Two hundred years after her death, Jane Austen is still surrounded by the literature she loves—but now it's because she's the owner of Flyleaf Books in a sleepy college town in Upstate New York. Every day she watches her novels fly off the shelves—along with dozens of unauthorized sequels, spin-offs, and adaptations. Jane may be undead, but her books have taken on a life of their own.
To make matters worse, the manuscript she finished just before being turned into a vampire has been rejected by publishers—116 times. Jane longs to let the world know who she is, but when a sudden twist of fate thrusts her back into the spotlight, she must hide her real identity—and fend off a dark man from her past while juggling two modern suitors. Will the inimitable Jane Austen be able to keep her cool in this comedy of manners, or will she show everyone what a woman with a sharp wit and an even sharper set of fangs can do?
My thoughts:
First of all, I must mention that I really didn't have high expectations towards this book. I just bought it for fun when I saw it in the bookshelf at Foyles' while I was at London. No, after the reading experience I can say that this book was somewhat a lot better than I expected, but some things in it were just as I expected them to be; funny and in a way entertaining, but nothing compared to Austen.
Jane Fairfax lives in upstate New York. To everyone else, she is 30 something bookstore owner. In reality she is Jane Austen who has been undead, a vampire, for quite many years already. While she was still known as Jane Austen during the 1800s, she wrote a novel called Constance, which was never found from her archives after her "death". She has been trying to get it published for years, but everytime she has been disappointed; it seems that no one is interested in her novel. Until a moment a publisher from New York expresses his interest...
Suddenly Constance by Jane Fairfax is on everyone's lips. Jane is whisked into fame and she does not know how to handle with the popularity. When she last was published she did not use her name, and it was her brother who handled all the publishing business. And the sudden appearance of a man from her past does not help out in the situation. And this mysterious man, a famous man of his time, is the one who is responsible for Jane's undeadness.
What can Jane do when it seems that the there are some outside forces against the publishing of her new novel? And what will happen with Walter, a man from the same town, who shows interest towards Jane, but who has no idea who Jane really is, or what Jane really is.
This novel was certainly entertaining, and it was a nice book for me to read right now in middle of the school stress (only few months to go, then I will be more active again... There is a big "read after IB" pile waiting for me in my bookshelf). There were certainly some things that bothered me in this book; the mystery man behind Jane's undeadness, the crazy authoress from the 1800s and the fact that I did not feel any connection between Jane and Walter, and still their relationship was described in this book.
I do not want to give out too much about this novel, because the appearance of different 1800 authors was a certainly surprise for me. So I want to keep those as a secret. This book definitely is an entertaining read, as I mentioned before, and I highly recommend it to ones who just want something fun to read.
Apparently there is going to be a sequel to this book. I don't know much about it or when it is coming out though.
