The Lady’s Maid by Dilly Court

The Lady’s Maid is a great story of friendship and of romance. 

 The story starts with two unwed young mothers in the 19^th century.  Both are forced to give up their babies due to circumstances.  One of the babies born to a Gypsy mother and aristocratic father becomes Josephine (Josie), the daughter of a Baronet.  The other, Kate, the daughter of an aristocratic mother and soldier father, becomes the daughter of a servant.  The two grow up as fast friends.  As young women, they both discover they are in love with men unsuitable for their station in life and that life isn’t easy for a single woman.

I love how very different the two women were and how it was very hard at that time to make a living without marriage.  I loved their friendship, although Josie’s unfeeling treatment of her friend often made me want to reach into the pages and smack her. The story was interesting and kept me wondering what was going to happen next.  It was the perfect book for the start of fall and left me wanting to read more Dilly Court novels.

I reviewed this book as part of the TLC Book Tour.  For more information on the tour, check out this site.





This novel is available as an e-book in the United States

The Best of Daughters by Dilly Court

I have found a new favorite author – Dilly Court. Dilly Court is an English novelist who writes wonderful romantic historic fiction. I read The Best of Daughters while we were camping over Labor Day weekend and I loved it!


If you are a fan of Downton Abbey, like me, you will appreciate the setting of The Best of Daughters. Daisy Lennox is the daughter of a well to do stock broker growing up in Edwardian England. She is rich, beautiful, and privileged, but she wants more out of life. She joins the suffragette movement to fight for woman’s rights, but she finds her world soon crashing down when her father’s business partner leaves the country with all of the firm’s money.

Daisy seeks to reinvent herself in the country and finds herself physically attracted to Bowman, the mechanic that is fixing her father’s car. She also finds that the entire neighborhood is under Bowman’s spell. Daisy’s mother’s dream is that Daisy will marry her childhood friend, Rupert. While Rupert is wonderful and attractive, Daisy finds herself wishing for the spark that she finds with Bowman. WWI soon intervenes and Daisy finds herself making hard choices, but also doing the best that she can for her friends and her family.

I loved the twists and turns that the novel took with the fate of Daisy and her friends and family. I had a very hard time putting this book down, I’m just glad it was a vacation weekend. I loved the romance, but I really loved the setting and the hard realities that WWI put everyone through. Having Daisy as a nurse on the front experiencing it first hand was a wonderful narrative, but it was also sad to read at times. As WWI drifts further back in time, it’s easy to forget the horror that it really was.

I read The Best of Daughters as part of the TLC book tour. For more on this book and The Lady’s Maid check out the TLC website. http://tlcbooktours.com/2013/06/dilly-court-author-of-the-best-of-daughters-and-the-ladys-maid-on-tour-augustseptember-2013/

Unfortunately, you cannot buy a hardcover copy of Dilly Court’s books in the United States. The good news is that you can purchase eBooks of her novels at the following site:

Great British Reads: Historical and Contemporary eBooks from across the pond:

http://www.greatbritishreads.com/