The Dressmaker’s Secret
Born to an unmarried mother, Lily Hayter has never lacked for love from her adopted parents and her brother Charlie. When she is orphaned at the age of nine, however, she is forced to live with her embittered Aunt Doris and her cruel son Jez, who treat her as a skivvy. She escapes by being apprenticed to kindly dressmaker Violet Upshall. It’s only then that she discovers her father is Sir Frederick Copperfield and that she has a younger half-sister, Eleanor. The two girls become friends when Lily is engaged to make Eleanor’s clothes, but Lily doesn’t dare tell her secret – especially as, even in her new life, Jez remains a menace…
I had no great expectations of this late-Victorian saga, but actually it’s better written than many books in this genre. The dialogue is naturalistic and rarely seems too modern for its era, and Dickson manages to avoid one of the commonest failings of sagas by not reducing her villains to one-dimensional stereotypes, allowing them some redeeming features and explaining why they have turned out the way they have. Lily is a likeable and resourceful heroine (despite one questionable decision she makes), which makes it a tiny bit disappointing that at the end other characters solve her problems for her. (I know women had limited power in that era, but surely she could have played some small part in the downfall of her Nemesis?)
I was a little surprised to find skylarks singing in the centre of Blandford Forum (I thought they were exclusively rural birds?), and a local servant in Weymouth speaking with a Cornish rather than a Dorset accent (I’m sure there are subtle differences), but these are minor quibbles. On the whole, this is a pleasant read if you like Cinderella stories with a happy ending.
