Julia Allen is a waitress by day, painter by night, and…a famous 1800s authoress on weekends?
Moonlighting as Jane Austen for a historical open house is a strange hobby for a contemporary artist, but Julia loves the role–until she falls asleep and gets locked inside after all the visitors are gone! Rushing home from the dark, historical mansion, she collides with a stranger in the snowy park, and discovers later her shortcut cost her the rare copy of Austen’s Northanger Abbey borrowed from a friend’s treasured collection.
Book historian Eliot Weston thinks he imagined the Regency-era figure, but the book he finds in her wake proves otherwise. The first edition of Jane Austen’s novel is authentic and incredibly rare, but he fails to find any trace of its owner. Reminders of the unusual encounter keep popping up, however, like the pretty modern artist eager to buy an identical volume. Coincidence? Or Divine intervention making it clear this is anything but an ordinary Christmas for these two hearts?
A huge thank you to the author for providing me with a copy of this book for review. I thoroughly enjoyed it!
I am one of those people that wants Christmas to be all year round and loves nothing more than Christmas trees, lights, wrapping presents and winter days, so reading a wintry, Christmas book in August is just what I needed to get me looking forward to this years festivities!
This is a very short novella that combines, contemporary and chic-lit fiction with the plot of old fashioned Christmas films to give you a warm festive feeling and a book that you just can't put down.
As a big Jane Austen fan, the book intrigued me just from the blurb and I wanted to see how Laura wrote her into the modern day, the way she does is brilliant but very unexpected!
Julia is a character I really liked, she is a real woman and I think a lot of women could relate to her. She is kind, caring and is trying to make up for her mistake. She is a waitress to pay the bills, an artist to fulfil her love of painting and for extras, and spends her free time dressing up as Jane Austen and reads a borrowed first edition of Northanger Abbey. When she falls asleep and is left in work late at night, she rushes home dressed as Jane, being in a hurry Julia bumps into a handsome stranger. This is when everything changes.
Eliot is the handsome stranger who bumps into a women that he is sure is dressed as Jane Austen. When she runs away and disappears so quickly, Eliot starts to convince himself he has seen a ghost, until he discovers that she’s dropped a valuable first edition of Northanger Abbey.
This starts the beginning of a beautiful love story that we see develop so wondefully in front of us, you begin to wonder if it is real.
I was hooked on this book from the first few pages and finished it in a hour, it is a perfect novel to get you into the Christmas spirit (even this early) and I give you permission to read this whilst listening to Christmas songs..go on you know you want to! I would recommend this to anybody, young or old as there is something for everyone in this book, history, fiction and a lot of romance.
