The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray

Summary from Goodreads: From New York Times bestselling author Claudia Gray—a summer house party turns into a thrilling whodunit when Mr. Wickham, one of literature’s most notorious villains, meets a sudden and suspicious end in this brilliantly imagined mystery featuring Jane Austen’s leading literary characters.

The happily married Mr. Knightley and Emma are throwing a house party, bringing together distant relatives and new acquaintances—characters beloved by Jane Austen fans. Definitely not invited is Mr. Wickham, whose latest financial scheme has netted him an even broader array of enemies. As tempers flare and secrets are revealed, it’s clear that everyone would be happier if Mr. Wickham got his comeuppance. Yet they’re all shocked when Wickham turns up murdered—except, of course, for the killer hidden in their midst.

Nearly everyone at the house party is a suspect, so it falls to the party’s two youngest guests to solve the mystery: Juliet Tilney, the smart and resourceful daughter of Catherine and Henry, eager for adventure beyond Northanger Abbey; and Jonathan Darcy, the Darcys’ eldest son, whose adherence to propriety makes his father seem almost relaxed. In a tantalizing fusion of Austen and Christie, the unlikely pair must put aside their own poor first impressions and uncover the guilty party—before an innocent person is sentenced to hang.

The Knightleys are having a house party at Donwell Abbey. They’ve invited some relatives and old friends: the Darcys, the Brandons, the Bertrams, and the Tilneys (who were unable to come but did send their eldest daughter Juliet for her first foray into adult society). Emma has unexpectedly added the Wentworths to the party – they had been renting the Highbury property which is now undergoing emergency repairs. Everyone has their own little secrets and worries. The Darcys are just coming out of morning for their niece and that has put a strain on their marriage. The Wentworths have had to “retrench” and it weighs heavily on Frederick. Fanny Bertram is keeping a secret from her husband. The Brandons are newly married and neither is sure of the other’s feelings, yet. The party starts out well but a sudden storm brings a most unwelcome guest.

Mr. Wickham.

And despite the intervening years (it’s been about 20 years since the end of Pride and Prejudice), he has not improved. In fact, he’s grown far more smarmy and despicable. After setting the entire house party on edge, George Wickham retires to what can only be a servant’s room (note: I love Emma and her housekeeper) only to be later discovered in the Armory lying in a pool of blood by a very unfortunate Juliet Tilney. And he is very, very dead.

Who could have done it? The storm was so fierce that it is highly unlikely that an intruder surprised him. Making the murderer one of the house party. And every, single person there had reason for wanting Mr. Wickham’s loathsome person gone. When local magistrate Frank Churchill comes to investigate, his first inclination is to look for a lower-class person as culprit (because the upper-class gentry would never do something as low-class as a murder…). Juliet Tilney and Jonathan Darcy are both quite certain he is wrong and begin their own discreet (or, about as discreet as two teenagers can be in the Regency) investigation to make certain an innocent person is not about to be hanged for Mr. Wickham’s death. In the process, more than one person is going to have to come clean before the true murderer is revealed.

In short, The Murder of Mr. Wickham is quite a clever way to tell a locked room-esque mystery in an Austen sequel that brings together almost all the major couples from her six novels. Gray does shift some timing of the original stories to get the Austen couples at different ages and points in their marriages. There’s one shift that really doesn’t work for me, personally, but it does work within the story (Marianne and Colonel Brandon).

And yes, the book fulfills the promise of the premise. Wickham does indeed get whacked early in the book (unlike Death Comes to Pemberley, where Lydia makes everyone think Wickham is dead for about five pages but then it turns out to be Denny instead…). Although, out of the entire range of Fuckbois of Austen, Wickham is only number two on that list. In my opinion, Willoughby is probably most deserving of getting clonked on the head. (Maybe Gray can work on that for a second book?)

Gray does give some notes and content warnings about the historical use of g*psy in the book, as Austen used it at the time she was writing, but there was a surprise moment of homophobia. It involved a side character who doesn’t appear on page in the book. Although the homophobia does come from a character who would historically initially hold that view (it is Church dogma-accurate for the time period) and then subsequently work to dismantle that viewpoint, it would have been nice to have in the note as well. I will also note that Jonathan Darcy is coded as neurodivergent. I know there is a lot of discussion of whether Mr. Darcy can be interpreted as autistic or neurodivergent but Gray does make it much more explicit in Jonathan, since we are given his internal monologue. I think the representation is good, although I am not neurodivergent myself, so don’t take mine as a definitive judgment. Jonathan and Juliet do make a very nice pairing as friends, amateur sleuths, and maybe a budding courtship.

