"The Countess Caper" by Alyxandra Harvey is an engaging historical mystery that transports readers to a captivating world filled with intrigue and suspense. Harvey's writing style effortlessly blends wit and charm, creating a delightful atmosphere that keeps readers hooked from beginning to end. The plot is intricately crafted, filled with unexpected twists and turns that will leave readers guessing until the very last page. Additionally, the characters are vibrant and memorable, each with their own unique motivations and secrets.

However, while the story is undeniably entertaining, some readers may find certain plot points to be a bit predictable or cliché. Additionally, the pacing at times can feel uneven, with moments of intense action followed by slower, more exposition-heavy sections. Despite these minor flaws, "The Countess Caper" is still a highly enjoyable read that will satisfy fans of historical mysteries looking for a dose of adventure and romance.

4.5 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

📚Disclosure: I received a review copy of this #book from Dragonblade Publishing via #Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, comments, and interpretations of the story are my own and bias free. I did not receive any money in exchange for this review. Thank you to the publisher for allowing me the opportunity to review. 🦄 @dragonbladepub
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Entertaining Historical Romance

Both Tessa and Roarke are unconventional. She owns a house that helps abused women, women pregnant out of wedlock, and other ladies down on their luck. Roarke has admired Tessa for years. He now has his chance. What earl would accept such an unconventional lady? The Earl of Dartmoor would. They called him a beast, but he was anything but that.

Tessa is a lady who champions the downtrodden. She is not above resorting to highway robbery to accomplish her goal. She needs a carriage to get her cousin to the midwife. If it has a man in it, what is she to do. Tessa does what she must, and kidnapping the Earl of Dartmoor just might be the best thing she could have done. It will result in a marriage proposal. Will the lady accept?

Roarke and Tessa will take us on a journey full of adventure, steamy romance, mystery, and suspense. I enjoyed this delightful story and would recommend it.

Lady Tessa Kilkenny is an excellent highwayman. She needs the money for the residents of Magpie House. Stealing from Roarke Noble, Earl of Dartmoor, may be her worst move or her best. Roarke needs a wife to fulfill his mother's promise to marry again by his thirty-fifth birthday. Marrying Roarke, the Beast of Dartmoor, has many advantages. With a greedy cousin, Tessa has little to live on and more responsibilities. Trusting Dartmoor becomes more necessary for the protection of Magpie House and Tessa's heart.
A cast of unusual characters, with a few surprises and acts for revenge. Very steamy descriptive sex. I voluntarily read and reviewed a copy of this book from NetGalley.

hahahaha this book was so funny, don't know if the author wrote it that way but i was laughing the whole time because the characters were unnecessarily funny

4.5
Tessa and Dartmoore have known each other for sometime. Tessa has relinquished her standing in society and has helped her cousin to have a better life. Along the way, she gets the support of Dartmoore.
What can I say about this book? It was an adventure. It was also a book with hard topics. The storyline was great, and it also highlighted the injustices that women faced. I enjoyed the happy ever after, and their relationship throughout the book.
This is the second book in the series.

This book was so much fun. I didn't want to put it down. Just the right amount of mystery, romance, and danger.

Such a great book! An Earl that hates Society + A Viscount's daughter that has ''ruined'' herself = awesomeness. This is a grumpy/grumpy romance. It was my first time reading one of this and I loved it. Hope to read more from you.

This is the second installment of The Dainty Devils, and what a captivating story it is! The story is centered around Magpie House, owned and operated by Lady Tessa Kilkenny. Due to some impulsive, but rightly deserved actions on her part, she is disparaged and cast out by society. She decides to use her resources to run a safe house, Magpie House, for women who have been abused, abandoned, or tainted by scandal and cast out by their families. When she is a little short on cash, she takes up highway robbery, and just so happens to steal the coach from Roarke, the Earl of Dartmoor. She does so to get her pregnant cousin to the midwife in time, and is successful, but she also gets something unexpected: a marriage proposal. Roarke is in need of a wife and finds her intriguing. Tessa proves to be quite a handful, but he welcomes the challenge. She is also hiding secrets, and when those secrets bring danger to her door, Roarke is right there to protect her. This marriage of convenience proves to be more than just a convenient arrangement for the both of them when feelings start to develop and passions fly high and neither can avoid the pull they have towards each other.
This was a fast-paced, engaging read with sizzling passion and romance and humor that had me laughing out loud. The storyline was well-crafted and the characters were interesting and colorful and I found myself rooting for them from the start. A well-written, quirky and endearing story that I am glad to have had the opportunity to read!
I received a complimentary copy from Netgalley and Dragonblade Publishing and am voluntarily leaving my review.

