... excellent ... The heiresses in Thompson’s book do not disappoint. It is packed with rich women who can buy everything but love ... Again and again the reader feels like shouting, 'What on earth were you thinking?' as heiress after heiress wilfully marries Mr Wrong ... wonderfully entertaining.
... exquisite and gossipy ... the women are too varied, their lives too disparate to draw a conclusion. But what japes we have along the way ...
Thompson, a gifted storyteller, obviously delighted in the writing of this book ... She is also deft: historical facts and dates and laws are woven into a kaleidoscope-bright tableaux of human highs and lows. You learn almost by accident as you gorge, pruriently, on the glamour and the glitz.
... expansive, fascinating ... In the same way that audiences enjoy titles like Downton Abbey, Dynasty and Revenge, there is something very entertaining about the content of Heiresses, which definitely has the potential to be read as some deliciously soapy material ... Like those TV shows and films that entertain us so brilliantly, this book is also packed full of plenty of drama and scandal, and the figures at the heart of many of these stories lived these lives long enough ago that a modern audience is coming at it from enough distance that, at times, they really do feel just like stories, and not real events that happened to real people ... Thankfully, Thompson tempers all of this with a keen acknowledgement that the women she is profiling here are all too real, accompanying each story with a breakdown of nearly all of the external factors at play in their lives too ... covers a lot of ground with enough depth and charm that most readers are sure to find a chapter, a time period or a topic that will interest them in this book. This work’s biggest strength, however, is that Thompson never once loses sight of the people at its heart – and rightly so ... With plenty of gossip, scandal and witty insights on every page, Heiresses is undoubtedly an entertaining read from start to finish, telling stories that range from sad and heartbreaking to outrageous, frustrating and spectacularly glamorous. Although it’s fair to say that some women make more of an impact within these pages than others. Nevertheless, this is an intelligent, fascinating and infinitely readable book that’s been structured well and offers such a wealth of brilliant material (not to mention an entirely new reading list to explore afterwards) that even the most casual of readers will not fail to be captivated by the lives of the Million Dollar Babies.
