A review by tinkeringcheck
The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner

emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

TLDR: Character-driven, multiple POVs, large cast with a lotta heart, slow pace, great audiobook narration, heartfelt exploration of grief, bit of an underwhelming ending.

To be upfront, I've... never actually read a Jane Austen book. However! I do have a lot of fondness for Austen screen adaptations. Was I a fool for diving into a book like this based solely off a recent rewatch of P&P 2005? Perhaps!

But despite all that, what I'd absorbed through cultural osmosis was enough to easily follow along. There were a few times when the characters got into discussions that made me feel like I'd shown up to an English Lit seminar without doing the reading, but these parts were still written in a pretty accessible way for newbies while digging deep into the themes of Austen's stories.

There are a lot of character storylines here and I admittedly had my favourites, but overall I found each brought something unique to the story and how we see the other characters. However, some POVs tended to slow down the story more than others. And because of the large cast and limited time with each,  you don't get a completely deep exploration of any one character. This can be a relief if there are POVs you don't click with, but left me a little wanting for my faves (like Adeline and Dr. Grey).

At the heart of the story, though, is a very poignant and relatable exploration of many different kinds of grief. While the WW2 setting has been overdone to death, it truly makes sense for this story for the unfathomable amount of grief it inflicted on society. Even so, this story is rooted firmly on the home front so it feels less a typical WW2 historical and more a story that just happens to be set during WW2. 

However, I do wish the ending had gone out on more of a bang plot-wise. It felt a bit underwhelming with some characters making regressive choices after seeing them grow so much over the course of the story. 

Overall, I really loved this story and these characters, and it made me interested in reading more of Austen's works! It has a slow pace though (the audiobook even moreso than the print book despite the excellent narration) and the characters - not the Austen plot - are definitely the focus.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Miscarriage, Sexual assault, and Grief

Moderate: Addiction, Mental illness, and War

Minor: Emotional abuse, Sexism, and Suicide

Graphic sexual assault: Happens in

chapter 6 I believe. As soon as Mimi goes to visit Monty the producer, skip to the next chapter if you need to.

Grief: It's a major part of the story, so if background deaths of parents/children/siblings or miscarriage will affect you it's probably best to skip this one.

Addiction: One of the characters starts struggling with a prescription drug addiction about halfway through the story. It's only lightly touched on and briefly described. They eventually take steps to help curb it, but they don't really get help for it (especially in terms of modern support).

Mental illness: One of the characters struggles with symptoms very strongly like depression and agoraphobia, and heavily isolates themselves because of it.

Suicide: Very brief mention of a character's relative sadly committing suicide in the past.

Emotional abuse: Nothing explicit, more one of the characters having a shitty parent.