This second entry in The Dainty Devils series is my introduction to the author’s work; I’m surprised that despite a fairly respectable backlist, I had not heard of her until I saw the ARC up on NetGalley a few weeks ago–especially because her writing voice is everything I enjoy in my genre fiction.

But I get ahead of myself. This series is set somewhere around genre-romance Regency England–no actual dates given–involving a Disgraced Hero TM and an also disgraced Plucky Heroine TM, a queer triad among the secondary characters, and a background of domestic, sexual, financial, and emotional abuse of women by the more powerful (mostly) men in their lives.

Beware: references to suicide, sexual assault, domestic violence; parental/familial abuse; dead parents as backstory; death in childbirth; violence on page; threat of rape; explicit sex on page; queer secondary characters.

Tessa is the daughter and only child of a viscount; upon his death when she was barely nine, his sister and heir fobbed her off to other relatives, each as uncaring as the last, grinding her self-esteem down while stealing every one of her personal (not entailed) possessions and her dowry.

It is not made clear in the text whether or not her cousin rejected any offers for her hand, or if the lack of dowry deterred all suitors, but Tessa is still single and a darling of the ton, living off her rank (and pickpocketing what she can at high society gatherings), until a year before the start of the book. When one of her other cousins, a close friend, dies by suicide after finding herself with child and being thrown out of her home by her family, Tessa hunts the seducer down at his house, during a ball, and tries to drown him in a punch bowl.

In the aftermath of that scandal, Tessa hies herself off to a small village in the middle of nowhere, where she buys a house (okay, it’s almost a ruin, overrun by cats, weasels, owls and other assorted wildlife, but it has a roof–that leaks–and walls–full of mold, ants, and mice), and gathers around herself women who need shelter–from abusive parents, husbands, or other relatives; to gestate and give birth; to disappear completely and forever.

Very few of the people in high society who knew Tessa before The Incident (capitalized) know where she is now; one of them is the sister of a duke, Lady Summer, whose cousin Roarke is known as the Beast of Dartmoor, rumored to have scared his late wife into leaving him–and who promised his mother on her deathbed that he would wed by his next birthday, barely a week away.

One of the best parts of the novel is that Tessa is thirty one years old, not a virgin, completely out of figs to give when it comes to society, and more than ready to exact revenge on the men of the ton as a class.

Another fantastic part is that Roarke has been carrying a torch for Tessa for the better part of a decade. While she was the toast of high society, seemingly created for soirees and balls, he didn’t dare approach her–he’s too large, too rough, too wild and too beastly for the likes of lady Tessa Kilkenny.

But he may be just what Tessa of Magpie House needs.

The development of the relationship between these two is lovely; from the first, Roarke is determined to give Tessa what she needs–so long as it’s also what she *wants*. Consent is definitely sexy, but especially when it’s not just about sexual intimacy. (“It’s your house, you decide.” Roarke, Chapter 16)

And while the sex scenes are explicit, there aren’t too many, and they all help to develop both the characters individually and their relationship with each other.

There’s quite a bit of pinning, and at first their individual traumas stand in the way; but–and again, this is lovely–they actually talk to each other and listen to each other, and they pay attention to both words and behavior. When the bleak moment comes, it’s not because of some flimsy misunderstanding; and while Roarke does charge to the rescue, Tessa isn’t just passively waiting to be rescued–by him or anyone else.

