The Countess

Regency #1

by Catherine Coulter

Catherine Coulter's revamped first novel—a gothic regency romance.

The #1 New York Times bestselling author's very first novel, rewritten as a Gothic. A woman who makes the wrong choice for a husband may not live to marry the man of her dreams...

Genres: Romance, Historical Romance, Historical, Regency, Gothic, Historical Fiction, Fiction

391 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Sarah Mac · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining, somewhat campy, & occasionally saccharine bit o' vintage romantic suspense -- that is, entirely suited to one's mood, & when it works, it works.

Natch, I read the rougher, pulpier original 1979 version & not the shiny, sleek 21st-c edition. Apparently Coulter extensively rewrote the book, expanding upon what was there & adding new things to the story. That's unfortunate, IMO; the story works as-is (a true gothic/regency hybrid, aka the rarest of gothic rom subgenres) & doesn't need silly subplots about cutesy dogs & endless pages of witty banter. Rather, I liked the brevity & self-contained aspects of the story. I liked the hero & his grumpy lack of frills; I liked the heroine in her unconventional-but-not-overdone habits; I liked the conflicts arising from her (given childhood history, not unreasonable) fear of sex; I liked the OTT resolution & everyone's abnormally calm reactions to it.

In short, I liked it. :)

[Maureen Feeney · Rating 2 out of 5]

WAS I READING THE SAME BOOK!!!
Looking at some of the great ratings this got I wonder was I reading the same book?

Andrea(Andy) Jameson (21) who is beautiful and rich has just lost her beloved grandfather and agrees to marry the much older Earl of Devbridge not because she loves him, but because she wants to ensure her future remains secure. The Earl has promised Andrea that he will not bed her because she does not want intimacy due to the memory of her father philanderings and her mothers heartache?? Anyway the Earl brings her to his large estate where his family live, this includes his nephew John that Andrea has met 3 times before while out with her dog George. Andrea would not entertain John because he was too manly and young?, hence she married his older uncle. John has fancied Andrea since first seeing her and he seems to be the only person capable of making her laugh. Soon eerie things start happening and Andrea may be in danger so she turns to John for help.

OK for starters I didn't really like the first person narrative and for CC the story was a bit tame. It just didnt work for me, if I had read this book without knowing who wrote it I wouldn't have guessed CC. It gets very slow in places with no character developement except Andy who narrates the story and John is in very very little of it so you never get a chance to know him. And as for Romance??,it would need to be underlined to find it.

The good things are the story is ok a bit gothic and it has a good villain.
I am a big CC fan and usually like her books but I would recommend to give this one a miss and try another one of hers. This one is barely a two star.

[ElenaE · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Thrilling. Mystic. Twisted.😍👏

[Olga Goa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my, oh my, oh my god!!! 100 stars for this book!

I think I've never read before such a great story that full of suspense, mystic things, chilling connection of murders and, of course, the line about forbidden love.

Actually as I start reading books I think sometimes like..."I already read such things or I read similar scenes in other stories...Again the same cliche..."

BUT NOT THIS TIME! NO! OMG. I still cannot put my thoughts in order and calm my impression and emotions! I feel like I'had watched the whole movie in my head! I bet I am able to create a great movie for this story. This book is so splendid that I cannot say more...Out of my mind!

Mrs Coulter SURPRISED ME TOTALLY! I couldn't imagine how she did that but she did! I still cannot figure out how DID I MISS SUCH A BOOK? WHY? Why I didn't read it before? The blurb won't tell you the real things that happen in this great suspense Gothic story. For example, a drama and secrets, murders that happen in this book and love. I just soundlessly admire this story.

A beautiful girl Andrea Jameson married on a mysterious and much older than her, a widowed beautiful count. She married him because she thought her life will be calmer if she doesn't face a male betrayal in her life, like to see his mistresses. She was a witness of how her mother suffered from her father's unfaithfulness and swore to herself never marry a man who can make her feel something emotional and manipulate her feelings. However, Andrea thinks that she is safe from danger but she is wrong. Despite she meets a beautiful nephew of her husband, John, when she comes to her husband's mansion (actually she met John 3 times in London before her marriage but avoided his attachment towards her, and she didn't listen to her brother when he said that her marriage is a huge mistake) she feels uncomfortable in his presence because she understands he has some feelings towards her how he watches her and behave. And then more she talks to him, then more she understands that she falls in love with John! But... Staying in her husband's mansion, Andy realizes how this marriage makes her to experience the most dreadful fear for her life, and she does not know what to do. She has no relatives in this house, only her loyal doggy. How can she fight such a threat from a person who wants to kill her since she met that person at the first day of her living when she wanted to scare Andy? She feels that person wants to revenge for something and the target is her, Andy. But why and for what that person wants to kill her? Only John decides to help Andrea to find who is that man or a woman. Would he do it for sure and save Andrea, the love of his life, from death? Or maybe he is a real murder?! ;) You have to find out!