The Murder of Mr. Wickham is out on Tuesday May 3!

And if you have time, check out the review on Austenprose and follow the #murderwickham hastag for the blog tour!

Dear FTC: I was sent a finished copy of this book as part of the blog tour with Austenprose, but I kind of couldn’t wait and read a digital galley from the publisher via Edelweiss in just about one gulp.

Cover Reveal: Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner!

Last summer, surprise hit The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner kept us all entertained with her tale of a group of wildly-different Austenites who come together in post-war England to save Chawton. Natalie is back on May 17, 2022 with a new novel, Bloomsbury Girls, loosely connected to The Jane Austen Society by one Evie Stone, the whip-smart young woman who worked as a maid at the Great House at Chawton and is now part of the first class of women to receive degrees from Cambridge.

“One bookshop. Fifty-one rules. Three women who break them all.”

Bloomsbury Books is an old-fashioned new and rare bookstore that has persisted and resisted change for a hundred years, run by men and guided by the general manager’s unbreakable fifty-one rules.  But in 1950, the world is changing, especially the world of books and publishing, and at Bloomsbury Books, the girls in the shop have plans:

Vivien Lowry:  Single since her aristocratic fiancé was killed in action during World War II, the brilliant and stylish Vivien has a long list of grievances – most of them well justified and the biggest of which is Alec McDonough, the Head of Fiction.

Grace Perkins: Married with two sons, she’s been working to support the family following her husband’s breakdown in the aftermath of the war. Torn between duty to her family and dreams of her own.

Evie Stone:  In the first class of female students from Cambridge permitted to earn a degree, Evie was denied an academic position in favor of her less accomplished male rival. Now she’s working at Bloomsbury Books while she plans to remake her own future.

As they interact with various literary figures of the time – Daphne Du Maurier, Ellen Doubleday, Sonia Blair (widow of George Orwell), Samuel Beckett, Peggy Guggenheim, and others – these three women with their complex web of relationships, goals and dreams are all working to plot out a future that is richer and more rewarding than anything society will allow. 

QUOTES FROM AUTHOR NATALIE JENNER

“I never intended for Evie Stone to be a major character in my debut novel, let alone inspire my second one, Bloomsbury Girls. But as time went on, I found I could not leave her behind in Chawton with the other society members. And then one day I rewatched a favourite movie, 84 Charing Cross Road, and I remember thinking, there’s a whole other story in here still to be told, of an upstairs-downstairs motley crew of booksellers, and right away the figures came to life.”

“As with The Jane Austen Society, Bloomsbury Girls features multiple characters and storylines revolving around one very charming location: this time, the quintessential Dickensian-type bookshop.”

“If The Jane Austen Society was the book I wrote when I was coming out of sadness, Bloomsbury Girls was written when I was very happy, and I hope it provides a little cheer to readers during this difficult time.

AUTHOR BIO

Natalie Jenner is the author of two books, the instant international bestseller THE JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY and BLOOMSBURY GIRLS. A Goodreads Choice Award finalist for best debut novel and historical fiction, THE JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY was a USA Today and #1 national bestseller and has been sold for translation in twenty countries. Born in England and raised in Canada, Natalie has been a corporate lawyer, a career coach and, most recently, an independent bookstore owner in Oakville, Ontario, where she lives with her family and two rescue dogs.

WEBSITE | TWITTER | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | GOODREADS