I absolutely believe that the main characters will live happily ever after, even as some of the details in the epilogue strike me as just a bit too much–too easy, too idealized, too perfect. Of course, this is genre romance, and that too is part of the fantasy.

The secondary characters in the novel can be divided essentially into two groups: high society, including Lord and Lady Kensington, who happen to be two of the few people Roarke actually tolerates, and the women of Magpie House. I appreciated that most of them feel like fully actual people, with established relationships with each other and the two main characters, even though the author doesn’t give us chapter and verse on each of their backstories; they are who they are now, and that’s enough.

A detail that had me cheering was the acknowledgment of just how incestuous the upper echelons of British high society actually are; most everyone is someone else’s cousin, and most people know everyone else, either personally or by name. (This, of course, is one of the reasons why these women have such difficulties finding a safe place to hide.)

The writing is funny–as in, giggle-a-lot funny–but the underlying themes are not funny at all. Tessa has essentially built a shelter for ton women escaping abuse, and in doing so has put a target on herself; the women’s fear is very real, and the measures they take to protect themselves reflect their desperation and their lack of resources.

There’s a lot of feminine rage in the book, named and acknowledged, because there is a lot of misogyny in the world these characters inhabit. Even the happy ending for the women of Magpie House is only possible through the public and very explicit protection and financial support of the Earl and Countess of Dartmoor, another acknowledgement of the world as is, rather than a fantasy.

“They said that revenge was not ladylike, but they said that because they did not want women to exact revenge. Or justice. Or anything at all.” (Tessa’s point of view, chapter 20)

(I will note here that while this novel is similar to some of Tessa Dare’s books in this regard, I enjoyed the execution more in this book than I generally do in hers.)

I did find a few editing issues–missing words here and there, the occasional typo–but the key word here is “few”--and the author's England is entirely too white, but still a very engaging read.

The Countess Caper gets a 8.75 out of 10

BOOK: THE COUNTESS CAPER (3.5 STARS)
AUTHOR: ALYXDANRA HARVEY
PUB DATE: 24 OCTOBER 2023
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REVIEW
Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for this ARC. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.”
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I liked Tessa, the FMC, her spunk and her mission to save and care for 'fallen women', 'soiled doves' and other women with cads as family members. I enjoyed reading the antics of magpie house.
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But, I didn't like her relationship with Roarke, it seemed rushed. He woke up one day and discovered he wanted to get married to Tessa and I wasn't feeling it. I also didn't like that I didn't get his POV most times.
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This book had a lot of potential, I just felt that it was not executed properly. I would have wanted more chemistry and more back story on the development of roarkes feelings for her

The Countess Caper is a fun, well-written romp of a romance between Lady Tessa Kilkenny, part-time highwaywoman who has founded a safe house - Magpie House - for women escaping their pasts or who find themselves unwed and with child, and the beastly, hulking, handsome and bearded Earl of Dartmoor, Roarke Noble. Mixed in with their love story is a full cast of quirky, supportive characters and a villain who seems determined to destroy what Lady Tessa has lovingly built to help women who have suffered at the hands of titled, aristocratic men.

It is a fast-paced, engaging read, and I enjoyed the caper aspect of the story and the romance, which is, without a doubt, steamy. I gave this story 4 stars because I wanted to learn more of Tessa and Roarke's past, both individually and as a couple. It's clear from the start that these two have "history", but we are never told how they first met, the circumstances and how it is that they've always had a tendre for each other, unbeknownst to the other. Also, we don't see Roarke much in his role as an earl, such that when the ending comes round, it isn't clear how Roarke will carry out his own duties and responsibilities for the earldom of Dartmoor AND live with Tessa at Lark House and Magpie House. Much of the story focuses on Tessa and her needs and is told from her point of view, but I would have liked to have more of the story be from Roarke's POV, for better balance between the couple. Still, I loved both Tessa and Roarke, her vulnerability and insecurity, and his solidity and protectiveness of her. They fit together well as a couple, in my opinion.

