I can’t believe I’ve had this on my shelf for as long as I have. It’s been almost TWO YEARSÂ since I bought it. TWO YEARS! I’m not sure I would go so far as to say this is THE pinnacle of Jane Austen fan-fiction, but it’s pretty close.
I say this for a couple of reasons the primary being that Baker didn’t deviate too far from Austen’s characters, she stayed true to them and only played with the background characters (they’re less than minor) and filled in their back stories. The secondary reason I say this is because it received reviews in the major publications and was fairly mainstream for Austen fan-fiction/inspired fiction. I mean sure you’ve got the major adaptations like Bridget Jones’s Diary and Clueless, but those are both modern adaptations.
I picked this up on our July trip to the UK. Multiple places along Hadrian’s Wall sold it as a souvenir and I thought why not?I wanted something that wasn’t a usual souvenir and the cover of the 
Of course I was going to read this. It actually arrived in my mailbox the same day we saw the film (the first time :-D). If I’m honest, I’m impressed I only saw it twice AND it took me this long to read it. There was a lot to take in and with so much dialogue, reading this sooner would’ve helped A LOT.
Susanna Clarke is one of those others where readers have to ask what in the hell is she doing that she can’t publish another wonderful book like her masterpiece 
I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this one. I’m always open for a bit of Austen fan-fiction so when someone from the publisher reached out to me about this one I figured why not?*