Thursday, October 01, 2009

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict


Rigler, Laurie Viera. 2007. Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. 293 pages.

Why is it so dark in here?

One day Courtney Stone awakes to find herself Jane Mansfield, a thirty year old "spinster" during the Regency period. The premise of this one is simple: a modern twenty-first century woman, an Austen addict, finds herself going back in time two hundred years to "live" out her fantasies. Not that Courtney chose to wake up in a different body. Not that she chose to go back in time and have this weird and overwhelming experience. But Jane, the woman whose life she now has to live, well, she was wishing for a different life. And her strange encounter with a fortune teller, well, Courtney/Jane suspects that may have been the start of this madness.

Courtney has always made the wrong choices in love. Always been attracted to the wrong guys. Can she (as Jane) make better choices? Can she use her time in Regency England to get over her broken heart and resolve her trust issues?

This one is obviously a romance. Did I like it? Yes and no. I was hoping to like it more than I did. I wanted a little more romance. A little more substance. I never really connected with Jane's significant other, Mr. Edgeworth. I never really felt what she felt. And with romance, it's nice when that happens. It's nice when the reader falls for the hero too. But that obviously doesn't happen with every single romance you pick up. And that's something that can be subjective. There may be readers out there who find Mr. Edgeworth swoon-worthy, but I'm not one of them. But it was an entertaining read. I guess I was expecting it to be a little more Lost in Austen than it was.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

2 comments:

Ceri said...

Good review. I kind of want to read this and I find that most people who've read it are like you in that they liked it but they didn't love it. Are you going to read the sequel?

I loved Lost in Austen <3

Natalia said...

I wanted to like this book, but it didn't quite work out in the end. Mr. Edgeworth does nothing more than just look handsome and shear a tear or two. And I'm terribly demanding with my Regency heroes' true characters, you know? Jane Austen taught me that, lol.

I did love Lost in Austen, though. But it was because Amanda did more than whine about her boyfriends...

I'm all negativity today. But I wanted a huge, epic, hilarious romance and I always get mad when I just get small romances :P

P.S. Hi!