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Product Description
Review
“All of RITA award-winning Boyle’s signature literary elements—deliciously acerbic writing, splendidly original characters, and sinfully sexy chemistry—blend brilliantly together.” (Booklist (starred review) on How I Met My Countess )
Product Description
Lucy Ellyson, the improper daughter of an infamous spy, saves the life of the Earl of Clifton. He intends to make her his countess after the war ends, but when he finally is able to return to her, he finds that she′s vanished.
Meanwhile, Lucy is living a new life in the heart of Mayfair. But she′s as scandalous as ever, and when Clifton finally happens upon her, she′s landed in the sort of trouble that only a hasty marriage can solve. He′s more than willing to step in, but their future is all too quickly threatened by secrets from the past.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clever, engaging, touching, everything you'd want a romance to be,
By
This review is from: How I Met My Countess (Mass Market Paperback)
It should not surprise romance afficionados that a book by Ms Boyle is a good romance, she has delivered in the past and delivers in this one.
The story is about Lucy Ellison, the improper daughter of a former spy and the Earl of Clifton (Gilby to his friends). They meet when Gilby and Marcus (his half brother) are sent to Lucy's father to be trained in the arts of espionage. Lucy helps with the training of the men and while Lucy and Gilby share some animosity at first, they end up making promises to one another. But those promises do not come true, and when they meet next, Lucy is no longer the young outcast girl she was, and Gilby isn't the earnest young man either. And the suspense of the book articulates itself over how these two find their way to each other again. First off, the book is well plotted. Boyle inverted events so that the past the two characters share is revealed after their chance meeting years later. It is not the most original narrative, but it is used so well, that it helps pull the reader in the story. But more than that, the characters are engaging, not so cookie cutter, and the writer makes us feel the contradictions in the characters that give rise to their emotional conflicts. Lucy knows she can't hope to marry a nobleman, but she can't help herself from wishing and when Clifton promises, we understand why she, even as a girl who is not naive at all, believes it. And that she believes it, and that we can believe that she believes, makes her disappointment more touching, more poignant. Gilby is not as well defined, we are asked to kind of buy it on goodwill alone that he makes a jump from his expectations that he needs to marry well and his conclusion that he will only marry for love, but he is still an interesting character, because the author refrains from making him another version of the stereotypical rakish alpha male. She allows him to be open and explain his emotions. And she does it all throughout the book instead of the usual waterfall of male emotional revelations at the end that plague similar novels. It is great that Boyle manages to have her main characters become so different within the same book and yet make the transformations appear like the natural consequence of the events that have unfolded onto the characters. She also resisted to use a plot device that is used way too often, instead going for the less frequented path, and yet everything fits perfectly in the plot. The author also writes at a leisurely pace, with an intrigue that is closer to home, and without revealing too much, the stakes are not as high as sometimes they are in this kind of spy-suspense-historical-novel, but they are more precious to the characters. The intrigue is there but does not take the front burner, it leaves that to the characters and their emotional ties. I liked the secondary characters very much, and they really added to the story because they fulfilled their roles and managed to be endearing without the author forcing us to love them by trying too hard to make them quirky. A solid romance, a credit to the genre.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.5 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews) 22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Cool cover. Love the necklace.,
By Old Latin teacher - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: How I Met My Countess (Mass Market Paperback)
I'm a romance novel addict even at my advanced age, so I've got a lot of books under my "have read that" belt. And I have read just about every romance written by Elizabeth Boyle and each time wonder why I did it. Doesn't say much for my learning curve, but there's always something about each book that I like and makes me think that the next one will be even better. The problem for me is that the Boyle heroines have too much 21st-century freedom and are full of modern-day sensibilities and actions. This new young heroine trains spies, is an expert at picking locks, breaking spy codes, cheating at cards, understanding foreign terrain and dealing out a mean uppercut. Not that these are usual activities for a 21st-century woman, but it would be even less likely for a 19th-century female. She is also illegitimate, from the lower classes, and at the end of the book ends up married to an earl. So to enjoy this book, one must suspend logic and just go with the story, enjoying the romance and the fairy-tale ending it is bound to have. I believe a younger reader will enjoy this much more than I did.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Boyle has lost it,
By romancecritic "Krassimira Bijeva" - Published on Amazon.com
At times I like to read an "uncharacteristic" romance, and Boyle is one to turn to. However, this effort is beyond poor. Really, most of her recent efforts have had me shaking my head. I enjoyed "Love Letters from a Duke," it was silly, unrealistic, but made me laugh, and sometimes I need that. But this story does not make you laugh - and laughter is all Boyle's novels have to recommend them, which I think says it all - do not bother.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Just kind of silly,
By Jen Takacs - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: How I Met My Countess (Mass Market Paperback)
I love romances - I read tons of them, but I find myself really confused by the glowing reviews for this book. I couldn't like the male lead - man I can't even remember his name- yikes. I kept thinking, if this guy loves and respects her, why is he moving so fast? I mean really - their first kiss he is groping her like a drunken frat boy. Ugh. Love is more than sex - and I just never saw the love part well developed here. That and the spy stuff was just silly - the father was supposed to be the "spy trainer" but somehow it's delegated to his daugher who he supposedly loves and wants to protect, but sends her around unchaperoned with a bunch of rowdy men, hmm. I was actually reminded a lot of the Johanna Lindsey books I loved when I was 13 - but as a grown woman, I need something a bit deeper.
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