P.S. I won't mind to read this book over and over again! This one goes to my most favorite books!

[Christi (christireadsalot) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This story follows the heroine Andrea (Andy) who moved in with her grandfather after her mother passed away when she was just a teen. Now years have gone by and Andy’s grandfather has also passed away, leaving Andy with some tough decisions to make. Andy has issues dealing with men, thanks to her father and the way he treated women, so she decides to keep her heart safe she will not marry for love. She decides she will marry a friend of her grandfather’s, a man 3 times her age who promises he won’t bother her, if need be he can acquire a mistress and safely tuck her away for “that” after all. 😆 Now Andy finds herself the new Countess of Devbridge and whisked away to her husband Lawrence’s manor. When they return to his manor, Andy is surprised to meet Lawrence’s 2 nephews and a niece-in-law who also reside there. They are equally surprised upon meeting Andy since they had no idea Lawrence was marrying and are even more surprised by her young age.

When Andy meets her husband’s nephews she finds out one of them is John, a man she had strangely met 3 previous times before her marriage to his uncle. John is very interested in Andy but she does her best to avoid him. Soon she learns not everything, or everyone, is right at Devbridge Manor and strange things start happening. Andy realizes her life is in danger and this manor is full of family drama, lies, revenge, secrets...

So this one I completely picked up because of the gothic vibes from the stepback and I definitely wouldn’t have read it if it wasn’t for that. It was a wild ride and I’m not sure I really enjoyed it. 😆 The romance portion was very light/barely there and almost just “sweet” if anything. Not sure I was a fan of the writing style and I had to really pay attention to the read as it would lose me easily if I wasn’t completely focused. While it was intriguing at times I was just waiting for more, something to grab my attention or for some epic forbidden romance story to unfold and it just never reached that level for me.

[Mar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book.

Andi has been raised by her grandfather and allowed to play chess, drink port and do somewhat unconventional things for a young lady of her era. However, she's no interest in marrying or finding Mr. Right. In her mind, her father was a philandering, ne'er do well who slept his way through the household staff, shaming her mother and wreaking havoc. Her mother died and her father's out of the picture at the onset of the book.

Thus, she does NOT want to fall in love..... actually fears it and thus, after her grandfather dies she striks a bargain with a much older widower. She'll marry him and be his charming young wife if he promises NOT to try and bed her........ he readily agrees.

Andi has no idea the reason for the agreement is that her soon to be new husband has a 'score' to settle. It involves her father and a past indiscretion.

The truly lovely development is that as Andi is in the park walking her dog, she encounters a GORGEOUS man. She's on guard because he's much too virle. She's in her mourning clothes of black...... John (our alpha male hero) tries to calm her and tell her she neededn't fear him. Andi's dog George, who never likes strangers, takes to John immediately....... Andi fairly grabs her dogs and runs off...... frightened yet VERY aware of John as a man......

Well, she marries and goes to her new home...... John is her husbands nephew! There's intrigue - fighting against the cosmic pull of attraction and sexual awakening - attempted murder - kidnapping and other twists along the way.

I was riveted from start to finish. I've re-read this book a few times and fall in love with John all over again each time.


..... sigh ......... I may swoon!

[Eliza · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt like the heroine did not have good enough motives to be as angsty and apprehensive as she was. I think the author was trying to find reasons to make her heroine "damaged", but it ended up feeling forced, and the characters choices did not seem reasonable.

When a book starts off like that I have a hard time trusting the characters. Probably more my fault than the authors, but in this case the heroine just came across as a bit dramatic and I am not down with that. She had a real chance at happiness and instead made a weird/creepy and impulsive choice to marry someone she didn’t know anything about.

I am sure there was much more to this book that I am missing, but I did not have any desire to find out what the mystery was.

[Ashton Reads]

DNF at 30%. I’m so bored and nothing is happening 😫

[Olivia Minova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dark, hot, twisted, and amazing fast read!
The book written in a first pov, so it is great for enjoyment. 😍

[Susan Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

I almost didn't finish this book because the first part was slow, then it picked up and then the ending was so-so. All in all I evened it out to a three.

Andrea's fear of sex made little sense to me and the whole premise of the book depended on it. Her father was a philanderer and she saw him with a maid then she saw the maid die during childbirth. But her fear was more of intimacy than its results.

She falls for John in happenstance meetings in London ( at the same time being intensely fearful of him due to his size) and then finds out he's the nephew of her husband. There are lots of twists and turns, some exciting, some making no sense, at least not to me.

FYI I generally love Catherine Coulter's books.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved her little dog in this book! She did this book in first person. It was different reading it that way. It sort of had the feel of reading someones diary.

