First Impressions: Jane Austen's First Love

^ See what I did there? *wink*

Today I am THRILLED to participate in the blog tour celebrating the release of Syrie James's latest novel, Jane Austen's First Love! (I am less thrilled, however, that due to life and a lack of time management I have not yet finished the novel, so I am unable to give you my full review as scheduled today...hence, the "First Impressions" title.)

Syrie James's novels have been on my radar for quite some time thanks to glowing reviews -- a recommendation from Laurel Ann of Austenprose carries great weight! --  and intriguing subject matter (Charlotte Bronte's secret diaries? I am so there!), but until I was approached for this blog tour her novels had not yet made it to the top of my to-be-read stack.

Let me start by sharing a bit about Jane Austen's First Love:

About the book:

INSPIRED BY ACTUAL EVENTS

 
Fifteen-year-old Jane Austen dreams of three things: doing something useful, writing something worthy, and falling madly in love. When she visits her brother in Kent to celebrate his engagement, she meets wealthy, devilishly handsome Edward Taylor—a fascinating young man who is truly worthy of her affections. Jane knows a match between her and Edward is unlikely, but every moment she spends with him makes her heart race—and he seems to return her interest. Much to her displeasure, however, there is another seeking his attention
 
Unsure of her budding relationship, Jane seeks distraction by attempting to correct the pairings of three other prospective couples. But when her matchmaking aspirations do not all turn out as anticipated, Jane discovers the danger of relying on first impressions. The human heart cannot be easily deciphered, nor can it be directed or managed. And if others must be left to their own devices in matters of love and matrimony, can Jane even hope to satisfy her own heart?

I've long admired Austen's prose, her warmth, humor, and razor-sharp wit! And I am an avid fan of several of the numerous film and miniseries adaptations of her work. However, it wasn't until Becoming Jane was released that Austen began to come alive for me as more than an author's name on the cover of a beloved novel. That film details the author's possible relationship with one Tom Lefroy as the impetus behind the timeless romances in her writing. Around the time of Becoming Jane's release, the BBC released the tele-film Miss Austen Regrets, which tells the story of Jane's last years, a poignant retrospective that sees an older Austen revisiting her life choices and past romantic possibilities.

Both films are gorgeous glimpses into this intensely private and beloved author's life, but it wasn't until I started Jane Austen's First Love that she came alive for me with the energy and life I always found within the pages of her novels. If this is an example of Ms. James's writing, I can only regret the time it has taken me to explore her work!!

This is an exquisite portrait of a youthful, vibrant Jane, who at fifteen is eager to explore the possibility of romance while honing her writing craft. James knows Austen's world like few others, her prose saturated with the period's rhythm of speech and colorful descriptors that bring everyday existence in the early nineteenth century to vibrant, technicolor life on the page.

James's teenage Jane has the energy of a Lydia and the romantic imagination of a Marianne, wrapped up with an Elizabeth's penchant for sly humor or cutting social commentary. As Jane's relationships with family and friends are sketched on the page, it is easy to see little hints of the classic characters that will spill from her pen plant seeds of imaginative possibilities in her keenly-observant conscious.

I am SO intrigued by the possibility that a youthful Jane's first brush with romance may have been with this Edward Taylor, heretofore completely unknown to me, and yet such a fascinating potential hero template -- educated, well-traveled, and a future Member of Parliament! Like much of Jane's life, the true extent of any possible relationship between them may never be known, but it is a fascinating premise for this articulate, beautifully-rendered sketch of a young Jane's life. I cannot WAIT to finish this novel and share my full review with you!*

You can check out the full list of tour stops as well as the launch contest on Austenprose.

*My apologies to the author and publicity team for being late with my review post! My goal is to have it finished on or shortly after the book's official release on August 5th!

the art of the stare...

Thanks to Deborah for making me aware of this delightful video's existence...

