“Show me the books she loves and I shall know the woman…“

Jane Austen Ruined My Life

Beth Pattillo

Drawing on the recent popularity of all-things Jane Austen, award-winning novelist Beth Patillo crafts a fiction title with cross-over potential that offers equal parts humor, intrigue, and romance in a lighthearted chick-lit style dealing with themes of overcoming betrayal and learning to love again.

English professor Emma Grant has always done everything just the way her minister father told her she should – a respectable marriage, a teaching job at a good college, and plans for the requisite two children. Life was prodigiously good, as her favorite author Jane Austen might say, until the day Emma is betrayed by her husband. Suddenly, all her romantic notions a la Austen are exposed for the foolish dreams they are.

In the end, Emma learns that doing the right thing has very little to do with other people’s expectations and everything to do with her own beliefs. Laced with fictional excerpts from the missing letters, Jane Austen Ruined My Life is the story of a woman betrayed who uncovers the deeper meaning of loyalty.

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Reviewed by Janette:

I enjoyed this book, cover to cover. Emma, a PhD professor at a US University is considered an expert in the study of Jane Austen’s writings. After Emma finds her husband with another woman, they divorce, her ex-husband’s lover accuses Emma of plagiarism, and the University fires her. Just as her divorce is final, Emma receives an invitation from a stranger that claims to be in possession of lost letters written by Jane Austen. Broke and disheartened, she decides this discovery would make her reputation credible once more. She contacts her cousin that lives in England, and her cousin opens her home for Emma’s two week stay.

Using the house key her cousin provided, she opens the door and there is a man standing just inside, wearing only a towel. It is Adam, her former best friend that she last saw when she married Edward. Adam seems to be on a secret quest of his own.

Her first morning in England, Emma wastes no time finding the home of the old woman behind the invitation, to see the documents promised. But the letters are not available until Emma completes a series of tasks. As each task is finished, a new envelope is received with new instructions.

I really enjoyed the descriptions of the sights and landmarks that Emma visited as part of her tasks, and the mystery that she needs to solve. As Emma works out her pain during the various tasks, she gains
a new inner strength.

The history around the time of Jane Austen’s life is interesting; many activities we take for granted are not allowed by a lady of Jane’s position. All in all, this was a page turner for me, beginning to end.

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