COVER REVEAL SCHEDULE

Aug 26 The Silver Petticoat Review

Aug 26 Austenprose

Aug 26 Relz Reviewz

Aug 26 The Calico Critic 

Aug 26 Bookfoolery 

Aug 26 Lu Reviews Books

Aug 26 Confessions of a Book Addict 

Aug 26 Savvy Verse and Wit

Aug 27 Chicks, Rogues and Scandals

Aug 27 Life of Literature

Aug 27 Cup of Tea with that Book Please

Aug 27 Gwendalyn’s Books

Aug 27 The Green Mockingbird

Aug 27 History Lizzie

Aug 27 Books, Teacups & Reviews

Aug 28 The Interests of a Jane Austen Girl

Aug 28 Literary Quicksand

Aug 28 Bookish Rantings 

Aug 28 Jane Austen in Vermont

Aug 29 Robin Loves Reading

Aug 29 The Lit Bitch

Aug 30 Margie’s Must Reads

Aug 30 Syrie James

Aug 30 The Reading Frenzy 

Aug 31 Laura’s Reviews

Aug 31 Becky on Books

Sept 01 Nurse Bookie

Sept 01 Probably at the Library 

Sept 01 Reading Ladies Book Club

Sept 01 My Jane Austen Book Club

PURCHASE LINKS

AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | INDIEBOUND | KOBO | GOOGLE PLAY | GOODREADS

BLOOMSBURY GIRLS AT ST MARTIN’S PRESS

Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur

Summary from Goodreads: With nods to Bridget Jones and Pride and Prejudice, a charming #ownvoices queer rom-com debut about a free-spirited social media astrologer who agrees to fake a relationship with an uptight actuary until New Year’s Eve—with results not even the stars could predict!

After a disastrous blind date, Darcy Lowell is desperate to stop her well-meaning brother from playing matchmaker ever again. Love—and the inevitable heartbreak—is the last thing she wants. So she fibs and says her latest set up was a success. Darcy doesn’t expect her lie to bite her in the ass.

Elle Jones, one of the astrologers behind the popular Twitter account, Oh My Stars, dreams of finding her soul mate. But she knows it is most assuredly not Darcy… a no-nonsense stick-in-the-mud, who is way too analytical, punctual, and skeptical for someone as free-spirited as Elle. When Darcy’s brother—and Elle’s new business partner—expresses how happy he is that they hit it off, Elle is baffled. Was Darcy on the same date? Because… awkward.

When Darcy begs Elle to play along, she agrees to pretend they’re dating to save face. But with a few conditions: Darcy must help Elle navigate her own overbearing family over the holidays and their arrangement expires on New Year’s Eve. The last thing they expect is to develop real feelings during a fake relationship. But maybe opposites can attract when true love is written in the stars?

As Written in the Stars opens, Elle is running late to a blind date. She’s been set-up with the sister of her new business partner. Darcy is getting ready to leave when Elle finally arrives. They decide to have a glass of wine, but then the small talk goes disastrously wrong. Darcy, an actuary, kind of (ok, she actually does) insults Elle’s profession of astrology. Elle accidentally knocks over a glass of red wine on Darcy’s vintage silk dress. When Elle over hears Darcy on the phone talking about her in less than flattering terms, she ghosts.

Darcy’s well-meaning-but-nosy brother Brandon asks her for details about the date (seriously, he’s like the Romance Golden Retriever). Darcy tells him it went great just to get him to STFU. The next day Brandon sees Elle at a diner and gushes about how he’s so happy she hit it off with Darcy – right in front of Elle’s mom. So Elle stomps over to Darcy’s apartment – box wine in tow – to put Darcy’s feet to the fire. They’re gonna fake date through the holidays to get their families off their backs. Because Darcy’s got cold feet after getting emotionally scarred by her ex-fiancé and Elle’s family treats her like she’s just the lost little girl with the unserious profession and sad serial dating life.

Fake dating! Opposites attract! Jane Austen retelling! (yeah, did you guess Pride and Prejudice?) Christmas romance! Ugly sweaters! Super-cute! There’s a great double-date scene at Seattle Underground where they have to do an escape room and Elle’s knowledge of astrology and tarot comes in beyond useful. And then there’s a beautiful scene in the astronomy tower. This is a wonderful contemporary f/f romance debut – I’m so glad Avon has really opened up their romance line lately (better late than never) and diversified their offerings. So much good stuff from a favorite publisher.

Written in the Stars is out today! (Yeah, I handsold most of our stock in about two hours today, hahahaha.)

Dear FTC: I had a digital galley then wound up with a lovely review copy from the publisher.

Recipe for Persuasion by Sonali Dev (The Rajes #2)

Summary from Goodreads: From the author of Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors comes another , clever, deeply layered, and heartwarming romantic comedy that follows in the Jane Austen tradition—this time, with a twist on Persuasion.

