Bibliofreakblog

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler was…a decent story just adequately written.

I was never totally sure who Courtney, a 21st century 30-year-old unmarried woman, who is transported back to 1813 and into the body of an unmarried 30-year-old woman named Jane, would end up with.  Which is good.

Rigler balanced out the excitement of being back in time with the reality of things like unwashed bodies and bloodletting and the inability of an unmarried woman to go anywhere alone.  And the way that Courtney grew to think like Jane, whose body she was living in, complete with thinking of her reputation, was remarkable.

But the writing was often clunky.  And the whole first chapter or two where Courtney as Jane is is trying to figure out what is going on and how she came to be there and how she can get back and what she can do bored the Hell out of me.  I mean, I know that that is necessary, but here’s what I’d suggest: start the book a little later.  Hell, make it into the the diary that Courtney as Jane keeps, after she’s already come to sort of accept her situation, and spare us the seemingly endless pages of questions going through her head.  

Also, without having read the sequel, I wish that it, which is about Jane being transported to the 21st century, was interwoven with this one.  And then, if a sequel was really necessary, make it about what happens to the ladies when they return to their own times and bodies, and what they remember and how they’ve changed.  Which, judging by the epilogue, does not seem to really be much.

 
Buy Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict on Amazon

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler
Lost in Austen: Create Your Own Jane Austen Adventure by Emma Campbell Webster
A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen by Susannah Carson (editor)
Emma by Jane Austen
Sense And Sensibility by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
What Would Jane Austen Do? by Laurie Brown
Austenland by Shannon Hale
The Savvy Gal’s Guide to Online Networking (Or What Would Jane Austen Do?) by
Jane Austen Ruined My Life by Beth Pattillo
The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James
According To Jane by Marilyn Brant 
Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels by Deirdre Le Faye
Dear Jane Austen: A Heroine’s Guide to Life and Love by Patrice Hannon 
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
Bridget Jones; The edge of Reason by Helen Fielding
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett

Other works by Laurie Viera Rigler:

Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict