Eva Ibbotson’s charming and warm-hearted tale, A Secret Countess was originally published as A Countess Below Stairs.Anna, a young countess, has lived in the glittering city of St Petersburg all her life in an ice-blue palace overlooking the River Neva. But when revolution tears Russia apart, her now-penniless family is forced to flee to England. Armed with an out-of-date book on housekeeping, … housekeeping, Anna determines to become a housemaid and she finds work at the Earl of Westerholme’s crumbling but magnificent mansion. The staff and the family are sure there is something not quite right about their new maid – but she soon wins them over with her warmth and dedication.Then the young Earl returns home from the war – and Anna falls hopelessly in love. But they can never be together: Rupert is engaged to the snobbish and awful Muriel – and anyway, Anna is only a servant. Or so everybody thinks . . .
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I absolutely adored this book when I was younger (I read it under the title “A Countess Below Stairs”), and since I’ve been in a bit of a historical fiction kick and since it’s been such a long time since I last read it, I decided to enjoy it again now during a quiet snow day. It was just as wonderful as I remembered, a lovely romance that reads …
I was feeling a bit poorly the other week and was listening to Sentimental Garbage, a podcast that discusses various chick-lit classics. They were talking this book, which I read years and years ago, and I enjoyed their conversation so much that I promptly picked it up for a sickbed re-read. The plot centres around Anna Grazinsky, a teenaged …
What a charming novel. It combines a fine sense of humor and occasional madcap comedy with a fairly biting morality tale. It’s also quite clean, which, combined with the obvious moral points, may be why it has been consigned to the Young Adult label. Highly recommended if you are not a hopeless cynic or likely to be triggered by some oblivious …
I just picked this up for a re-read, and am struck anew by what a delightful read it is–definitely on my comfort read list! The Secret Countess is basically a Cinderella retelling, but the Cinderella character is Anna, a young countess, raised in luxury but now fleeing the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. She and her mother and young …
Loved it! This book seems a little dated, but I still sank into the story of a Russian refuge who finds shelter in a struggling English estate, and naturally, falls in love with the heir to the estate. The characters are all quirky and often too good to be true, but so what, I loved this sort of sappy, sentimental love story. I rate it a smidge …
This is one of my favorite romances with one of my all-time favorite authors.
No bodice ripping, panting, squirming lady parts, etc, just a sweet, witty, well-written and often humorous romance with a great hero and heroine and a cast of secondary characters that add depth to the story.
Anna
“‘You will see, Pinny, it will be all right. …