Home: while I’m not saying it’s a epic saga about the journey to find a place to call home, whether Jane will finally get to call a place home (or if Thomas will come and take Dunnock away from her) is a main plot point!
Based on a rec from llamareadsbooks for the second in the series!
So I will say that I enjoyed this and stayed in bed one morning in lieu of going to work to read it. It’s the first book in a while that was easy to get into and prompted such behavior. Do I think it rises to the level of three stars? Not quite, but I did enjoy it quite a bit!
This book marks #2 in a quirky sub-genre/trope of “historical fiction where the/a female character has agency due to writing, under a pseudonym, (a) fantastically popular pulp-y novel(s).” I imagine if you’re an author of our times writing about characters in ye olde times, it’s hard to create the agency and egalitarian feel which readers sort of expect, even subconsciously. I might enjoy stories where dashing heros sweep heroines off their feet, but said heroine needs to have something that gives her a backbone or it seems limp.
Enter the authoress heroine, who is financially sound and therefore not required to find a husband in order to stave off destitution in a time when women didn’t really have means to support themselves!
I will say a part that confuses me is the ready availability of bound books–weren’t those pretty expensive? I had thought that Jane’s work would sell as paper bound books or in a magazine, but I believe it came out in bound volumes. WhatEVER we’re not here for those nuances and details. We’re here for some mild hurdles, easily dispatched villains, and the boning, all of which happen in abundance here.
