I’ve gotten extremely lucky with Jane Austen adaptations this year. I’ve read four that really work for me this far, and Anne of Avenue A is the very best of the bunch. A fun, spirited take on Persuasion, it has a wonderful narrative voice and draws you easily into the mix. Anne Elliott and Freddie…
Kamila Knows Best is a gently funny, charming romcom that upends Jane Austen’s Emma and has a lot of fun with its energetic heroine and engaging premise. Kamila Hussain is a Toronto accountant with a warm, closely-knit friend circle and an Instagram-famous dog, Darcy. She’s popular, happy and successful, she adores her father and tries…
Sonali Dev delivers a charming, poignant love story in this third offering in her The Rajes Austen-inspired series. You do not have to read the others to enjoy Incense and Sensibility. Yash Raje, California’s first Indian-American gubernatorial candidate, has always looked at his privilege as a test. It’s a chance to prove that he is worthy…
So far I’ve read novels from the perspectives of Georgiana Darcy and Caroline Bingley, and when I saw there was one about Charlotte Lucas, I had to check it out. I always thought of Charlotte as someone who evaluated her situation in life and then did the most reasonable thing she could do to secure…
Pride and Premeditation hits a lot of notes that tempt me – it’s a Jane Austen retelling, a murder mystery, and an historical romance. This novel sets Elizabeth Bennett in London as the daughter of a barrister striving to prove her worth. She is the second of five sisters, and while Lizzie wants nothing more…
Like most Jane Austen adaptations (this one is a riff on Pride and Prejudice), A Taste For Love struggles to work some of the plot devices of the original into the modern world. While some aspects of this book are sweet, it’s ultimately underbaked. Liza Yang’s parents run Yin and Yang, a Taiwanese bakery/restaurant in…
Ladies of the House is a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, following a family as they fall from grace after the death of their patriarch. Mother and daughters have to grapple with their new lives, and learn to survive independently, despite a deck stacked against them. The Richardson women are blindsided by…
A loose reinterpretation of Pride and Prejudice – the characters are more archetypal than direct representations of Austen’s – Written in the Stars is a fun, light-weight and light-hearted romp through the worlds of two Seattle women who find love together in spite of themselves. Elle Jones is on a blind date. A blind date…
The Secret of You and Me is an unexpected treat of a heartfelt but very dark novel, a warm and queer retelling of Persuasion by Jane Austen. But it fashions a whole new world, a whole new set of feelings created from broken hearts and heavy religious guilt in small-town Texas. Captain Nora Noakes has…
Recipe for Persuasion is Sonali Dev’s latest Jane Austen inspired novel. A sweet second chance at love tale, this delicious romance will have you savoring every second you spend reading it. This is book two of The Raje Series but you don’t need to read book one – Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors – to…
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