Lady Catherine,The Earl,And The Real Downton Abbey by Fiona Carnarvon : Book review

Title: Lady Catherine, The Earl, And The Real Downton Abbey
Series: The Women of the Real Downton Abbey #2
Author: The Countess of Carnarvon (Fiona Carnarvon)
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published Date: October 29th 2013
Genre: Nonfiction, Historical, Highclere Castle
Length: 10 hrs 21 min 
Format: Audio

My Rating: ★ ★ ★

Goodreads Summary: 
Lady Catherine, the Earl, and the Real Downton Abbey tells the story behind Highclere Castle, the setting for Julian Fellowes’s Emmy Award-winning PBS show Downton Abbey, and the life of one of its most famous inhabitants, Catherine Wendell.  In this transporting companion piece to the New York Times bestseller Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey, Catherine, a beautiful and spirited American woman who married Lady Almina’s son, the man who would become the 6th Earl of Carnarvon, presides over the grand estate during a tumultuous time for the British aristocracy. Following the First World War, many of the great houses of England faded as their owners fortunes declined in the new political and social world of the 1920s and 1930s. As war loomed, Highclere’s survival as the family home of the Carnarvons was again in the balance—as was peace between the nations of Europe.
    Using copious materials—including diaries and scrapbooks—from the castle’s archives, the current Countess of Carnarvon brings alive a very modern story in a beautiful and fabled setting, paying particular attention to the staff who provide Highclere Castle with continuity between generations.
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

 My Review:

I ended up reading this book, because I love Downton Abbey and this book is about Highclere castle and the family that actually lived there.  Now having said that I think you should know that this book focuses far more on the families personal lives outside of Highclere castle. This was rather disappointing to me. I was hoping to hear more about things that actually happened at Highclere between the family and staff and the parties that the family had thrown and that type of thing. Instead it ended up being more about the families private life, liaison’s, worry of war, and divorce drama. Which was very interesting and entertaining at times, just wasn’t exactly what I was looking for in this particular book. I really did like though how after a while Catherine got tired of the Earls affairs and got a divorce. She ended up living a rather happy life, while the Earl went from woman to woman assuming they felt things for him when most of them didn’t or didn’t feel them enough to marry him long term. Even though this book wasn’t what I was hoping it to be, I am still interested in to read about Lady Almina and see how life was for her at Highclere and how it greatly differed from Lady Catherine’s.