Chef Ashna Raje desperately needs a new strategy. How else can she save her beloved restaurant and prove to her estranged, overachieving mother that she isn’t a complete screw up? When she’s asked to join the cast of Cooking with the Stars, the latest hit reality show teaming chefs with celebrities, it seems like just the leap of faith she needs to put her restaurant back on the map. She’s a chef, what’s the worst that could happen? 

Rico Silva, that’s what. Being paired with a celebrity who was her first love, the man who ghosted her at the worst possible time in her life, only proves what Ashna has always believed: leaps of faith are a recipe for disaster. 

FIFA winning soccer star Rico Silva isn’t too happy to be paired up with Ashna either. Losing Ashna years ago almost destroyed him. The only silver lining to this bizarre situation is that he can finally prove to Ashna that he’s definitely over her. 

But when their catastrophic first meeting goes viral, social media becomes obsessed with their chemistry. The competition on the show is fierce…and so is the simmering desire between Ashna and Rico.  Every minute they spend together rekindles feelings that pull them toward their disastrous past. Will letting go again be another recipe for heartbreak—or a recipe for persuasion…? 

In Recipe for Persuasion, Sonali Dev once again takes readers on an unforgettable adventure in this fresh, fun, and enchanting romantic comedy. 

Recipe for Persuasion is a great Persuasion retelling – I love how Sonali uses the original Austen story as inspiration and then reshapes it as necessary. And tucked in among Ashna and Rico’s story (which uses the bones of Austen’s Persuasion) is the story of Ashna’s parents and how “persuasion” has played out in the older generation of Rajes. I have one piece of advice for all the characters in this story: GO HAVE SOME THERAPY PLEASE.

Dear FTC: I read a digital galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.

Austen Years: A Memoir in Five Novels by Rachel Cohen

Summary from Goodreads: An astonishingly nuanced reading of Jane Austen that yields a rare understanding of how to live

“About seven years ago, not too long before our daughter was born, and a year before my father died, Jane Austen became my only author.”

In the turbulent period around the birth of her first child and the death of her father, Rachel Cohen turned to Jane Austen to make sense of her new reality. For Cohen, simultaneously grief-stricken and buoyed by the birth of her daughter, reading Austen became her refuge and her ballast. She was able to reckon with difficult questions about mourning, memorializing, living in a household, paying attention to the world, reading, writing, and imagining through Austen’s novels.

Austen Years is a deeply felt and sensitive examination of a writer’s relationship to reading, and to her own family, winding together memoir, criticism, and biographical and historical material about Austen herself. And like the sequence of Austen’s novels, the scope of Austen Years widens successively, with each chapter following one of Austen’s novels. We begin with Cohen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she raises her small children and contemplates her father’s last letter, a moment paired with the grief of Sense and Sensibility and the social bonds of Pride and Prejudice. Later, moving with her family to Chicago, Cohen grapples with her growing children, teaching, and her father’s legacy, all refracted through the denser, more complex Mansfield Park and Emma.

With unusual depth and fresh insight into Austen’s life and literature, and guided by Austen’s mournful and hopeful final novel, Persuasion, Rachel Cohen’s Austen Years is a rare memoir of mourning and transcendence, a love letter to a literary master, and a powerful consideration of the odd process that merges our interior experiences with the world at large.

This is going to be a very short review. It has taken me MONTHS to read Austen Years. I was expecting a slow read, something to savor. What I got was floundering around. I’m still not sure why Cohen was only able to read and re-read Austen’s novels (and only five of them, not the full six or any of the juvenalia) for a number of years. Some of her thoughts about the books are interesting, and she writes beautifully about her father, but it’s such a scattered book that I couldn’t follow her thesis.

There was also a sentence where Cohen stated that the young woman Willoughby seduces and leaves pregnant in Sense and Sensibility dies, which that is not anything that happens in any edition of S&S I’ve read, so I’m waiting for a library hold to come in so I can check that in a finished copy.

Dear FTC: I read a digital galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.

The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner – audiobook review and Austenprose blog tour!

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

Just after the Second World War, in the small English village of Chawton, an unusual but like-minded group of people band together to attempt something remarkable.

One hundred and fifty years ago, Chawton was the final home of Jane Austen, one of England’s finest novelists. Now it’s home to a few distant relatives and their diminishing estate. With the last bit of Austen’s legacy threatened, a group of disparate individuals come together to preserve both Jane Austen’s home and her legacy. These people—a laborer, a young widow, the local doctor, and a movie star, among others—could not be more different and yet they are united in their love for the works and words of Austen. As each of them endures their own quiet struggle with loss and trauma, some from the recent war, others from more distant tragedies, they rally together to create the Jane Austen Society.

