... excellent.

... exquisite and gossipy.

... expansive, fascinating.

The most recent heiresses in this selective catalog refused the default female position of passive victim that characterized earlier incarnations.

Thompson spreads herself far more thinly with the organizing principle that 'it really is different for girls.' Her well-informed but slightly breathless narrative ranges from the 17th century to the 21st, crisscrossing continents as if on the Concorde rather than one of Cunard’s pokey liners, and her choice of which 'female stories' to tell can feel somewhat arbitrary.

[Thompson] is right: we do tend to think that if we were heiresses, we’d be intelligent and sensible about it and would live in a state of permanently fulfilled bliss. This book suggests that we’d probably make the same mistakes and that life with a keen edge of financial anxiety is actually happier.

... odd but absorbing.

Pages are filled with well-documented accounts of horrid mistreatment, legal wrangling, unimaginable spending, lavish lifestyles, and general depravity. In short, authoritative, eye-opening, and gloriously gossipy..

... entertaining.

... engaging.