A Countess Below Stairs

Author: Eva Ibbotson

Age: YA/Adult 
(The author's books are usually included in the YA section at stores, but Eva Ibbotson has said she wrote them for adults. They're just not as explicit as your typical adult romance novel. And they're MUCH better written.)

Post-World War I England. Anna is a beautiful Russian countess who barely made it out of Russia alive after the Russian Revolution. Her father was killed, but she and her mother and younger brother escaped to England, where they moved in with her old British nanny. A kindly benefactor is paying for her younger brother to attend school, but Anna and her mother are near destitute. So to support the family she decides to hide her identity and become a maid for an aristocratic British family. Anna's a hard worker, and besides, the whole plan seems terribly romantic to her.

Rupert is the new Earl of Westerholme. He never thought he'd be in this position; he was the second son, but his older brother was killed in the war. Now he's come home to find his family's nearly out of money and may lose their ancestral home, and it's all his responsibility. Luckily, he has a solution: to marry the beautiful nouveau-riche heiress Muriel, who volunteered at a hospital during the war and nursed him back to health after he was wounded. With her money, he can keep his home, look after his aging mother, and continue to provide jobs for all the family's loyal and devoted servants. Plus, Muriel's hot.


Muriel also has a plan. She's a staunch supporter of the eugenics movement (particularly the handsome Dr. Lightbody) and she has high hopes for using her prestige as an earl's wife, and the earl's beautiful home, to further the cause. (If you don't know what eugenics is, look it up...pretty scary stuff, and, not to go all conspiracy-theory here, but it's all still out there, just under different names).


So far, so good. Problem is, once Rupert brings Muriel home to meet his family and friends, he starts to realize she's maybe not all that nice--especially after she offends his best friend's crippled little sister, who is the most darling child on the planet. And there's that beautiful new maid, who's mysterious, intriguing, and so kind-hearted that she's has made the entire household fall in love with her.


Will good triumph over evil? Will Anna's true identity be revealed? And what has happened to Anna's family's jewels, which they entrusted to a servant to smuggle out of Russia...a servant who hasn't been heard from since?


You should know that all of Eva Ibbotson's books, and all of her heroines, are incredibly sweet, to a stylized extent. Melodrama-heroine, Disney-princess sweet. But that's not a bad thing. In a world where happy endings are less and less common, grown-ups need their own Disney fairytales sometimes, too.


This is seriously one of my favorite books EVER.



Recommended for readers who like: happy endings; handsome earls; books about the British aristocracy; the sort of books that make you squeal with delight