This book is what I was worried of when I found out these were categorized under clean romance and Christian fiction. It could’ve been A LOT worse, but it was just enough to start to put me off toward the end of the novel. That being said, I know there’s a HUGE market for both clean romance AND Christina fiction, so I can’t really fault it too much because it was just a little too preachy for me at some points. I’ll talk more about this later.
I’m still not sure where to categorize this for my own references. I think they’d be more accurately described as inspired by Austen rather than the traditional fan-fiction/fanfiction. Reay does a great job weaving in the stories and characters from Austen’s works but doesn’t necessarily use them as frameworks or even plot outlines. I’ll read the other’s books in her oeuvre that are Austen/Brontë connected because they’re such quick reads, but I’m not sure I’ll follow her into the future.
Continue reading “Book 553: Dear Mr. Knightley – Katherine Reay”
I picked this up at the library after reading about it on Jane’s blog 
I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one when the publisher reached out to me about a few books way back in August of last year.* Quakeland caught my eye for the very reason any of those disaster movies (Twister, The Day After Tomorrow, San Andreas, Volcano, etc.) speak out to millions of people every year. We’re fascinated by the potential destruction and yet completely disbelieving that it could happen to us. Fun fact, it can and will at some point (maybe not the Volcano story line) but according to this and a lot of scientists earthquakes could!
I received an unsolicited copy of this from the publisher and aside from the title making me giggle continuously (seriously it took about 200 pages before I stopped giggling), I figured everyone needs to be more “kind, compassionate, and accepting of [ourselves] so I thought I’d give it a go.* Unfortunately, it wasn’t for me.