Review: And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander

And Only to Deceive (Lady Emily #1)
By: Tasha Alexander
Publisher: HarperCollins
ASIN: B000OI0E0Y

Review:

Lady Emily Bromley married Philip, the Viscount Ashton, not for his good looks or fortune, but to escape her overbearing mother's attempts to control every facet of her life. Love, least of all, played no part in her marriage equation. For while she had more interest in her books, a well-bred woman in Victorian England was expected to marry, and to marry well -- and so when Philip offered, she accepted. Six months later, Emily found herself a widow, thrown into the elaborate and socially expected mourning rituals of the day for a man she barely knew, let alone really, truly, grieved. It's only as she finally enters half-mourning, when at long last gray could begin to replace her black mourning crepe that Emily begins to understand that the man she married was wholly different from the one she thought she knew. Philip loved his hunting, yes, but it is his best friend, the handsome Colin Hargreaves, who first opens Emily's eyes to her husband's academic passions and even more shocking, the idea that he may have really, truly, loved her.

As a wealthy widow, Emily now as the resources and freedom to pursue her own interests, and using her husband's journals and antiquities collection as a starting point, she begins her own socially unorthodox -- but oh so personally gratifying -- academic pursuits. But as she delves into the world of Homer, Greek antiquities, and academia, the unthinkable occurs -- Emily begins to fall in love with her husband. The more she gets to know Philip through his writings and friends' reminiscences, the deeper her regret cuts at not having put more effort into her marriage when she had the chance. As she becomes an amateur expert in Philip's field of antiquities, she makes a terrifying discovery -- someone has been replacing priceless artifacts in the British museum with fakes, and several of the items in her husband's collection prove genuine. With their provenance in question, Emily fears the man she learned to love too late will prove a thief, and if not, a victim of men willing to go to any length to achieve their unscrupulous aims...

Tasha Alexander's Lady Emily series has been on my radar for several years now, and when the first installment was keenly-priced on Amazon I couldn't resist finally meeting her aristocratic lady sleuth. I am always eager to meet new, smart, and intelligent heroines, and the Victorian-setting within the pages of Alexander's debut is one rife with possibilities -- a period characterized by great scientific and intellectual advancements as well as a strict moral and social code. By positioning Emily as a wealthy widow, Alexander has gifted her heroine with an extraordinary amount of relative freedom, an ideal situation for an amateur sleuth. There is an authenticity to the almost leisurely manner at which Emily's intellectual awakening unfolds; however, the flip side is the glacial pace of the novel, stalling any forward plot momentum and character development. A full two-thirds of the story is devoted to Emily's educational pursuits, which, while admirable, are meted out with a pedantic tone that turns the story into an intellectual exercise rather than a compelling character study.

The pacing picks up when Emily makes the shocking discovery that her husband's antiquities collection contains genuine, priceless artifacts, the knowledge threatening to topple Philip from the pedestal on which she'd installed him in memoriam. While Emily's intellectual pursuits to this point are gratifying and empowering, it isn't until she starts to research the questionable provenance of her inheritance, exercising her intellect and free will, finally hinting at a character with the moxie and smarts to actively challenge convention. Prior to this juncture, she's toyed with the concept, attending lectures and (horrors!) professing a preference for brandy rather than sherry, but there was a naivete to her approach to freedom that quickly grew stale. Yes, the social expectations and restrictions she encountered were real, but her response to resistance too often reads as childish rather than focused -- there is a lack of balance in her swings from one extreme to the next that came off as initially more immature than compelling.

The promise of a widow coming to know and love her husband through his writings intrigued me, and the one-sided love affair is one of the more intriguing aspects of Emily's introduction that sets her apart from other sleuths of her ilk (i.e., Raybourn's Lady Julia). However, in the end I think Alexander took the conceit too far, as Emily's headlong obsession with building a one-sided, post-death "relationship" of sorts with Philip reaches its inevitable conclusion of going exactly nowhere. Yes, he is a critical catalyst for Emily's intellectual and personal "awakening," but the scant journal excerpts aren't lengthy or compelling enough to warrant siding with Emily's rose-colored view of Philip. The contrast is especially stark when her two new, would-be suitors are introduced -- Colin and Andrew. Both men have their secrets, but Colin's pursuit of Emily possesses such a maturity that it is frankly maddening every time she spurns him for Andrew.

