Review: What Would Jane Austen Do? by Laurie Brown

I promise there will not be many of these. I'm not wholly into the whole 300-page trashy romance novel with only about 8 pages worth actually reading, thing. That's my best friend, Ali. She can tell you all about Nora Roberts (Eleanor Robertson, who also writes as J.D. Robb) and her tawdry characters with their tawdry affairs.

Reading this book wasn't about that...so I'm going to skip bringing up anything around pages 197, 249, 287 and also the last 3 chapters. No, reading this book was only inherently about the tawdry affairs of others. Appropriately, it was about something bigger, the development of Jane Austen as a character in modern-regency crossover fiction. That subject is, of course, somewhat boring. So I'll go back to the inherent nature of the book.

It's a fun bit of fluff that neither bored me (contrary to my anticipations), nor shocked me. It was nothing out of the common way in its storytelling, and it retained the happy ending that so many of these romances tend to latch onto. I did actually enjoy the inclusion of Jane Austen into the story itself, but I do wish she'd been somewhat more centrally figured. It was well-balanced and well-meted in its speed and delivery, and it is barely shocking at all.

Though, I find it amusing to read some other reader reviews from librarything where some of them have been shocked. It's frightening to know that some Janeites have focused so much of their intent upon being Janeites, that they've forgotten to be women. The tawdry bits are really not so bad. But I can see how, coming from a world of reading Jane Austen and her contemporaries, one might wish to remain in the dark. But sex, especially in novels, is nothing to be ashamed of, nor to run and hide from. It's not hurting Jane Austen's reputation, it's not hurting yours and it's certainly not hurting mine. If I hadn't had Ali to really induct me into the world of this kind of literature, I might be just as wary, but therein the cost of education.

Next Up, appropriately, Confessions of  Jane Austen Addict.