Book #54: Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope

I've only just realized how many Jane Austen rewrites and fan fiction books I read. I just recently made a Jane Austen tab for all JA and JA-related books and this is the 16th book in that category already haha. I don't know why, but even when books don't necessary live up to the expectations, I love reading Austen-related stories (and I still have a few more on my to-read list that will hopefully be coming up soon). I ran across this one kind of randomly; I'm not even sure how. But I found out that this group of authors were rewriting all of Austen's novels for the modern times and calling it the Jane Austen Project, and I was already enthralled. This and the Northanger Abbey version are both published already, but this was the only one at the library so far.

I really, really liked this book. The author stuck to all of the main premises of the original novel, even those that don't necessarily hold up in today's culture (like Edward staying engaged to Lucy against his own will) but changes the reasoning behind the actions to match our modern-day assumptions, and I feel like it works really well. She stuck very well to the original characters, and I loved seeing them from a modern-day point of view. Margaret was hilarious as an angsty pre-teen listening to her iPod non-stop. I like how she kept Edward as interesting and not as a complete pushover (although kind of)--but it made him slightly more appealing and you can see why Elinor likes him. I even liked the little things in the voice and modern adaptation of the book, like how each of the characters has little nicknames that really fit them, like Ellie and M and Mags. Very cute and this was definitely an awesome read. I can't wait for the other ones to come out.