AUDIOBOOK NARRATED BY ACTOR RICHARD ARMITAGE:

The full unabridged text of THE JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY was read by the distinguished English film, television, theatre and voice actor Richard Armitage for the audiobook recording. Best known by many period drama fans for his outstanding performance as John Thornton in the BBC television adaptation of North and South (2004), Armitage also portrayed Thorin Oakenshield in Peter Jackson’s film trilogy adaptation of The Hobbit (2012 – 2014).

Link to YouTube audiobook excerpt: https://youtu.be/OJ1ACJluRi8

AUTHOR BIO:

Natalie Jenner is the debut author of THE JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY, a fictional telling of the start of the society in the 1940s in the village of Chawton, where Austen wrote or revised her major works. Born in England and raised in Canada, Natalie graduated from the University of Toronto with degrees in English Literature and Law and has worked for decades in the legal industry. She recently founded the independent bookstore Archetype Books in Oakville, Ontario, where she lives with her family and two rescue dogs.
WEBSITE | TWITTER | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | GOODREADS

So, if you hadn’t already noticed, I’m pretty down for all things Jane Austen. I definitely had The Jane Austen Society on my list of spring releases very early on after St. Martin’s Press catalogs came available on Edelweiss. Historical novel about the creation of the Jane Austen society? Sign me up. And then Laurel Ann of Austenprose invited me to not only be part of her incredible blog tour but also review the audiobook read by Richard (Freakin’) Armitage. Would I like to listen to Mr. Thornton read me a book? YES PLEASE. I already loved his narration of three of my favorite Georgette Heyer novels (Venetia, The Convenient Marriage, and Sylvester, or The Wicked Uncle) so I was prepared to be delighted with this book.

Now, I haven’t finished it. I’m about 2-3 hours from the end of the audiobook. We can thank the coronavirus for disrupting my reading. I usually read audiobooks while commuting back and forth to work in the car/on the bus and, well, my commute right now is the distance from my French press in the kitchen to my desk in my home office, approximately 40 feet. What also makes this harder is that the app used for the audiobook galley doesn’t play through my car speakers as well as an inability to listen to fiction audiobooks while I’m working. So even though I planned some extra listening time with a review slot at the tail end of this blog tour, I’m a tad bit behind. But, oh, I do love this book.

The Jane Austen Society is a character-driven tale about the foundation of the real Jane Austen Society that saved Jane Austen’s Chawton cottage as a major landmark and site of literary pilgrimage. Each main character here – the town doctor, a laborer, a school teacher, a housemaid, a lawyer, a movie star, the last descendant of the Knight family – has their own tale of loss in this post-World War II setting. And underlying all that loss is an incredible love for the work of Jane Austen. This is the love of Austen that goes beyond admiration for the books. This is looking beyond the books to see themselves in the characters. And it’s a love that pushes them in an uphill battle to preserve a fast-disappearing legacy in a dying rural English town. (Note: I did check the Historical Note in a print copy of the book and all these characters and events are made up for this book. The Jane Austen Society is real, as are Jane Austen’s cottage and the Knight estate in Chawton, of course.)

Richard Armitage’s narration is perfect for this book. He is adept with accents, from the country accent of a farm laborer, to an upper class middle-aged woman, to a Scots auctioneer, to an American movie star. His reading speed is good – he doesn’t do that annoying thing where he pauses between sentences so the conversation between characters feels natural – and while he does feminize his voice a bit for the female characters it’s not a cloying falsetto. And when he has to provide the sexy voice of Mimi’s rich American boyfriend/fiancee/backer/whatever he thinks he is because he’s kind of a jerk…well, one of Armitage’s best voices in the Heyer books is whenever he gets to voice a rake. Yummy.

I will give a small content warning that grief is a major part of this book. Several characters lose spouses or family members. There is also a traumatic pregnancy loss and stillbirth, so if you are sensitive to that kind of event there are several chapters that deal with Adeline’s loss and grief at about the 25% mark (the birth itself is mostly kept off the page but it is described in medical terms).

