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Trouble

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About this listen

There's a new governess at Fairmont House, and she's going to be nothing but trouble.

Emily Laurence is a liar. She is not polite, she's not polished, and she has never taught a child in her life. This position was meant to be her sister's - brilliant, kind Amy, who isn't perpetually angry, dangerously reckless, and who does (inexplicably) like children.

But Amy is unwell and needs a doctor, their father is gone and their mother is useless, so here Emily is, pretending to be something she's not.

If she can get away with her deception for long enough to earn a few months' wages and slip some expensive trinkets into her pockets along the way, perhaps they'll be all right.

That is, as long as she doesn't get involved with the Edwards family's dramas. Emily refuses to care about her charges - Grace, who talks too much and loves too hard, and Aster, who is frankly terrifying but might just be the wittiest sixteen-year-old Emily has ever met - or the servants, who insist on acting as if they're each other's family. And she certainly hasn't noticed her employer, the brooding, taciturn Captain Edwards, no matter how good he might look without a shirt on . . .

As Fairmont House draws her in, Emily's lies start to come undone. Can she fix her mistakes before it's too late?

©2023 Lex Croucher (P)2023 Bonnier Books UK
Coming of Age Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Historical Fiction Romance
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Narrator grated on me and I found it difficult to take in the story.

Not for me

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Many many likes - confident voice, dialogue, characters and world building felt so natural and juicy. A safe space for queerness. at points the protagonists plot felt a little cyclical

Great characters and dialogue

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This wasn’t my favourite of the Lex Croucher books but I still enjoyed it. The heroine isn’t the most likeable character and while I thought the narrator fit well with the main character I didn’t like her male voices very much. I liked that the story explored class more than her other books and thought it was an interesting story set in Georgian times.

Another enjoyable read from Lex Croucher

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I've really enjoyed all the other previous novels by Lex Croucher but this one didn't have the spark of the previous ones. It felt like we were meant to root for the main characters (Emily and Ben) despite them both being quite unlikeable and mismatched. When other characters showed kindness and warmth towards Emily I couldn't help but feel it was an act of foolishness rather than evidence that Emily had some deeper redeeming qualities.
The brief reference to Nash Nicholson was a reminder that I could just be re-reading a more interesting book.

A bit of a lull for Lex Croucher

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