Rating: 
Summary: Another winner by Connie!
Review: This is such a great book, the luscious kind that just completely sinks you into the story.Avery Thorne, his sickly, asthmatic past behind him, finds that his uncle Horatio has died and left Mill House, Avery's inheritance, to outspoken woman's rights champion Lily Bede. If Lily can run Mill House for five years and show a profit for it, the place is hers. If not, it goes to Avery. A disillusioned Avery travels the world for most of those five years, and as Lily must get to him a quarterly allowance, they begin corresponding, most of their letters filled with barely filled insults, which amuse Avery's fellow adventurers and Lily's friends in Mill House. Avery eventually comes home, only to find that the spinster he expected to find is a beautiful woman, who nonetheless, suffers the shame of not being accepted in society because of her illegitimacy. Their first meeting is filled with tension and eventually they give in to the attraction they feel for each other, but Avery will not have Lily without marriage, and Lily fears her rights as a mother would be gone if she married Avery. Connie Brockway writes wonderfully lush books that don't go into purple prose territory - her characters (main or secondary) are always fully drawn and interesting, and My Dearest Enemy was a delight to read.
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