For fun, Natalie Jenner put together a Spotify playlist! If you use Spotify, you can find it here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5Q1Vl17qyQQIvvPGeIPCkr?si=-iMhVz8uRk2v2mTdolrPdg. The playlist includes music from various film adaptions of Jane Austen’s books, as well as film scores by such incomparable artists as Hans Zimmer, Ennio Morricone, Rachel Portman, and Michael Nyman.

Now, I’m coming in at the end of the blog tour, but feel free to look back at all the different reviews and features (75 blogs!) linked at the bottom of the Austenprose review here.

Thanks so very, very much to Laurel Ann for inviting me to the blog tour and providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook.

Dear FTC: I listened to a digital galley of the audiobook provided by the publisher.

Sanditon by Jane Austen and Kate Riordan: A blog tour review with Austenprose!

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

In the vein of Downton Abbey, Jane Austen’s beloved but unfinished masterpiece-often considered her most modern and exciting novel-gets a spectacular second act in this tie-in to a major new limited television series.

Written only months before Austen’s death in 1817, Sanditon tells the story of the joyously impulsive, spirited and unconventional Charlotte Heywood and her spiky relationship with the humorous, charming (and slightly wild!) Sidney Parker. When a chance accident transports her from her rural hometown of Willingden to the would-be coastal resort of the eponymous title, it exposes Charlotte to the intrigues and dalliances of a seaside town on the make, and the characters whose fortunes depend on its commercial success. The twists and turns of the plot, which takes viewers from the West Indies to the rotting alleys of London, exposes the hidden agendas of each character and sees Charlotte discover herself… and ultimately find love.

AUTHOR BIO:

Kate Riordan is a writer and journalist from England. Her first job was as an editorial assistant at the Guardian newspaper, followed by a stint as deputy editor for the lifestyle section of London bible, Time Out magazine. There she had assignments that saw her racing reindeers in Lapland, going undercover in London’s premier department store and gleaning writing tips (none-too subtly) during interviews with some of her favorite authors. After becoming a freelancer, she left London behind and moved to the beautiful Cotswolds in order to write her first novel.

When Jane Austen died, she left behind six completed novels (four published) and fragments of several more, including the beginning of Sanditon, a novel about a young woman visiting an up-and-coming resort town. Only about sixty pages exist, several of them more in the vein of “plot-bunny problems for Future Jane to solve later,” definitely not enough to determine Austen’s intention for the resolution of the plot but just enough to establish her cast of characters: Miss Charlotte Heywood, the many Parkers, Lady Denham and her household, and Miss Lambe.

Fast forward to the twenty-first century and Sanditon has been adapted as an eight-part television series airing in the US on PBS January 12 – February 23, 2020. Screenwriter Andrew Davies – responsible for Colin Firth’s wet-shirt scene in Pride and Prejudice (at the very least) – took on the task of fleshing out Austen’s world of seaside resorts and invalids and creating a plot where not had existed. And it is a very pretty adaptation, with lovely costumes and beautiful British actors (oh, hello, Theo James). It is a very sexy adaptation, too, which is to be expected in a Davies adaptation and it, uh, goes rather beyond wet shirts. There’s a gorgeous companion book in the vein of the Downton Abbey tie-ins that looks behind the scenes of the show (this show is totally Regency era catnip for Downton Abbey fans). I haven’t watched more than the first few episodes of the show because I finished the novelization by Kate Riordan.

And I didn’t like the ending.

Now. I had also prepped for this release by re-reading Austen’s original fragment (I have multiple editions of her fragments and juvenilia but the Penguin Classics edition that includes The Watsons and Lady Susan is the most readable, in my opinion). So I had Austen’s sentence structure and style fresh in my mind when I started Kate Riordan’s adaptation of Andrew Davies script. The two styles do not mesh well in my mind. Modern prose is very prescriptive, telling you what characters are touching and doing as if describing a movie scene to the reader. In addition, this adaptation and novelization is rather…earthy. Austen would have known all about sex and what people get up to when alone (she was a Georgian, not a Victorian, and spent more than enough of her time helping her sisters-in-law during their confinements) but she certainly wouldn’t have put it on the page, even as a fade-to-black scene. So it was a bit jarring.

