Filed under: A Review Category, A Reviews, Reviews
Dear Ms. Ibbotson,
When Azteclady asked me to review one of your romances, I was both excited and challenged. You pack so many irresistible characters into less than three hundred pages that it is difficult to do justice to these delightful folk. And how would I explain the magic by which you can take me from a lump in the throat to tears of laughter in the space of a few sentences? And yet, how could I refuse? Your books are the meringue kisses of romance novels: simple and sophisticated at once; rich and sweet and awfully charming.
A Countess Below Stairs is no exception. The story takes place in 1919 and centers, as much as it does, on Anna Grazinsky, a Russian Countess. As a child, Anna is a joy to her parents, and though they shower her with gifts, she is so tenderhearted that she never becomes spoiled. Her father calls her his “little star,” but when he is killed in World War I, Anna’s heart, as well as her mother’s and her younger brother’s, are broken.
The family is dispossessed of their fortune when the servant …
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