Jordan's The Countess (No Spoiler NG Review)

The Countess (Scandalous Ladies of London)

Sophie Jordan

 SPOILER-FREE NetGalley Review

Stars:              ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Heat rating:   🔥🔥🔥-1/2 

So, Sophie Jordan has done it again, but are you surprised? Her books are always five star reads and I wish I could give this one an even higher rating. Okay, so what makes me so excited about this book? You will absolutely love the characters. How can you not love a man named Jasper Thorne? I mean, really (swoon . . . With that name, you know he’s hot as fire). 💖 And our heroine is one of my absolute favorites, for several reasons, but the number one is she’s not a 20-year old virgin debutante. I love historical romance, that’s basically all I read. And that means that 99% of the time the woman is right out of the schoolroom. I mean, even books where the heroine is a spinster means she’s 24. Not our Tru, who is 37. She’s been married for most of her life and her husband is the world’s biggest a-hole. (You will love to hate the Earl Chatham.) Her marriage has been nothing but pain and sadness except for her two wonderful children, Charles and Cordelia. Now the horrible husband wants to marry off Cordelia because he cannot keep a penny in his pocket and he needs someone to fund his extravagant lifestyle since he’s basically taken all of Tru’s parents’ money. Well what happens when you have a beautiful daughter at that time? You sell her to the highest bidder, who happens to be Jasper Thorne. Well of course, Tru is not happy about that, because she will protect what’s hers. But what happens when fate keeps putting Jasper Thorne in her path and these two just need to be together?

Like I said, I have zero complaints about this book. It is perfection. I absolutely cannot wait for the rest of the books in the series because there are three, and possibly four, very strong and interesting female characters who are introduced here and leave you gasping for more. Valencia, who is in the next book. Hazel, Valencia‘s stepmother who is married to an old and decrepit man. Rosalind, Tru’s sister, who is a spinster and not interested in men or marriage … or is she? And then there’s the fourth, Maeve, who is happily married, but you never know what  could happen. I mean, Valencia was very happily married until her husband’s accident turned him into a different person . . .  But for right now, we know we have at least three more books coming in this series and I am here. For. It.

There is so much going on in this book, but it’s easy to keep track of it all. I love that she’s an older woman and he’s a younger man. But I also love the fact that neither of them is 20 years old. They’ve been through things in their lives and it shows. That’s what I like the most about Sophie Jordan; all of her characters are so three-dimensional and realistic that you end up falling in love with them. You want to read more about them. They matter to you. Her writing is such that I have often gone back and reread passages just because I loved what she said and how she said it.

This is the start of a stellar series, and I cannot encourage people enough to pre-order this book and get to reading!