THE SECRET COUNTESS by Eve Ibbotson

This novel was intended by the author to be adult fiction when first published in 1981, but it found such a strong following among younger readers, that it has since been republished as young adult fiction. It is a credit to the writer, who would be 90 this year if still alive, that she has so successfully been able to place a foot in both camps.

The secret countess is 19 year old Anna Grazinsky, daughter of Count and Countess Grazinsky who lost everything with the Bolshevik uprising of 1916. Her father dead, Anna has fled Russia with her mother, brother, and countless other aristocrats, ending up in London and taken in by her former governess. Anna has courage, pluck, and plenty of smarts. She decides to get a short term job as a servant in order to contribute to the household's income, talking her way into a position at the country estate of an English aristocratic family.

What follows is fairly predictable for us older jaded readers, but this never detracts from the nicely paced story telling, the upstairs/downstairs characters, shenanigans, and various eccentric English people. Anna charms her way into the hearts of everyone, well almost everyone, never letting her secret out, determined to pay her way. The author is Austrian by birth, escaping to England in the early 1930s with her mother, making me suspect some elements of this are autobiographical.

I really liked this with plenty of action, easy to read, some depth and complexity, a good number of twists and turns, a most satisfying outcome, and I  can see why it appeals to both the younger and the older reader.