How can Belle be "intelligent and grown-up" halfway through the book and still make the most stupid decisions, causing her to need to be saved TIME AND TIME AGAIN? I didn't continue with the series the first time I read this book but I will now be excitedly picking up The Promise to see what comes next in Belle's story. Não é um tema fácil de ler, e certamente poderá chocar os mais sensíveis, tal como me fez a mim, mas Lesley Pearse tem o dom de construir personagens fortes e sólidas, deixando-nos absortas do destino que Belle irá percorrer. Sempre viveu no Annie’s Place um bordel de luxo em Seven Dials, embora nunca tenha percebido completamente o que ocorria quando as habitantes de casa levavam os cavalheiros para os quartos de cima.

O que quero dizer é que apesar de todo o mal e azar que a vida lhe proporcionou, Belle tentava tirar o maior proveito de todas as situações que enfrenta, acabando por se convencer que é a sua melhor escolha. I've read stories before of women going into prostitution and books like Memoirs of a Geisha and Tears of Tess have captured it so much better. Encontramos Belle, um jovem de 15 anos que não conhece outra realidade senão a do mundo da prostituição. Tenho mais alguns dela para ler mas optei primeiro por este por ser o mais recente e não me arrependei.

Eighteen-year-old Mari is defiant, selfish and has given up everything in favour of glamorous parties in the West End.

Belle is the daughter of a brothel owner in the streets of Seven Dials, London, but while she was brought up in such a place, she is blissfully unaware of what goes around in her home.Other cancelled products: If you want to cancel products that are not damaged or incorrectly supplied, then you must inform us of this within seven working days following the date of receipt in accordance with the Distance Selling Regulations or otherwise as soon as possible. It didn't make sense reading about her supposed uber naivity, then her being super introspective (as though she'd been through years of counseling), then her claims of being able to figure people because how observant she was, and then continually dumbly trusting people who most of the time turned out to be awful. A autora é conhecida pelos seus enredos complexos e digamos a puxar para o triste, e este livro não foge à regra.

Mas louvo a ASA por ter traduzido o livro numa linguagem directa e frontal sem meias palavras nem rodeios, aqui não há meios termos, sendo usado muitas vezes o vocábulo "puta". Belle begins the novel a a somewhat innocent young girl of fifteen, shielded from the murkiness of the world she lives in by her Mother and her housekeeper Mog. The one thing she does right is working towards her dream of becoming a milliner even after all this while.

By the end it felt like old seasons of 90210 where you wondered what's the next horrible thing they can make to the same character.