she could’ve had is not as great as she thought it’d be. Plus, revenge is not always sweet, especially when you don’t know the whole story.

While the setting was grand and fun, I think that it also has a great cast of characters. I personally found it interesting that every character we meet is not who they appear to be on the surface. Characters who are seemingly the life of the party are suffering from debilitating depression, sweet and thoughtful characters are just sharks lurking in the water, and people Rachel thought she knew well turn out to be the exact opposite of what she thought. I particularly liked Rachel’s sister, Olivia. She seems meek, cold, and distant but really isn’t.

I will say that some of the dialogue was a bit cringey and try hard, particularly the dialogue between characters at parties. It got better as the story progressed, but it strongly came off as a bunch of people trying very hard to be cool and it just was not working. It kept taking me out of the story when it first started, but once I got used to it, it did not faze me often.

I also found it odd that Rachel barely mourned her mother. For someone who was very close with her, Rachel mourned her for a day and occasionally got sad here and there. At first, I thought she was pouring her grief into her revenge plan, but then she got a little sad about her mom exactly one time when the revenge was coming to an end. I just find it extremely unrealistic that she had the fastest mourning period ever for someone she deeply cared about. In fact, she seemed to still be mourning her father even when finding out he was alive while her poor mom was left in the wind.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book and could not put it down. I had so much fun reading about Rachel’s adventures and getting absorbed in all the secrets. The only reason I knocked a star off is because of the awkward party dialogue and Rachel’s practically nonexistent grief about her mother’s passing.