But, personal preferences aside, Emily's relationship with the men in her life charts a clear trajectory of her emerging maturation. As a first novel and an introduction to Emily's world, Alexander has delivered a serviceable storyline that hints at the possibility of greater, more compelling characterization to come -- a possibility that I hope bears out in subsequent volumes of this long-running series. While the glacially-slow plotting and characterization issues didn't leave me eager to read the sequels, Colin's promise to Emily -- wherein he tells her he only wants to "complement a life you already find perfectly satisfying" -- gives me hope that subsequent installments take this budding relationship of true intellectual like minds on deeper and more satisfying adventures. The intellectual slant of Lady Emily's character sets her apart, and I have high hopes that further volumes have seen the formula polished and the character's potential hitting the right balance between intellectual and historical authenticity and compelling storytelling.

About the book:

For Emily, accepting the proposal of Philip, the Viscount Ashton, was an easy way to escape her overbearing mother, who was set on a grand society match. So when Emily's dashing husband died on safari soon after their wedding, she felt little grief. After all, she barely knew him. Now, nearly two years later, she discovers that Philip was a far different man from the one she had married so cavalierly. His journals reveal him to have been a gentleman scholar and antiquities collector who, to her surprise, was deeply in love with his wife. Emily becomes fascinated with this new image of her dead husband and she immerses herself in all things ancient and begins to study Greek.

Emily's intellectual pursuits and her desire to learn more about Philip take her to the quiet corridors of the British Museum, one of her husband's favorite places. There, amid priceless ancient statues, she uncovers a dark, dangerous secret involving stolen artifacts from the Greco-Roman galleries. And to complicate matters, she's juggling two very prominent and wealthy suitors, one of whose intentions may go beyond the marrying kind. As she sets out to solve the crime, her search leads to more surprises about Philip and causes her to question the role in Victorian society to which she, as a woman, is relegated.

Monrosalee's Wedding!

Oh Grimm, I miss you and your quirky randomness.

The Hobbit - new trailer!

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies teaser trailer was released today. WHAT IS WITH THAT TITLE?! Not a fan of the whole three movie thing for this book-to-screen adaptation, but The Hobbit: There and Back Again gave me all of the book nostalgia feels I could want. Oh well, c'est la vie. This marathon is almost finished...

In the Field of Grace by Tessa Afshar

This week, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is introducing In The Field of Grace River North; New Edition edition (July 1, 2014) by Tessa Afshar

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

TESSA AFSHAR was voted "New Author of the Year" by the Family Fiction sponsored Reader's Choice Award 2011 for her novel Pearl in the Sand. She was born in Iran, and lived there for the first fourteen years of her life. She moved to England where she survived boarding school for girls and fell in love with Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, before moving to the United States permanently. Her conversion to Christianity in her twenties changed the course of her life forever. Tessa holds an MDiv from Yale University where she served as co-chair of the Evangelical Fellowship at the Divinity School. She has spent the last thirteen years in full-time Christian work.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Destitute, grief-stricken, and unwanted by the people of God, Ruth arrives in Israel with nothing to recommend her but Naomi's, love. Her loftiest hope is to provide enough food to save Naomi and herself from starvation.

But God has other plans for her life. While everyone considers Ruth an outcast, she is astounded to find one of the most honored men of Judah showing her favor.  Long since a widower and determined to stay that way, Boaz is irresistibly drawn to the foreign woman with the haunted eyes. He tells himself he is only being kind to his Cousin Naomi's chosen daughter when he goes out of his way to protect her from harm, but his heart knows better.

Based on the biblical account of Ruth, In the Field of Grace is the story of a love that ultimately changes the course of Israel's destiny and the future of the whole world.

If you would like to read the first chapter of In The Field of Grace, go HERE.

Mockingjay gets a proper trailer!

FINALLY.

Once S4 trailer!

Okay, so there's no new footage, but there's a DRAMATIC VOICEOVER! You can check the trailer out HERE.