Book #37: Midnight in Austenland by Shannon Hale

I read the first Austenland book by Hale a few years ago. I honestly hadn't heard that there was a sequel to it, so when I ran across this book at the library while randomly searching the shelves to find books to read on our trip, I was surprised but also thrilled to find it. I remembered enjoying the first one, although it was a little mindless and a very easy read (which made it a perfect fit for a vacation read). But the idea of an Austenland is very appealing and fun to imagine, and I was definitely up for reading more about it. And Hale's style is cute and funny, and she's LDS so also very reliably clean.

I finished this on the plane on the way to Mexico, which shows how quickly it moved. And I think I liked it even more than the first one. The interesting thing about this book was that this added a mystery into the whole idea of visiting Austenland, so Charlotte, the main character, ends up solving a murder mystery while she's there. I thought it was a great twist to make a sequel to Austenland different than just replaying the first book. And I really liked Charlotte's background: she was a recently divorced woman, with kids, whose husband had an affair and left her. I liked how she was different than the young single woman heroine that you expect from a lot of romance novels like this, and I liked how Hale interspersed her background at the beginning of each chapter, so you feel like you get to know her while the story continues in England. Charlotte's internal monologue was charming, and I really enjoyed getting to know her character. I'm not sure how I felt about the "convenient" ending, which solves Charlotte's problem of having to choose between her new love interest and her kids (of course she was going to choose her kids, so she was going to have to leave the man she liked, but a deus ex machina appeared to save the day). I also am not sure how believable the murderer or his motivation was (but I won't give any more spoilers about that), but overall, it was an enjoyable read!