I received an ARC of The Countess Caper from NetGalley for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

The women watching out for women. Girl Power. Of course behind every strong woman is a most devoted doting man. Who is swoon worthy and basically a big teddy bear with a giant heart and a really big roar and claws. A house that protect abused women is a wonderful plot and story line. I thought that the plot was thought out well especially with how intertwined it was.
I received a complimentary copy of this book. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with guidelines.

I received this book as an ARC on NetGalley courtesy of Alyxandra Harvey and Dragonblade Publishing.

The best part of this book is the premise! Lady Tessa is running her own home taking in women who need help. In that era there was nowhere else for them to go. And she protects them all FIERCELY. Strong mama bear energy.

This book jumped right into the action, which was a refreshing and captivating way of character building. (This is the first book I've read in this series; some of that backstory may have been in the first book, but this book does well as a standalone.) The descriptions of the house were funny and vivid. The characters were relatable and well-written. I will definitely read more of Alyxandra Harvey's books!

Oh my, what an cute book.

A fiery Tessa and stoic Roarke,steam the pages of this book together.
Tessa has been cast off by the ton for dunking a bad dude in punch. She now runs and rundown home for women of the ton who need a place to hide, due to unwanted families or situations. Tessa herself is persecuted by her cousin and aunt.

In hops Roark, a beautiful kind giant of a man who has admired Tessa for many years from far. She holds him up, he offers to marry her.

It leads to inevitable steam, trust, friendship and hea.

This was such a wonderful and enjoyable read!!!! I loved this book and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys this genre. Thank you so much to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Absolutely loved this story! This is a new author for me and one I will now follow continuously. Through most of the story, I laughed at the genius work of an author who could create banter, humor and sarcasm with such incredible talent. The rest of the time, I wanted to rip the heads off of the evil mem who had caused pain and suffering. Tessa is determined to help women in need and pulls her pound of flesh from these tom members by highjacking them. Roarke is a silent huge man who sees Tessa with clear eyes and loves her. Both the main characters as well as the secondary characters are colorful, humorous, well defined people who add life to the story. Not a book to.pass by.

This has to be one of my favorite books to read this year. Tessa is a disgraced lady that has purchased a ramshackle house as safe harbor for women in trouble. Roark is The Beast of Dartmoor, an Earl with a reputation of his own. Their marriage of convenience was just the start of a wild, entertaining ride. 5 big stars!.

I love the heroine in this story. She set up a house for women in trouble even while she has no financial resources. The hero is just as admirable in that he would support her endeavour and found different ways to do so. Underneath all that is their mutual attraction and affection. But true love confessions have to wait until a pesky problem is resolved. It is easy to enjoy this tale full of funny, witty and endearing characters,

I received an ARC from Netgalley and leaving my review voluntarily.

Alyxanda Harvey is fast becoming one of my favorite romance authors. I deeply enjoyed Tessa and Roarke's story in "The Countess Caper." I loved Tessa and Roarke as a couple - both are pragmatic, strong-willed, and so much want to love and be loved. Tessa's efforts to protect women are remarkable and Roarke's easy acceptance is lovely. The dialogue in the book is witty but open and honest. Magpie House is a character all its own, and you can feel the various women's appreciation for its safe haven. The sexy times were HOT and the book was overall just fun to read, even with the underlying darker themes.

5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a complimentary ARC of this book. The opinions herein are my own.

Lady Tessa Kilkenny’s life changes when she attempts to steal a carriage from Roarke Noble, the Earl of Dartmoor. In an attempt to get her cousin to a midwife in time, she is desperate. What she doesn’t expect from Roarke, is a proposal of marriage. Roarke knows that Tessa will prove a challenge for him, but he can’t understand when her manor house is full of women who have nowhere else to go. Tessa is hiding the truth behind their presence, and why she needs to rig the house with traps to discourage unwanted visitors. As Tessa’s life is threatened, Roarke finds himself more and more determined to understand her plight and to do everything he can to save her.
This story moved at a fast pace, as did the romance between Roarke and Tessa. The dialogue was at times, quirky and snappy but always honest, which made it even more entertaining. These were two strong willed characters that didn’t hide their feelings nor emotions. An overall fun read.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.