Captain Tuttle’s #CBR4 post #50 – Searching for Captain Wentworth by Jane Odiwe
Someone please save me from myself. I can’t stop reading these Austen-adjacent, fan-fic books. Some are better than others, but none come even close to the original. Anyway, this one has a bit of a twist. Our heroine, Sophie Elliot, is a modern gal who just caught her boyfriend cheating, and who has a sucky job. She really wants to be a writer. So her dad loans her money and her aunt loans her a flat in Bath so she can write her Austenesque novel.
Of course the flat is in a building that was next door to where Jane and family lived when they were in Bath. Of course her downstairs neighbor is cute and cool. Of course she picks up a glove, steps through a gate, and goes back in time, into the body of her ancestress (who is presumably the model for Anne Eliot of Persuasion) to meet the actual Jane Austen. Ok, forget that last “of course.” The whole time-travel aspect of this book is very silly.
Sophie meets the Austens, but her family doesn’t approve because her dad is Mr. Eliot, and thinks she’s friending-down, so to speak. Sophie goes back and forth between now and then, and the time tables between visits gets awfully jumbled. It’s not the best-written book, but I still managed to get through it.
I wouldn’t necessarily say it was bad, but I also wouldn’t recommend it, even if you’re an Austenania addict like me.
Cannonball Read IV 