Carole's Sunday Review: The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen

Author: Collins Hemingway

Title: The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen (Volume1)

Genre: what-if, Historical Romance

Pages: ebook

Published: June 2015

Where I Got It: My shelf (Given to me by the author/publisher for my honest and unbiased opinion)

Tradition holds that Jane Austen lived a prim and proper life as a single woman. But what if she wed a man as passionate and intelligent as she—and the marriage remained secret for 200 years?

The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen is a trilogy that resolves the biggest mysteries of Austen’s life, the “lost years” of her twenties—a period of which historians know virtually nothing.

- Why the enduring rumors of a lost love or tragic affair? 

- Why, afterward, did the vivacious Jane Austen prematurely put on “the cap of middle age” and shut herself away to write her books? 

- Why, after her death, did her beloved sister destroy her letters, journals, and diaries from this period?

The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen trilogy presents an original love story, based on actual history, to put forth a believable, compelling, and plausible answer to Austen’s lost years.

Go with Jane Austen as this thinking woman, and sensitive soul, seizes the opportunity for meaningful love with a man who inspires her and understands her independent spirit—the one man worthy of her mind, heart, and soul.

I love what-if stories, but I hate them at the same time especially if I want it to be the real thing that happened. This is the case for this one. This story follows a Miss Jane Austen. Instead of dying a spinster, she gets to be married to a man who really loves her. It took a while for her to realize she is supposed to be with this gentleman, but it does happen. No spoilers here…it is in the title. LOL

But yes, this was short and sweet. I am curious to read the next book in the trilogy. The next books follows Jane and her hubbie as they work out as newlyweds. I really like her hubbie a lot. I wish he was a real guy. Sure he is based off a real person who did propose to Jane which didn’t fall through (as we all know). He was a sweetie and I feel like Jane was so mean to him unnecessarily so. You could tell he loved her from the moment he stumbled onto the page. 

This was light and fun. I really enjoyed how you could see bits and pieces of her books scattered around the pages. I loved how the author showed possibly where she could’ve gotten her inspirations for her stories. It was a nice touch. Some were obvious, but some were done in a way that could be missed. Loved it. 

There were some eye-rolling parts like the part with the balloon. The balloon-ride was fine, but the whole repercussion that Jane and Ashton had to deal with afterwards. Yes, I get the ton are jerks, but I really feel like everyone overreacted. Especially Jane’s parents. Sure, sure, I get that it was scary and balloons were a new thing, but really? Jane was with a family friend and an old French guy. I highly doubt anything scandalous happened there.

Jane bothered me sometimes. She was actually kind of mean. For example, Ashton had gotten a bundle of tickets (I guess it was cheaper to buy 10 then just 5 – I can’t remember) and he offered to take Jane and her sister. Jane was a jerk about it saying how she didn’t want to be in his debt. Like really? Just take the damn ticket woman. The ticket was basically free. Gah. It bothered me sometimes with how cold she acted towards people. 

I enjoyed the few pages of letter exchanges. Sometimes it bothers me, but it actually helped move the story along in a fun way. It also showed, slowly, how feelings were changing and morphing. It was fun to see how friendship turned to love. It was very nice. 

In the end, this was a short, light, and fun read. I loved the whole what-if Jane didn’t say no and actually got to get married to a man who really did love her. I highly recommend this if you even mildly like Jane Austen and her novels. I’ll stamp this with 4 stars.