Title: Lies Jane Austen Told Me
Author: Julie Wright
Publication: November 7, 2017
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Genre: Romance
Pages: 320
SYNOPSIS: (From Goodreads)
Ever since Emma read Pride and Prejudice, she’s been in love with Mr. Darcy and has regarded Jane Austen as the expert on all things romantic. So naturally when Emma falls for Blake Hampton and he invites her home to meet his parents, she is positive an engagement is in her future. After all, Blake is a single man in possession of a good fortune, and thus must be in want of a wife.
But when it turns out that what Blake actually wants is more of a hook-up than a honeymoon, Emma is hurt, betrayed, and furious. She throws herself deeper into her work as CMO of Kinetics, the fastest growing gym franchise in the nation. She loves her work, and she’s good at it, which is why she bristles when her boss brings in a consultant to help her spearhead the new facilities on the East Coast. Her frustration turns to shock when that consultant turns out to be Blake’s younger brother, Lucas.
Emma is determined not to fall for Lucas, but as she gets to know him, she realizes that Lucas is nothing like his brother. He is kind and attentive and spends his time and money caring for the less fortunate.
What she can’t understand is why Lucas continues to try to push her back into Blake’s arms when he so clearly has fallen as hard for her as she has fallen for him. It isn’t until Lucas reveals to Emma that he was adopted into the Hampton family that she begins to understand his loyalty to Blake as well as his devotion to the child April-she is Lucas’s biological niece.
Emma opens up to Lucas about the feelings of abandonment she has harbored ever since she was a child and her mother left the family. As she helps Lucas deal with his past demons, she is able to exorcise some of her own.
Realizing that her love life is as complicated as anything Jane Austen could have dreamed up, Emma must find a way to let Blake know that it’s time for him to let her go and to let Lucas know it’s time for him to love her back.
REVIEW:
**A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.**
When asked to read Lies Jane Austen Told Me I was excited. My Grandmother is a lover of all things Austen. Every winter with my mother I would watch the 1995 mini-series of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth as Mr Darcy. The one with the infamous white shirt scene. Ladies, you know what I am talking about. So to say that Jane Austen has always been part of my life would be an understatement. I even had to start watching that series again this morning thanks to the book.
As the story opens, Emma is trying to hustle out of the office so she can make it to her weekend away. Everyone around her seems to think that she will come back to the office on Monday as an engaged woman. Though she had not planned to go, Emma decides to surprise her boyfriend Blake by showing up at his parent’s place for the weekend. Once there she realizes something isn’t quite right. Blake doesn’t seem excited to see her. He is blocking the door and when he does let her in, he only takes her to the kitchen. That’s when he confesses he has a “work colleague” there to “grill fish”. Emma storms out of the house deeply hurt. That is when she encounters Lucas, Blake’s brother. Lucas offers to drive her to the train station so she can get back home. Once home Emma goes to her best friends Silvia’s house. Emma is a self-admitted obsessed Jane Austen fan. She carries a copy of Pride and Prejudice wherever she goes. She swears off Jane Austen for good. She feels that she knew nothing about romance since Jane never married yet she wrote romance novels. Once she swears off love, fate throws love at her in the form of Lucas. Will she give in to love? Will she find her way back to Jane Austen?
This book was all kinds of fabulous! I hammered it out in about 2.5 days. I would catch myself turning the Kindle on just to read a few more pages to find out what else was going to happen. I loved the quotes from each of Jane Austen book written in italics before each chapter. The characters were lovable. They all had parental issues that they needed to work out and they helped each other work through theirs. A lot of books have parent issues but this one seemed to buck the norms. Maybe it was the female character having the main issues and not the male (even though he has them as well), Maybe it was how it didn’t overshadow everything else while the author beat it like a dead horse. The story was clean and tastefully written when it came to the romance parts, which was only in the last chapter and the epilogue. I will definitely be getting this for my Grandma for Christmas. I’ll also be adding this author to my to-read list of books and keeping her new books on my radar.
STAR RATING: 5/5
Lies Jane Austen Told Me by Julie Wright is available now on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Also check a local bookstore near you. Make sure to add it to your To Reads list on Goodreads and leave feedback for the author when you are finished. You can also follow author Julie Wright on her website here.
