Enjoyed the first book but this one wasn't giving me anything - they're married and there's hardly anything happening on the romance angle, the glamour bits are little new, I was ready to quit the book half way through but kept going. It gets more actiony but wasn't enough to make me happy for having read it. The writing style and location are fun but there was so little else going on that I was not thrilled with this one.
Somehow I expected more of this series. I've read the first three. Of those I liked the third best. The books are easy reading. The writing style indeed very reminiscent of Jane Austen as advertised or at least of the time in which Jane Austen was living. The historic portrayal is convincing.
The added glamour magic is interesting but feels a bit tacked on.
What I was disappointed in for the first two books, and which was only remedied in part by the third, was the characters and the plot. The characters felt flat, stereotypical, their emotions not quite real. I haven't read Jane Austen in a while but I do believe her plots are a bit more concise. With the romance and the magic both needing to be dealt with to fulfill the promise of "Jane Austen with Magic" the plots feel meandering and somewhat contrived.
The books actually …
Somehow I expected more of this series. I've read the first three. Of those I liked the third best. The books are easy reading. The writing style indeed very reminiscent of Jane Austen as advertised or at least of the time in which Jane Austen was living. The historic portrayal is convincing.
The added glamour magic is interesting but feels a bit tacked on.
What I was disappointed in for the first two books, and which was only remedied in part by the third, was the characters and the plot. The characters felt flat, stereotypical, their emotions not quite real. I haven't read Jane Austen in a while but I do believe her plots are a bit more concise. With the romance and the magic both needing to be dealt with to fulfill the promise of "Jane Austen with Magic" the plots feel meandering and somewhat contrived.
The books actually managed to bore me, especially since the first two books seemed to wait until well into the last third for the action to commence. Only the third installment managed to grip me from the beginning. It also built up a credible bad guy and then I read the blurb to the fourth book: nothing to do with the previous one and so I decided to stop reading the series then and there.
But if you want a bit of romance with a dash of fantasy and have already read all that the original 19th century writers have produced, go ahead you might like it.
