Girlawhirl

Beach Reads: Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler


Girlawhirl will proudly admit it. She is a Jane Austen addict. No matter how many times she reads, and re-reads, the author’s classic’s like Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion, as soon as she’s done she just wants to start again from the beginning. And so does Courtney Stone, Laurie Viera Rigler’s 21st century girl who takes to vodka and Jane Austen to help heal her broken heart after a failed engagement in Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict…

After a particularly rough night full of vodka cocktails and Jane Austen novels, Courtney finds herself in the midst of a strangely realistic dream where she wakes up in a 19th century English bedchamber, surrounded by people who insist on calling her Jane Mansfield.

She quickly concludes her situation has to be the most realistic dream ever because it’s one she cannot wake up from. And preferring not to be shipped off to the asylum - as Jane’s mother has threatened to do if she continues to insist she isn’t Jane – Courtney soon realizes she might as well play along until she can figure out just how to get back to modern day Los Angeles.

Courtney soon finds herself more disgusted by the strict social mores and living conditions of Regency England (i.e. chamber pots, bleeding the sick and a ridiculously inadequate number of baths) than enchanted by the picture-perfect, high-class living of her former Jane Austen fantasies. She’s equally amazed at how easily she adapts to the lifestyle and even begins to have memories that are certainly not her own.

Now she just has to bide her time and find a way home before she messes up Jane’s life too much to ever leave or worse, chases away the real Jane’s one shot at happiness – the dashing Mr. Edgeworth, who may just turn out to be a good guy after all. More than that, if Courtney is here, then where’s Jane?

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