[Michael DeMarco · Rating 1 out of 5]

**Warning: Contains spoilers.**

So far, this is the only Catherine Coulter novel I have read. I may give her another chance, but while the literary quality of her writing is strong, and there are aspects of The Countess, a Gothic/Regency historical romance, that I liked, the profoundly irritating aspects of this novel far outweighed its positive elements for me. Andrea "Andy" Jameson starts off as a promising heroine: she is reasonably intelligent, really her own person, and seems to make a smart decision to marrying the "elderly" earl, Lawrence, who promises her a sex-free marriage with financial security. (This is one thing, right off the bat, that gets old (pun intended) and rather annoying throughout the book: the "hero," John, Lawrence's nephew (more on him) and Lawrence's other, annoying AF relatives -- and also Andy's mildly douche-y, busybody brother -- repeatedly discuss Lawrence, who is in his 50s, and Andy's marriage to him, as if Lawrence were in his 80s or 90s. This is part of a pattern of ageism throughout the novel, as well as, frankly, promoting toxic stereotypes about age-gap romantic relationships.

In addition -- and, I get it, the original version of this novel (titled The Autumn Countess) was published in 1978) and this "substantially revised" version was published in 1999, which are both dates light-years removed from 2021 in terms of asexual representation -- Andy could have been a good opportunity for interesting, dynamic ace representation. She has the scaffolding, as it were, to be a solid asexual, heteroromantic heroine. But, no, she has to fall for John, Lawrence's uncle. I get that he's supposed to be superlatively handsome and charming, making her laugh (that seems like a low bar to me, and Coulter's descriptions make him seem like generically decent-looking, nothing special, frankly). Also, I couldn't stand his "violent" gazes. What's up with that, dude? Lawrence had made clear to him that he was still going to get his freaking inheritance. Andy reiterated that. He was acting as though Andy is his rightful possession, and how dare she be married to his uncle or any man other than His Majesty John, God's gift to all women everywhere. Yes, I suppose that Coulter's intent was to foreshadow that he knew that his uncle was an evil snake all along, and that he was concerned for Andy's safety. But, then, why not have his eyes be full of concern, worry, and fear for her rather than violent, jealous, alpha-role rage?

I get that Coulter had to generate conflict for the romance arc, and having an unconventional but agreeable marriage with a chill older man and a nice "found family" with a stepdaughter who adored her wouldn't sustain that. But making the old guy the psychopathic villain -- yeah, there are twists and turns to get there, but it's still ultimately kind of cliched and feeds into ageist stereotypes -- well, it's a bit gross and lame. John is, frankly, a false hero, an alpha-hole misogynist wolf in sheep's clothing, despite Coulter's attempts to redeem him. Finally, the extreme stigmatization -- really, demonization -- of an age-gap marriage between (at the beginning, at least) two consenting adults is socially damaging and highly offensive.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and I think part of the reason was because it was a lot of action and plot an intrigue and it really kept you guessing as to who may have been the perpetrator of all of these events. I mean you were pretty sure who had the most to do with it perhaps but the exact reasons why were somewhat unclear of course. I listened to this audiobook in one day… It was a bright part of my need to clean my basement. And by clean I meant scrub all of the floors on my hands and knees and move all the furniture and scrub the walls. I mean not that it was a pleasant task but listening to the book helped me take my mind off of it or as much as you could. I could certainly understand Andrea‘s fears and confusion because she never knew exactly the whole story of what happened with her family. I would imagine that’s relatively hard and all of the freaky events happening to her throughout the book were interesting because you had to guess quite a bit as to why they were happening or who had done it looking forward to Reading the next installment. Oh by the way one thing I really did appreciate was that there was some description of sex or vague illusions but nothing that was overly graphic. It was nice to focus on the plot rather then have to listen to the same old descriptions of what we all know happens in bed.

[Jack Vasen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seeing other reviews label this as Gothic made me look up the definition and that is what this is. There are elements of horror, mystery, romance and ghost story but the term Gothic sums up most of that.

It takes a long time to get interesting. Like a good mystery, there are clues both good and misleading. Overall much of the climax is predictable. There was one small thing that surprised me.

I didn't like Andy. She is spoiled, arrogant, and impertinent. She has a brain but doesn't always use it. She thinks she is more important and wiser than she really is. She is actually naïve. We learn that there are reasons for her almost blind innocence. There is a lot of hurt in her childhood.

I won't talk about the other characters because they are all potential suspects.

I question the motives of the villain and his accomplices.

There is only one brief and almost innocent sex scene. There is a lot of violence including murder and several attempted murders. (This spoiler describes more violence as ambiguously as I could, but provides clues to the ending.) A young woman is forcibly hit twice and threatened vaguely with worse. At least two men appear to have been tortured, but there is little detail of the latter. Perpetrators are killed in self-defense.