Then there’s the ending. I’m not going to totally spoil it, but quit reading now if you want to finish out either the show or the novel without a whiff of spoilage. So. If one is a show runner, who wants to keep Sanditon going for more than one season, you go for this ending. Look at the mileage Downton Abbey got for three seasons with the will-they-won’t-they antagonism of Mary and Matthew. If one is a reader who reads Austen extensively, owns multiple editions of her novels, and regularly imbibes Regency romance novels? This ending is so unsatisfying. I sincerely hope the show gets second season pickup because I can’t believe this is where Austen would have left her characters. (Well, to be honest, she wouldn’t have put some of them in some of these situations in the first place, in my opinion.)

Verdict? Enjoy the TV show but don’t re-read Austen’s original right before reading the novelization.

I’m participating in a blog tour organized by Lauren Ann of Austenprose! Visit her site to read Laurel Ann’s review of Sanditon and find a list of other bloggers featuring Sanditon on their pages. Thanks Laurel Ann for the review opportunity!

Dear FTC: I received finished copies of Sanditon and The World of Sanditon from the publisher for participating in the blog tour.

The Bride of Northanger by Diana Birchall

Hello! Today marks the last few stops on the #Janeite blog tour for Diana Birchall’s new Austen Variation, The Bride of Northanger, stopping here with a review (waves!) and also a spotlight at My Love for Jane Austen. Many thanks and hugs to Laurel Ann of Austenprose for organizing the tour and visit her review and kick-off post for a list of other participating blogs for interviews and more reviews.

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

A happier heroine than Catherine Morland does not exist in England, for she is about to marry her beloved, the handsome, witty Henry Tilney. The night before the wedding, Henry reluctantly tells Catherine and her horrified parents a secret he has dreaded to share – that there is a terrible curse on his family and their home, Northanger Abbey. Henry is a clergyman, educated and rational, and after her year’s engagement Catherine is no longer the silly young girl who delighted in reading “horrid novels”; she has improved in both reading and rationality. This sensible young couple cannot believe curses are real…until a murder at the Abbey triggers events as horrid and Gothic as Jane Austen ever parodied – events that shake the young Tilneys’ certainties, but never their love for each other…

Diana Birchall’s new sequel to Austen’s Northanger Abbey opens the night before Catherine Morland’s wedding to Henry Tilney as Henry arrives at the Morland family home to dutifully inform them that the Tilney family appears to operate under a curse: that the wife of the eldest Tilney son will die young (apparently the family was cursed during the Dissolution). Catherine, now rid of her youthful flights of fancy, dismisses this so-called curse. Henry is, of course, the second son and furthermore, as rational, modern people, they don’t believe in curses. So Catherine and Henry marry and settle into a pleasant life at the vicarage…until General Tilney (and his ominous wedding gift) summons the young couple to a strange dinner party at Northanger Abbey. This sets off a year full of mysterious events, ghostly sightings, and deaths worthy of Catherine’s horrid Gothic novels.

And those deaths are firmly in the realm of gruesome twists of fate, serving up grisly demises for several familiar characters. Birchall made an interesting choice in this novel, to both attempt the ironic tone Austen used when poking fun at Gothic fiction and go full-Gothic at the climax of the plot. It starts out very light, with Catherine enjoying married life and expanding her reading – and education – by reading works of philosophy and history under Henry’s direction. Even the initial trip to the Abbey stays on the lighter side with a glimpse of a possible ghost to tickle Catherine’s imagination. The plot, though, begins to delve into horrors that steadily pull away from the recreation of Austen’s tone. In one scene Catherine is made to sit a vigil over a dead body since no one else from the family is available to do it and the sequence of events is quite unnerving, far more so than searching a cupboard to find a mysterious document (which turned out to be a laundry list) or speculating whether General Tilney killed his wife. Each further mishap gets a bit more squicky-making. (Sorry about the vagueness, but there are quite a lot of twists to the plot that I’m trying to avoid spoiling.) The plot of The Bride of Northanger is much closer to a true Gothic novel in the vein of The Castle of Otranto or The Mysteries of Udolpho than Austen’s lively send-up. If you’ve read any of the Gothics that Catherine so enjoyed then you’ll recognize a number of the plot elements.

The book reads quite well. I took it with me on a short trip and read almost the whole thing on a two-and-a-half hour plane ride. It was fun to see so many of the original characters again, so despite my wish to have a bit more Austenian irony and a few less deaths it was quite enjoyable.

The Bride of Northanger is out now!

Dear FTC: I received a review copy of this book via the blog tour organizer.