by Syrie James

Something that is often mentioned when people bring up the famous author of Pride and Prejudice (among others) is that Jane Austen, a writer of romance, died a spinster. All her books ended with a wedding (at least one wedding) but she herself never married.

Many people have imagined what might have happened if Jane Austen had had a romance, one that she kept secret for certain reasons.

What if someone found a sealed up chest in Jane Austen’s former house – and it was revealed to be full of Austen’s own experiences – and one of them told of a romance of her own?

The novel takes place while Jane is revising Sense and Sensibility. I really liked reading how her “real-life experiences” let themselves out in S&S. And because Austen is so famous a writer about courtships, I think people (in general, woman) would love to hear that she had her own romance.

I personally loved reading all Jane Austen’s books (yes, sadly I’ve already read all of them, so I can never read one of them anew again), and I found this view into her personal life was very fun. The language was good, in a way that echoed Austen’s, and Syrie James somehow managed to blend a bittersweet romance to perfectly correspond with other events that occurred in her life at that time. It was fantastic.