I read Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict as apart of the Everything Jane Austen Challenge. When I finished the book and started reading reviews of this book at goodreads.com I was surprised at the number of people who really disliked this book.
I thought it was a fun take on a lot of different Jane Austen novels. I think the problems that most of have when reading a book with Jane Austen or one of her books in the title is that we take it too seriously and expect the writing and the characters to be exactly like the original-which is impossible.
Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict is about Courtney Stone who wakes up in the England of the Jane Austen books she loves instead of present day L.A. and is Jane Mansfield. Before I get to the parts of the book that had me shaking my head-I'll begin with what I liked.
After reading so many time travel romances I really liked that it started with the heroine already being in the past, and discovering that she is there. I also enjoyed her disbelief over what it was like living in Jane Austens time and what little freedom women of that time had and the insane rules they had to follow or be ruined forever.
Most of the negative reviews I read all stated that they didn't like the fact the Courtney never really dealt with the mess of her life in the present day, I liked that. I hate it when books like this spend too much time on what happened, instead of what is happening.
Courtneys life in Jane Austens time is spent trying to discover who Jane Mansfield was...the book focuses on her friendship with Mary Edgeworth, the sister of Charles Edgeworth, Jane's suitor. This is another one of those books where the girl spends half the book fighting her feelings and doing everything she can to scare the guy away even though she really loves him.
The most annoying part of this book was that the romance was really all of three pages at the end. Presto, Courtney/aka Jane discovers that she loves Edgeworth, faults and all. The story never really deals with the stuff that Courtney/Jane did to push Edgeworth away. I really want to find a book where the romance is more then at the end of the book.
Despite the lack of real romance, I rated this book four stars. It was a very quick read and I found the characters all likable and believable. I can't wait to read the second book to see if it has more substance and deals with some of the stuff that was left out of this one.
