Happily Ever After Book Club discussion

Next month (April) our theme will be all about Austen. I'm compiling a list right now, some are retellings others are sequels and some decide to take our favorite characters and give them new twists. I'm still not 100% sure how I feel about all of the this, but I love Austen and as long as they are well done I enjoy them. Anyway, while searching for books I came across The Austen Project, which is a project Harper Collins is doing. Here's what they said on their site:

"The Austen Project pairs six bestselling contemporary authors with Jane Austen’s six complete works: Sense & Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Pride & Prejudice, Emma, Persuasion and Mansfield Park. Taking these well-loved stories as their base, each author will write their own unique take on Jane Austen’s novels."

I'm only familiar with one of the authors, I'm curious to see what these retellings will be like. Below are the authors and books they will be writing (I only found four of the six books so far).

Joanna Trollope- Sense and Sensibility
Val McDermid- Northanger Abbey
Curtis Sittenfeld- Pride and Prejudice
Alexander McCall Smith- Emma

What do you think of all the knock-off Austen's? Do you like them, hate them, or don't really care? Which are your favorites and ones you'd recommend? I'm looking forward to April's choices and can't wait to see which one wins!

www.theaustenproject.com

I have a love/hate relationship with the books that follow the characters after the originals. On the one hand, I want there to be more books like Austen's, but I've read all of hers so many times, so that it's glaringly obvious when the followups don't come close. I suppose the one I enjoyed the most was this one These Three Remain

I did not enjoy one that had Mr. and Mrs. Darcy involved in trying to solve murders, though I don't even remember what they were called or who wrote them. Not badly done, just not very engaging.

I was lucky enough to hear Curtis Sittenfeld speak last year, but she hadn't even started writing the Pride and Prejudice book! She made a comment about how her publisher wasn't going to be happy that it was going to have to come out later than they expected. I've only read one of Sittenfeld's books, American Wife and I'm really curious how she is going to do this new version of P&P. I'd be too intimidated to take on such a challenge.

I'm enough of an Austen enthusiast that I'll read almost any knock-off or sequel, although too often I'm disappointed (I read a version of P&P told from Darcy's point of view that I thought was a complete waste of time). One I did enjoy was a sequel about Elizabeth's and Darcy's children, Mr. Darcy's Daughters. I think you all would like it. Not all of this author's books are clean but this one was.

Do you know whether that entire series is clean, at least?

Marlene wrote: "Do you know whether that entire series is clean, at least?"

The second book in that series, The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy, was not what I'd call clean. It's been several years since I read it and I remember being flabbergasted that the heroine and hero decided to just live together at the end. Maybe they'll get married? I don't think there was any explicit sex, though. I haven't read any of the others, just those two books.

Depending on how sensitive you are, you may or may not mind that in the first book, Mr. Darcy's Daughters, one of the sisters (not the main character) gets pregnant and runs off with a man.

OK, thank you for that. Wow, are you confident you're remembering the living together part correctly? I was so impressed with the first book. Eesh! As for the latter, I saw a lot of parallels between the characters in book 1 with P&P, so I wouldn't be surprised if the author continued that trend. (Lydia)

I'm like 95% certain that I'm remembering that right, unfortunately. I think they did decide to get married in the end, but it was after they'd been living together for a while (it was like in Italy or somewhere remote where they didn't have to worry about society's disapproval, IIRC). I'll see if I still have the book around but I suspect I got rid of it the last time I did a bookshelf purge.

OK, thanks. 😱

Love Austen. I have read some wonderful sequela / what If e some really bad. Love ATTEMPTING ELIZABETH. I'd like suggedtions, clean ones

Look at my JAFF shelf. They're all clean unless they're marked "don't want to read." Most of the books on my shelf I have not read.

I really loved Darcy's Voyage by Kara Louise.

I’ve read two very good alternate endings to Mansfield Park in the last year:

Henry and Fanny: An Alternate Ending to Mansfield Park - $2.99, definitely worth it

Everingham - online freebie, link is in my review

Looks like Everingham has not been very widely read. Or at least reviewed. None of the people in my JAFF group have reviewed or rated this one. It looks interesting to me. Thanks for the recommendation! (I already had the first one on my list.)