WHAT WOULD JANE AUSTEN DO?

Author: Laurie Brown ISBN: 9781402218316 5/2009 PARANORMAL/HISTORIAL Publisher: SOURCEBOOKS
Time Period: Regency and Contemporary

Surely Jane Austen would know how to handle such a rake... From the author of Hundreds of Years to Reform a Rake, a new time travel romance featuring a modern day career woman swept back in time to Regency England, where she thwarts a Napoleonic spy, chats with Jane Austen, and falls in love with a notorious rake. Eleanor is a costume designer in England for the Jane Austen festival, where her room at the inn is haunted. In the middle of the night she encounters two ghost sisters whose brother was killed in a duel over 200 years ago. They persuade her to travel back in time with them to prevent the duel. Eleanor is swept into a country house party, presided over by the charming Lord Shermont, where she encounters and befriends Jane Austen. But there's much more to Lord Shermont than the ghosts knew, and as Eleanor dances and flirts with him, she begins to lose her heart.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Laurie Brown sets her paranormal romance, WHAT WOULD JANE AUSTEN DO?, in present day (and mid 1700’s) England, where Eleanor Pottinger has arrived to give a talk on historic costumes for a Regency Week seminar at an inn near Jane Austen’s house. She’d visited the inn two years previous and met her ex-fiancé there. Now she knows him for the cad he is and is hoping to salvage what was to be her honeymoon by branching out in her design business. At least she was going to give a talk until she meets the ghosts of two sisters who lived in the manor that has been converted into the inn. They need Eleanor to go back in time with them to help prevent their brother Teddy’s death in a duel of honor with Lord Shermont. Apparently he seduced one of the sisters, and they feel they need to atone in order to move on. Lord Shermont is suffering his own sort of time travel. He had an accident five years previous and can’t remember anything from his past. When he meets Eleanor (standing in for the sisters’ American cousin, Ellen) he can only think of the future, especially if it includes her, even at the cost of his secret mission to flush out the spy who is passing information to the French enemies.

Brown sets out to dazzle us with her witty characters and not only succeeds in that department, but also in a unique whodunit thriller as well as a charming period piece. Eleanor reluctantly takes on her mission with the sisters’ (Mina and Dierdre) promise that she’ll meet Jane Austen herself. With a huge house party unfolding at the manor with a large group of guests, Eleanor has to quickly adapt to the etiquette and mores of the time (constantly asking herself what her idol would do), distract Lord Shermont from the girls, and prevent Teddy’s death. A pretty tall order and she almost succeeds. She avoids the duel, but with that change, events start to modify from how they occurred in the past. She also falls madly in love with Shermont even knowing that she’ll be headed back to her own time soon, and he’s as desperately in love with her despite the fact that he thinks she might be the traitorous spy.

I absolutely couldn’t put WHAT WOULD JANE AUSTEN DO? down for a minute! It captured my heart and spirit of “what if?” There are plenty of puzzles to unravel and the lovely affair of Eleanor and Shermont and, of course—Jane Austen chatting demurely. Sigh. Regency fans will appreciate Eleanor’s love for all things from that era.

Susan Barton