Book Review: Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict

According to the cover of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, by Laurie Viera Rigler, it is "A rich, saucy lark of a book." I have to agree with that statement, even as I found the book to be a bit fluffy even for my own chick-lit loving tastes and somewhat predictable. I, however, have never turned my nose up at a predictable book, as I hate to be shocked by an unhappy ending more than most. So keeping that in mind, I did enjoy Confessions quite a bit, and struggled not to read it while I was at work for 12 hours on Monday.

Courtney Stone is a modern girl living in LA, that has just broken up with her fiance. One morning, after a vodka and Austen-filled comfort session, she wakes up to find that she inhabits the body of a woman during the Regency period in England. At first she thinks she's dreaming, but as she wakes up day after day as another person, she comes to realize that she might be stuck there.

At first, this seemed like something I would like to experience, although I've always been partial to the post-civil war era in Wyoming, or other places out West. But the more you think about it, the less exciting it seems. I mean, you have to go to the bathroom in an outhouse, give birth without benefit of painkillers, and suffer through the summer in hot woolen dresses with long sleeves, because it's considered ill-mannered to show one's elbows or wrists. So I wondered how this book would handle such things - would it just breeze over the more unpleasant aspects of this era, like so many romance novels do, or delve into the nitty-gritty? It turns out that the author didn't shy away from such things. We see a doctor "bleeding" a patient, what it's like for a woman back then to have her period, and something that has always concerned me - bathing in a public bathhouse. Quite refreshing, and just for giving us the good and the bad of Regency times, this book is worth a read!

On a final note, before I was even halfway through, one of my techs requested I loan it to her. So we'll have to see what her opinion is after she's done.