A Countess Below Stairs by: Eva Ibbotson

    Eva Ibbotson's A Countess Below Stairs was great! It's a historical fiction book that focuses on humility and kindness. It takes place in England/Russia after the Russian Revolution, so it does talk about war a lot.
    Anna, a young Russian countess, has just had her life changed. The Russian Revolution has left her family in poverty and she has no choice but to go to England. Once in England, Anna becomes a servant in the Westerholme residence. Anna hides her background and loyally serves the Westerholme family with only the knowledge an outdated housekeeping manual has given her. The countess soon finds out how difficult this job can be. Oh, and she is attracted to Rupert, the young engaged Westerholme earl. As Anna tries to faithfully serve Rupert and his horrid fiance, Muriel, she finds herself in situations that make it hard for her to keep her past a secret.
       She tries to keep her family a topic of unimportance. Her cousin is the chauffeur for another wealthy family, so nobody realizes she's a countess. She has another family problem though. Anna's brother doesn't know she's a housemaid. Anna tries her hardest to get over Rupert, because he's engaged. Muriel is a completely different problem. She cares about appearance more than anything and least of all cares about the faithful servants. Anna has to decide between staying for Rupert and leaving because of Muriel.
    This book was entertaining in many different ways. I thought the end was actually pretty funny. There are times through the book when it's more serious or even anticipative because of both Anna and Rupert's problems throughout the book. This book changed my opinion on historical fiction. I'm not going to lie, I saw the sticker on the spine and almost didn't check it out for that reason. I love Eva Ibbotson now, even if most of her books are historical fiction. This book taught me not to judge a book by its genre.
    The first chapter of this book was a little hard to get through, but after that it was just amazing. It had characters that I could connect to and an ending that I never would have predicted. There are a lot of big words, so you may need to keep a dictionary near by. A.