Slightly too long (Editors! Please step it up! And, writers! Please listen to your editors), but overall very enjoyable. This is classic chick lit, and I mean that in a good - even great - sense. As a baby, Betsy was left on the doorstep of a London finishing school and subsequently adopted by the owners, Lord and Lady Phillimore. As an adult, she returns to Edinburgh following Lady Phillimore's death and attempts to modernize the school and ensure it's relevance (does it have any relevance?) in a twenty-first century. It's funny and romantic and hits all the right call-signs and is just really delightful. I wanted some light chick lit to read as a pleasant distraction during a busy time, and this fit the bill. However, I don't like when I have to re-read sentences in a book several times over again to get what the author is saying - and that happened throughout this one. I read 'til the end though, and I'll quit before that if I get too irritated. So these kinds of books have a formula, and that's partly what makes them comforting. This one didn't follow that as closely as I would've liked though, so I skipped to the end, found out what happened and then finished reading the middle. Not my ideal reading experience, but the main character's arc wasn't getting there soon enough in my opinion. She has the framework in place: an underemployed young-ish woman, wanting to branch out, choosing between two males of apparently equal romantic possibilities, a funny good female friend sidekick. Enough tangles in all of their lives to get nicely worked out. But by the middle of the book, I was impatient for more of a crux to happen or have developed at that point - and that just wasn't the construction or pace. Again though, I read 'til the end and enjoyed it okay. I was pleasantly surprised at and enjoyed the lack of explicit scenes. The author did a nice job with that.
What do You think about The Finishing Touches (2009)?
delightful light read, plus it had "helpful hints" at the beginning of each chapter which was cute.
—aliG
A cute story with great characters. A much more well rounded story then most chick lit novels.
—Cecilievaleur
I really wanted to like this book a lot more than I did.
—taylorr122
disappointing end to the series I adored
—Dman1105