[Drogheda Lir · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's easy to forget how totally owned women were in the 1800s. Without a husband, father or brother, they had no status, no power, no money of their own, and, most often, no choice. The wealthy heroine, Andrea Jameson, seems to break this mold, but she has to make a deal with (what she doesn't realize is) the devil in order to live her own life. Marriage and sex hold terror for her, thanks to her philandering and flagrant wastrel of a father who rogers everything in a skirt, virtually in front of her young eyes. He abandons the family, and she blames his behavior for her mother's death.
Into this mix slithers the very eligible and very old earl who assures her theirs will be a celibate marriage.
Complications? Of course. The stunningly handsome and incredibly nice nephew of the sleazy earl would like to capture more than Andrea's heart, and the pulse races for him also, but she has, alas, married the old guy.
Ulterior motives, violence, a feisty heroine ... it's all here.
Interestingly, this is Coulter's very first novel, first published in 1978, and she has extensively rewritten the original to lean harder on the gothic elements.
It's a very tight read, and I wound up liking the heroine a lot.

[Laine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Way too much dog in this novel. The heroine is obsessed with her ugly pooch and at one point the villain correctly points out that her furry friend is the only one in the world she loves (since her grandfather's death). The late-coming romantic interest pales in comparison and would never have been considered if the dog hadn't taken to him. This made the heroine seem childish, elevating a pet to prime companion.

We are to believe that 21 year old Andrea/Andy is a chess-master, crack shot, phenomenal horsewoman and whip-smart yet she cannot control her sharp tongue, not even when placating the villain might have let her escape. No, she had to keep adding insult to injury, rubbing in her chess superiority, then belittling a man physically stronger than her with a fragile ego, getting herself nearly strangled. That hardly seemed smart.

In the book she admits to herself that she was stupid to contract a May-December white marriage (in name only) when she had an independent fortune and a male relative (cousin) who was well disposed toward her. All in all a foolish dog doter who even birthed her firstborn when her pooch sired a litter (cringe) in the epilogue.

[Shellie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 - 3.5 stars. For me this was more of a historical mystery than a romance, most of the romance came at the very end, which was fine. Took a while to get going after the half way point it picked up. I wish I could have read the original version as some of the reviews stated there were things added like cutesy doggie stuff, again fine, who doesn’t like cute little dogs and he did feature as almost a secondary character. Villain wasn’t that big of a surprise. Not bad for CC first book not as good as some of her others.

[Christine VanHalder · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel was a good read before Halloween. It had mystery, suspense, a ghost too. It was very light romance. A quick read while waiting for the next book to come to the library on the long holds list. It was so good, I put down "Where the Crawdads Sing". Which has a hugs holds list on it. I even signed up to be a in bookclub for "Where the Crawdads Sing" on April 16, 2020 at Beaverton City Library.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little slow getting into the book, but once I did I finished it quickly. Ghosts, Murder, Mystery, Romance, and Revenge. The ending surprised me, never thought the ghost was the person it seemed to be! The real ending is happy!

Another book given to me by my friend when I ran out of books on our trip. She bought them at a library bag sale!
The author has 207 books listed on goodreads so I might have to try a few more of hers.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable read. I looked for this book because it appeared to be one of Catherine Coulters first published novel (although it's had a rewrite) and I had decided to check her work starting as close to the beginning as I could. I found it very enjoyable with a delightful main character. There were a few plot points I found hard to swallow - but overall it was still great fun.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fans of Catherine Coulter will love this as it was her first. That said, you can REALLY see how she’s grown. It was fun and exciting but needed some more polish which she definitely learns as she continues to write. Even so, it was an enjoyable read and even managed to surprise me at the end. So glad she kept writing.

[Katy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A naive young woman marries an older man in a pre-determined marriage in name only. She quickly learns this probably wasn't a smart move when she meets his heir apparent, a man closer to her age, and then realizes the count is not what he appears to be.

[Belinda in Alabama · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good

As usual, Ms Coulter does not disappoint. I did not figure out who the bad guys were. I loved the story, the characters and the writing. Thank you
Miss Catherine for anther story well told. Happy Reading!

[Pat Lancet · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of the book seemed slow, but the second half was more active/better. I felt the storyline was hard to follow - it seems to jump at times. The last half of the book was more active, but was hard to follow.

[Loraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great story, interesting plot, good characters. I enjoy Coulter's novels.

[Olga · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've loved most Coulter books I've read, but this one was unexciting. The gothic plot and storytelling device were not my cup of tea.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun to read a traditional Gothic again. Loved George! He added a lot to the story.

[Brenda Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love her trilogies

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was good from start to finish. I was involved with the characters right away. There were lots of twists and turns to keep you guessing.

[Karen Darling · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't get into this book. It just seemed silly to me.