BOOK REVIEW- The Greek Maiden and the English Lord by [Patty Apostolides]

      

Six year old Lily Montgomery wanders from her home in Patras on that fateful night of 1821 when the Ottomans set fire to the Greek city, and is captured by gypsies. Ten years later, she learns about her true identity from her gypsy grandmother and begins her search for her father, who is an English Lord and her mother, a Greek heiress. Her personal journey leads her to England, where she is informed by her cousin, Mrs. Bennington, that her father is away on a trip to the Indies and her mother presumably dead from the war. Lily is sent away to boarding school by Mrs. Bennington. There, she falls in love with Edward Grant, an English lord, but he is engaged to another. When Lily receives news that her father has died in a shipwreck, her whole world turns upside down. She has no funds and is forced to work as a maid to pay her tuition. Love wins the day, however, and a surprise ending will bring happiness to all.

AMAZON LINK 

3.5 STARS 

I liked this story but I can't say that I loved it. It just didn't pull me in as much as I was hoping.  Even with good backgrounds of different locations, history and clothing. 

It did have good main characters with definite challenges placed in front of them getting to their H.E.A.  Plenty of misunderstandings and people working for THEIR own agenda.  Sweet, gentle, trusting Lily gets roped into more than one person's agenda.  Take, Mrs.  Bennington for instance.  Now there was one cold, snooty, controlling, social climbing "witch".  I just kept waiting for her to stick her greedy "knife" in Lily's back.  

 It's a good thing that Lily does have some people in her corner.  Even though there was a time or two that it took a bit of time for what she needed to be conveyed to them. It also took Edward a while to wake up to the fact that he had feelings for Lily.  He was also a man of honor so he also struggled with that too.

One thing that I did notice was that Lily sure spent a fair amount of her time packing and unpacking from one place to another for awhile.

There is at least two surprise twists towards the end of the story. And a quick look at Lily's life afterwards, which I did enjoy.   

I will be giving it 3.5 Stars on Amazon for some of the good things.