After my amazing luck with John Boyne’s The Absolutist last year, I decided to always keep an eye on Other Press releases and I’m glad I did. I requested a copy of this book directly from the publisher and I quite enjoyed it. This is my honest response and I received nothing in return.
To start, I’d like to say that the only other review on Goodreads is worthless (to me, at least). Why bother reviewing a book if that’s all you’re going to say? The person has, in essence, re-written the synopsis of the novel (on the back cover), without any additional insight or synthesis and it came across as snide to me. If you didn’t want to read “frothy froth about rich French people and their angst,” then why’d you read it? It never pretended to be anything else and that’s why I appreciated this novel. It’s times like this when I wish I could give half stars on Goodreads because it’s not quite what I would consider 5 stars, but not quite as low as 4 stars. Now on to my response.
This novel is everything that it claims to be, an amusing inside look at the codes, manners, and morals of high society, and it’s nothing more.So if you don’t want to read a comedy of manners, then don’t. It’s sort of what I imagine Austen’s works were like when they were first published and reactions were similar to the Goodreads reviewer’s.
This Quirk Classic was MUCH better than 
If I were to write a novel, I assume it would be something like this one, somewhat scatter-brained, somewhat genius and somewhat ludicrous.
This was a so-so read. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but I remember when it first hit the shelves and everyone obsessed over it. I sort of put it in the back of my mind as a to-read book, but never thought I would as I love Austen’s novels on their own and really didn’t know what to expect with the introduction of Sci-Fi/Horror elements.
