The Mister

by E L James

Overview

The #1 New York Times bestseller—a thrilling and seductive Cinderella love story from E L James, author of the phenomenal bestselling Fifty Shades Trilogy.

Clasping her plait at the base of her neck, I tug lightly, bringing her lips up to mine. "Alessia," I breathe, and kiss her again, softly, slowly. She stills in my arms, then brings her hands up to clutch my biceps, closing her eyes as she accepts me. I deepen the kiss, my tongue teasing her lips, and she opens her mouth. She tastes of warmth and grace and sweet seduction.

London, present day. Life has always been easy for Maxim Trevelyan, the "spare" to the earldom of Trevethick. With his good looks, aristocratic connections, and money, he's never had to work, and he's rarely slept alone. But all that changes when tragedy strikes and Maxim inherits his family's title, wealth, and estates, and the responsibility that entails. It's a role he's not prepared for and one he struggles to face.

But his biggest challenge is fighting his desire for an unexpected, enigmatic young woman who's recently joined his staff. Reticent, beautiful, and musically gifted, she's an alluring mystery, possessing little more than a dangerous and troublesome past. As Maxim's longing for her deepens into a passion he's never experienced and dares not name, he's left to wonder just who is Alessia Demachi? And can he protect her from the malevolence that threatens her?

From the heart of London through wild, rural Cornwall to the bleak, forbidding beauty of the Albanian Balkans, The Mister combines the sensuality of a modern Regency romance with the danger, desire, and adventure of E L James's captivating storytelling, leaving the reader breathless to the very last page.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781984898326
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	04/16/2019
Series:	Mister & Missus , #1
Pages:	512
Sales rank:	27,534
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

E L James is an incurable romantic and a self-confessed fangirl. After twenty-five years of working in television, she decided to pursue a childhood dream and write stories that readers could take to their hearts. The result was the controversial and sensuous romance Fifty Shades of Grey and its two sequels, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed. In 2015, she published the #1 bestseller Grey, the story of Fifty Shades of Grey from the perspective of Christian Grey, and in 2017, the chart-topping Darker, the second part of the Fifty Shades story from Christian’s point of view. She followed with the #1 New York Times bestseller The Mister in 2019. In 2021, she released the #1 New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and international bestseller Freed, the third novel in the As Told by Christian trilogy. Her books have been published in fifty languages and have sold more than 165 million copies worldwide.

E L James has been recognized as one of Time Magazine’s Most Influential People in the World and Publishers Weekly’s Person of the Year. Fifty Shades of Grey stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 133 consecutive weeks. Fifty Shades Freed won the Goodreads Choice Award (2012), and Fifty Shades of Grey was selected as one of the 100 Great Reads, as voted by readers, in PBS’s The Great American Read (2018). Darker was longlisted for the 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award.

She was a producer on each of the three Fifty Shades movies, which made more than a billion dollars at the box office. The third installment, Fifty Shades Freed, won the People’s Choice Award for Drama in 2018.

E L James is blessed with two wonderful sons and lives with her husband, the novelist and screenwriter Niall Leonard, and their beloved dogs in the leafy suburbs of West London.

Editorial Reviews

05/13/2019

In this uneven tale of love and passion, James (the Fifty Shades series) crafts the contemporary equivalent of a Regency romance: a privileged English rake seduces the hired help, whose innocence reforms his wicked ways. Maxim Trevelyan, the newly minted Earl of Trevethick following his older brother’s untimely death, prefers to lose himself in meaningless flings and his musical pursuits. But when he meets his new house cleaner, Alessia Demachi, an undocumented Albanian immigrant on the run from human traffickers, Maxim is surprised to feel protective of her. As he shelters her at one of his family’s estates, the two succumb to mutual attraction, falling headfirst into a relationship that proves to be a sexual awakening for the virginal Alessia. When her enemies finally track her down, Alessia and Maxim must rise to the challenge to secure a happy future. The story’s plausibility is undermined by the unbalanced power dynamic between the protagonists, Alessia’s portrayal as a chess and music prodigy who’s oddly oblivious of modern society, Maxim’s initial sulky unlikability, and the depiction of Albania as hopelessly behind the times. Readers will cheer the occasional moments when Alessia claims her own agency, but there’s little else to recommend this middling erotic romance. Agent: Valerie Hoskins, Valerie Hoskins Assoc. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"No handcuffs this time, but passion aplenty." — People

"The Mister follows a hot rich British nobleman…who falls for a mysterious woman with a troubled past. Honestly, Fifty Shades can step to the left." — Cosmo.com

"With heart-racing danger and steamy desire, readers are left breathless to the very last page." — Women’s World

"The Mister is over-the-top romantic, with … emotionally deep love scenes…The book’s belief in the infinitely transformative power of love will hit the sweet spot for readers looking to be swept away." — Booklist

From the Publisher

2019-04-17
A feckless Englishman who's just inherited wealth and a title finds purpose when he falls for his enigmatic cleaning lady, an Albanian refugee with a vast well of secrets.

Maxim Trevelyan has just lost his beloved older brother, Kit, and inherited his title as Earl of Trevethick. He also discovers his old house cleaner has left and been replaced by Alessia, a beautiful young woman from Albania who has little beyond the clothes on her back yet plays the piano like a superstar. She's reticent and modest and came to England to escape the brutal man her father wanted her to marry only to fall into the hands of sex traffickers. She's managed to find a job and shelter with her mother's friend, but when she's threatened, it's clear that Max has suddenly developed a heightened sense of protectiveness. He's falling in love with her. How could he not? She's beautiful, talented, and courageous, having survived these horrors. But when one evil man after another tracks her down, Max will use every property and penny at his disposal, even go to the ends of the Earth—or at least across Europe—to save her. James offers her first book outside the staggeringly successful Fifty Shades of Grey (2012) world, and the story can be compelling, in a "Cinderella" meets Perils of Pauline kind of way. We root for Alessia to be saved by the rich, handsome Max, who suddenly cares about all the things he's intentionally ignored his whole life, yet we also ask ourselves why a woman who escaped sex traffickers at a gas station can't be smarter when she's hiding from them in a mansion or when she's being dragged back to her hometown by the man she fled from in the first place. It's also worth noting in light of James' earlier books that while sex is an important theme—mainly Alessia's sexual awakening and the threat of sexual violence—there's only the slightest hint of BDSM, when Max hooks up with a one-night stand early in the book, which highlights Alessia's innocence.

A modern fairy tale that moves apace but is burdened by uneven writing and characters who continually do things that seem out of character.

Kirkus Reviews