A joyful celebration of one of the most important writers in English literature.
Eight stories give new life to some of Jane Austen’s overshadowed characters.
In recognition of Austen’s 250th birthday, nine authors have compiled eight stories reimagining some of the secondary and tertiary characters from her beloved tales, placing them against both historical and contemporary backgrounds. Often having only a handful of Austen’s sentences as a jumping-off point, the authors take minor characters like Eliza Brandon, Margaret Dashwood, and Georgiana Darcy, flesh them out, and give them complex, intriguing narratives of their own. Nikki Payne’s reimagining of Pride and Prejudice’s Caroline Bingley as a free woman of color traveling away from her community in New Orleans to marry a complete stranger out West is especially engrossing, as is Eloisa James’ tale of Margaret Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility, now a bit older, out in society and training herself to be a novelist as she waits to fall in love. Diana Quincy’s attention is thoughtfully trained on Lydia Wickham (née Bennet), also from Pride and Prejudice, surprised by a second chance at love after she’s widowed by her wicked husband. Though Sarah MacLean and Elinor Lipman choose very different happy endings for Emma’s Hetty Bates, both are highly satisfying. In keeping with the spirit of Austen’s work, there are multiple life-changing kisses in these stories, but anything spicier than that is kept off the page, and even in the contemporary stories there is a sense of old-fashioned courtliness underlying the different voices. The collection’s primary flaw is that the length of the stories varies widely; some are too long while others feel thin by comparison. Despite this, the collection will have tremendous appeal to Austen’s legion of devoted readers, thanks to the unique and generally well-executed concept.
A joyful celebration of one of the most important writers in English literature.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781668204177
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.
Childhood friends, almost-sweethearts, a misunderstanding, and a funeral.
Blair Lang and Declan Renshaw were best friends who went on one date before a disagreement and an accident sent them in different directions after high school. Now Blair is back from college to be with her great-aunt Lottie, who’s dying, and to support her single mother in small-town Seabrook, California. Finding a job at a coffee shop puts her in the path of her former boyfriend, since he turns out to be its owner. Can the two get past their mistakes? The novel uses the popular second-chance romance trope, but Pham fails to energize it through interesting characters. Blair’s grief over her great-aunt’s death and her plan to help her mother are overshadowed by internal monologues about her feelings, the way her friends aren’t paying attention to her, and the novel she plans to write. Declan’s distinguishing characteristic, besides being a former high school quarterback, is his skill at building birdhouses. Unsurprisingly, the couple doesn’t have much chemistry; when they embrace, their “bodies meld like…memory foam.” The wooden characters, unusual word choices (“conglomerate of pedestrians,” “litany of plants”), and odd turns of phrase (“tension melting from his eyebrows like butter melting in a warm pan”) are almost enough to obscure the lack of plot development. What passes for stakes is easily defused when Blair comes into an inheritance that saves her from working as a consultant at Ernst & Young in New York—so she can write a romance novel.
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668095188
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
Light on plot and heavy on bolstering traditional gender norms as the ultimate goal for both men and women.
A Seattle woman meets a Chicago businessman as she flies home from a visit to a friend, and her small act of kindness blossoms into more.
Maisy Gallagher is barely making ends meet. With her father’s unexpected death a few years earlier, she dropped out of nursing school to help out in the family’s jewelry store, working with her uncle. Her older brother, Sean, also moved back home so he and Maisy could help their mother and their 10-year-old brother, Patrick. When Maisy offers a ride to a rude businessman who sat next to her on the plane, she’s just operating on the kindness her grandmother instilled in her. That businessman, Chase Furst, turns out to be an incredibly wealthy banker; he’s flown into Seattle to make funeral arrangements for his mother, to whom he hasn’t spoken in years. Sparks fly in this gentle and predictable romance that leans heavily on long-distance and class-divide tropes. As with many of the author’s books, Christianity and the characters’ reliance on God’s will—as they wait and see what happens next—play a large part, as do traditional gender roles where women cook, clean, and only work in paying jobs until they have children at home to take care of. The author does offer a lighter touch when it comes to the painful ways alcoholism can destroy family relationships, with an understanding of the regret that can weigh on every family member.
Light on plot and heavy on bolstering traditional gender norms as the ultimate goal for both men and women.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9798217091676
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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